Preparatory Tests for AWS Cloud Practitioner and Beyond

This course of Three Practice Tests will hone your skills broadly as you start your journey into the Cloud. It is meant to help you pass the AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification, and to help you lead your journey into other Certifications (notably Assoc. Architecture): it is this transition path knowledge in addition to helping you to pass the AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification that differentiates this course offering from the others.

Course Audience

The course audience is expected to be diverse and there are no pre-requisites, except a curiosity to learn about Cloud Computing in the AWS Cloud. This is a Practice Test Course and is comprised of Three full-length quality Practice Tests to thoroughly vet your understanding of the AWS cloud.

Why one should take the AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam?

• The goal of this exam is to ascertain you have a broad understanding of the AWS Cloud, Cloud Computing fundamentals, and its components & services. Attaining this certification can also be a competitive discriminator in your career.

• More specifically, the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner offers a foundational understanding of AWS Cloud concepts, services, and terminology.

  • This is a good starting point for individuals in non-technical roles with no prior IT or cloud experience or for those with on-premises IT experience looking for basic AWS Cloud fluency.

  • This certification can give candidates the confidence to tackle other  AWS Certifications as well as engage in Cloud related conversations in their work confidently.

Goals of this Course

1. Ensure your fundamentals are vetted out so you can take the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam Confidently.

2. The challenge level slightly intersects with advanced next levels of competency in the Cloud - so the knowledge you gain  this course goes above and beyond what is expected for Cloud Practitioner.

3. Train you via use cases to make you differentiate and identify best performing low cost solutions in the Cloud (this type of questions are quite common in other AWS Certifications). These questions are simplified but helps you get that mindset from the get go.

4. You do not have to have IT or Software Background to take these Tests - in fact, this tests will vet the knowledge of anyone who want to operate and explore the Cloud at various levels of detail and engagement.

5. The knowledge you gain will also make you make confident, intelligent for value-added conversations whether it is related to Cloud migration from your premises, Issue Diagnoses, Deploy Solutions in the Cloud, and more.

6. You will understand, unequivocally, how the AWS Cloud can impact your business and be prepared for the next technology revolution.

The AWS Practitioner Certification Exam

1. It is 65 multiple choice questions and duration is 90 minutes.

2. Some questions may have multiple answers than a single one - in this case, note there is NO credit for partial answers.

3. The passing criteria is a score of 700 (AWS scales the score based on exam difficulty automatically). Questions are NOT weighted equally.

4. No penalty for guessing - i.e., an incorrect answer does not entail you to a negative score: SO PLEASE ANSWER ALL THE QUESTIONS.

5. Study Material.

   1. AWS Skills Builder has a course 'AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials' which is free and walks through all the topics for Cloud Practitioner. In addition to the videos, please also read the transcript and additional explanation. You should also take the final quiz which should warm you up for these Tests.

Sample Question and Answer with Explanation

As you will see in the explanation, not only it gives details of the question and its answer, but explanation on why others are unfit for the given use case. Further, plenty of Exam Tips are underscored in the explanation which will help you face alternative Exam scenarios, or possible Exam questions.

Question. You want to conserve your S3 storage costs. Your Compliance department noted that data access frequency varies widely, and wants you to devise a storage scheme to optimize costs based on data access. Note, frequently used data must be accessed in milli-seconds and infrequently accessed data, when accessed should also be fast, within milli-seconds. What is the simplest automated way (least development effort) to accomplish this goal?

• Use S3 Intelligent Tiering

• S3 life-cycle rules.

• Store in S3 Glacier.

• Store in S3 Standard Storage Class.

Explanation

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is a service that provides object-level storage. Amazon S3 stores data as objects in buckets. In object storage, each object consists of data, metadata, and a key. You can choose from a range of S3 storage classes to select a fit for your business and cost needs. Only relevant subset is shown below:

• S3 Standard - default storage class if none specified. 3 AZ replication, Fast Retrieval (aka first byte latency in techy terms) in Milli-seconds

• S3 Intelligent Tiering - Ideal if you don't know the access pattern of your data (which is accessed more frequently vs. less frequently). Moves data between Standard and Standard IA using access patterns to reduce your costs. Has a monthly fee for this.

• S3 Glacier Instant and Flexible Retrieval: Glacier is for archival storage and data stored in vaults

  • Instant - for archived data that requires immediate access (milli-second access, same like S3 standard)

  • Flexible - Primarily for data archiving. Retrieval from minutes (Expedited) to Hours (5-12). Note, the term "S3 Glacier" typically stands for Glacier with Flexible Retrieval.

Correct Choice

Use S3 Intelligent Tiering

The Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class is designed to optimize storage costs by automatically moving data to the most cost-effective access tier when access patterns change.

This is the simplest automated way to manage storage based on access patterns and thus save on costs as per above.

Exam Tip Unpredictable access pattern to your objects and S3 storage costs increasing?, think Intelligent tiering.

For the other choices

S3 life-cycle rules.

To manage your objects so that they are stored cost effectively throughout their lifecycle, configure their Amazon S3 Lifecycle. An S3 Lifecycle configuration is a set of rules that define actions that Amazon S3 applies to a group of objects. There are two types of actions: Transition (move to another storage class) or Expiration (delete the object).

Exam Tip Control your object storage yourself in S3 for cost, think life-cycle rules.

Though this does help on automation front, it requires lot of setup and effort, and difficult to do when access patterns cannot be predicted. S3 Intelligent Tiering is best at it.

Store in S3 Glacier

This is for archival storage and can help infrequently stored object cost, but its retrieval performance will be slow for frequently used objects so ruled out.

Exam Tip Note, the terminology S3 Glacier stands for Glacier Flexible Retrieval. It was formerly called S3 Glacier and the terminology is still around. So if you just see S3 Glacier in Exam, best not to assume instant retrieval as it is a recent addition. Read the question context always.

Store in S3 Standard Storage Class

This is the default storage class and exhibits good performance but not the best storage class to keep your objects if they are infrequently accessed as it increases your total cost.

Suggested Ways to Crack the Exam Questions

1. Study the question Fully. Make an expectation of what the answer should be without reading the choices, but DO NOT attach yourself to this conclusion - keep it tentative.

2. Make sure you note the constraint keywords and asks (such as least cost, high performance, least effort, etc.)

3. Beware if a question says: "Pick a choice that is NOT  TRUE (or Pick a choice that is FALSE) - natural human thinking tends to gravitate towards True.

4. Review ALL the choices - DO NOT make a selection without reading all. Common mistake is picking the earliest choice that seem to fit as the best answer (without reading all the choices). But, the next choice could have been the perfect answer!

5. Answer ALL the questions even if you don't know any - there is no penalty for incorrect answers. Further, if you don't know or not fully confident of the question, use elimination of the choices that definitely are wrong, then focus only on the fit ones to choose the answer (your probability of being correct increases this way!).

6. Keep time to review at the end. Reasons:

• Sometime you may have inadvertently forgot to answer a question, or

• [Beware] Though you knew a question and selected the answer correctly, inadvertently due to mouse click, it may have selected a wrong choice, or

• You may have skipped a question to save time, but forgot about it: remember, every question's answer counts.

The practice tests will ensure you are prepared on the above especially #6 pitfalls.

Check List

1. Prepare as per above (Suggested Study Material and additional as you see fit) BEFORE you take these Tests. Pretend the Test is the Exam itself so allocate time.

2. Read the explanation fully for a Test after completing it before moving to the next Test.

3. Review your Incorrect Answers (for obvious reasons!).

4. Review also your Correct Answers. Why?

   • For some questions, you could have used elimination or just guessed - so understand why that choice is indeed the right answer.

   • For some questions, you picked a choice thinking of a reason; the Choice is correct, but that reason is wrong. Reading the explanation will tell you why it is the right choice and its reason precisely.

5. Review the Incorrect choices (regardless of whether you answered a given question right or wrong) - because you need to know why they are not the right answer(s). Moreover, in a different problem context, they may be valid choices.

6. If you wish to re-take the Tests, give a couple days so your memory will not interfere with your understanding in answering the questions.

7. A few days before the exam, see if you have time to quickly re-take all the Tests (or simply review the Exam Tip content).

8. If you get over 80-90% or above in the Tests, I believe you are ready to take the Exam.

Exam Domains and Weighting

• Domain 1: Cloud Concepts 26%

• Domain 2: Security and Compliance 25%

• Domain 3: Technology 33%

• Domain 4: Billing and Pricing 16%

Finally in taking the practice tests, focus on the ask pattern of the question, not just the question itself. This will hone your problem solving skills and quick thinking when you are at the exam.

Good Luck!