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AWS Azure Google Cloud Certifications Testimonials and Dumps
Do you want to become a Professional DevOps Engineer, a cloud Solutions Architect, a Cloud Engineer or a modern Developer or IT Professional, a versatile Product Manager, a hip Project Manager? Therefore Cloud skills and certifications can be just the thing you need to make the move into cloud or to level up and advance your career.
85% of hiring managers say cloud certifications make a candidate more attractive.
Build the skills that’ll drive your career into six figures.
In this blog, we are going to feed you with AWS Azure and GCP Cloud Certification testimonials and Frequently Asked Questions and Answers Dumps.
Went through the entire CloudAcademy course. Most of the info went out the other ear. Got a 67% on their final exam. Took the ExamPro free exam, got 69%.
Was going to take it last Saturday, but I bought TutorialDojo’s exams on Udemy. Did one Friday night, got a 50% and rescheduled it a week later to today Sunday.
Took 4 total TD exams. Got a 50%, 54%, 67%, and 64%. Even up until last night I hated the TD exams with a passion, I thought they were covering way too much stuff that didn’t even pop up in study guides I read. Their wording for some problems were also atrocious. But looking back, the bulk of my “studying” was going through their pretty well written explanations, and their links to the white papers allowed me to know what and where to read.
Not sure what score I got yet on the exam. As someone who always hated testing, I’m pretty proud of myself. I also had to take a dump really bad starting at around question 25. Thanks to TutorialsDojo Jon Bonso for completely destroying my confidence before the exam, forcing me to up my game. It’s better to walk in way over prepared than underprepared.
Just Passed My CCP exam today (within 2 weeks)
I would like to thank this community for recommendations about exam preparation. It was wayyyy easier than I expected (also way easier than TD practice exams scenario-based questions-a lot less wordy on real exam). I felt so unready before the exam that I rescheduled the exam twice. Quick tip: if you have limited time to prepare for this exam, I would recommend scheduling the exam beforehand so that you don’t procrastinate fully.
Resources:
-Stephane’s course on Udemy (I have seen people saying to skip hands-on videos but I found them extremely helpful to understand most of the concepts-so try to not skip those hands-on)
-Tutorials Dojo practice exams (I did only 3.5 practice tests out of 5 and already got 8-10 EXACTLY worded questions on my real exam)
-Very little to no experience (deployed my group’s app to cloud via Elastic beanstalk in college-had 0 clue at the time about what I was doing-had clear guidelines)
I used Stephane Maarek on Udemy. Purchased his course and the 6 Practice Exams. Also got Neal Davis’ 500 practice questions on Udemy. I took Stephane’s class over 2 days, then spent the next 2 weeks going over the tests (3~4 per day) till I was constantly getting over 80% – passed my exam with a 882.
What an adventure, I’ve never really gieven though to getting a cert until one day it just dawned on me that it’s one of the few resources that are globally accepted. So you can approach any company and basically prove you know what’s up on AWS 😀
Passed with two weeks of prep (after work and weekends)
This was just a nice structured presentation that also gives you the powerpoint slides plus cheatsheets and a nice overview of what is said in each video lecture.
Udemy – AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Practice Exams, created by Jon Bonso**, Tutorials Dojo**
These are some good prep exams, they ask the questions in a way that actually make you think about the related AWS Service. With only a few “Bullshit! That was asked in a confusing way” questions that popped up.
Pass AWS CCP. The score is beyond expected
I took CCP 2 days ago and got the pass notification right after submitting the answers. In about the next 3 hours I got an email from Credly for the badge. This morning I got an official email from AWS congratulating me on passing, the score is much higher than I expected. I took Stephane Maarek’s CCP course and his 6 demo exams, then Neal Davis’ 500 questions also. On all the demo exams, I took 1 fail and all passes with about 700-800. But in the real exam, I got 860. The questions in the real exam are kind of less verbose IMO, but I don’t truly agree with some people I see on this sub saying that they are easier. Just a little bit of sharing, now I’ll find something to continue ^^
– Took 450 screenshots of practice questions and technology/service descriptions as reference notes to quickly swift through on my phone and computer for review. Screenshots were of questions that I either didn’t know, knew but was iffy on, or those I believed I’d easily forget.
– Made 15-20 pages of notes. Chill. Nothing crazy. This is on A4 paper. Free-form note taking. With big diagrams. Around 60-80 words per page.
– I was getting low-to-mid 70%s on Neal Davis’s and Stephane Maarek’s practice exams. Highest score I got was an 80%.
– I got a 67(?)% on one of Stephane Maarek’s exams. The only sub-70% I ever got on any practice test. I got slightly anxious. But given how much harder Maarek’s exams are compared to the actual exam, the anxiety was undue.
– Certified Cloud Practitioner Course by Exam Pro (Paid Version)**
– One or two free practice exams found by a quick Google search
*Regarding Exam Pro: I went through about 40% of the video lectures. I went through all the videos in the first few sections but felt that watching the lectures was too slow and laborious even at 1.5-2x speed. (The creator, for the most part, reads off of the slides, adding brief comments here and there.) So, I decided to only watch the video lectures for sections I didn’t have a good grasp on. (I believe the video lectures provided in the course are just split versions of the full length course available for free on YouTube under the freeCodeCamp channel, here.) The online course provides five practice exams. I did not take any of them.
**Regarding Stephane Maarek: I only took his practice exams. I did not take his study guide course.
Notes
– My study regimen (i.e., an hour to two every day for three weeks) was overkill.
– The questions on the practice exams created by Neal Davis and Stephane Maarek were significantly harder than those on the actual exam. I believe I could’ve passed without touching any of these resources.
– I retook one or two practice exams out of the 10+ I’ve taken. I don’t think there’s a need to retake the exams as long as you are diligent about studying the questions and underlying concepts you got wrong. I reviewed all the questions I missed on every practice exam the day before.
What would I do differently?
– Focus on practice tests only. No video lectures.
– Focus on the technologies domain. You can intuit your way through questions in the other domains.
Lots of the comments here about networking / VPC questions being prevalent are true. Also so many damn Aurora questions, it was like a presales chat.
The questions are actually quite detailed; as some had already mentioned. So pay close attention to the minute details Some questions you definitely have to flag for re-review.
It is by far harder than the Developer Associate exam, despite it having a broader scope. The DVA-C02 exam was like doing a speedrun but this felt like finishing off Sigrun on GoW. Ya gotta take your time.
I took the TJ practice exams. It somewhat helped, but having intimate knowledge of VPC and DB concepts would help more.
Passed SAA-C03 – Feedback
Just passed the SAA-C03 exam (864) and wanted to provide some feedback since that was helpful for me when I was browsing here before the exam.
I come from an IT background and have a strong knowledge in the VPC portion so that section was a breeze for me in the preparation process (I had never used AWS before this so everything else was new, but the concepts were somewhat familiar considering my background). I started my preparation about a month ago, and used the Mareek class on Udemy. Once I finished the class and reviewed my notes I moved to Mareek’s 6 practice exams (on Udemy). I wasn’t doing extremely well on the PEs (I passed on 4/6 of the exams with 70s grades) I reviewed the exam questions after each exam and moved on to the next. I also purchased Tutorial Dojo’s 6 exams set but only ended up taking one out of 6 (which I passed).
Overall the practice exams ended up being a lot harder than the real exam which had mostly the regular/base topics: a LOT of S3 stuff and storage in general, a decent amount of migration questions, only a couple questions on VPCs and no ML/AI stuff.
Sharing the study guide that I followed when I prepared for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C03 exam. I passed this test and thought of sharing a real exam experience in taking this challenging test.
First off: my background – I have 8 years of development.experience and been doing AWS for several project, both personally and at work. Studied for a total of 2 months. Focused on the official Exam Guide, and carefully studied the Task Statements and related AWS services.
SAA-C03 Exam Prep
For my exam prep, I bought the adrian cantrill video course, tutorialsdojo (TD) video course and practice exams. Adrian’s course is just right and highly educational but like others has said, the content is long and cover more than just the exam. Did all of the hands-on labs too and played around some machine learning services in my AWS account.
TD video course is short and a good overall summary of the topics items you’ve just learned. One TD lesson covers multiple topics so the content is highly concise. After I completed doing Adrian’s video course, I used TD’s video course as a refresher, did a couple of their hands-on labs then head on to their practice exams.
For the TD practice exams, I took the exam in chronologically and didn’t jumped back and forth until I completed all tests. I first tried all of the 7 timed-mode tests, and review every wrong ones I got on every attempt., then the 6 review-mode tests and the section/topic-based tests. I took the final-test mode roughly 3 times and this is by far one of the helpful feature of the website IMO. The final-test mode generates a unique set from all TD question bank, so every attempt is challenging for me. I also noticed that the course progress doesn’t move if I failed a specific test, so I used to retake the test that I failed.
The Actual SAA-C03 Exam
The actual AWS exam is almost the same with the ones in the TD tests where:
All of the questions are scenario-based
There are two (or more) valid solutions in the question, e.g:
Need SSL: options are ACM and self-signed URL
Need to store DB credentials: options are SSM Parameter Store and Secrets Manager
The scenarios are long-winded and asks for:
MOST Operationally efficient solution
MOST cost-effective
LEAST amount overhead
Overall, I enjoyed the exam and felt fully prepared while taking the test, thanks to Adrian and TD, but it doesn’t mean the whole darn thing is easy. You really need to put some elbow grease and keep your head lights on when preparing for this exam. Good luck to all and I hope my study guide helped out anyone who is struggling.
Another Passed SAA-C03?
Just another thread about passing the general exam? I passed SAA-C03 yesterday, would like to share my experience on how I earned the examination.
Background:
– graduate with networking background
– working experience on on-premise infrastructure automation, mainly using ansible, python, zabbix and etc.
– cloud experience, short period like 3-6 months with practice
– provisioned cloud application using terraform in azure and aws
cantrill course is depth and lot of practical knowledge, like email alias and etc.. check in to know more
tutorialdojo practice exam help me filter the answer and guide me on correct answer. If I am wrong in specific topic, I rewatch cantrill video. However, there is some topics that not covered by cantrill but the guideline/review in practice exam will provide pretty much detail. I did all the other mode before the timed-based, after that get average 850 in timed-based exam, while scoring the final practice exam with 63/65. However, real examination is harder compared to practice exam in my opinion.
udemy course and practice exam, I go through some of them but I think the practice exam is quite hard compared to tutorialdojo.
lab – just get hand dirty and they will make your knowledge deep dive in your brain, my advice is try not only to do copy and paste lab but really read the description for each parameter in aws portal
Advice:
you need to know some general exam topics like how to:
– s3 private access
– ec2 availability
– kinesis product including firehose, data stream, blabla
– iam
My next target will be AWS SAP and CKA, still searching suitable material for AWS SAP but proposed mainly using acloudguru sandbox and homelab to learn the subject, practice with acantrill lab in github.
Good luck anyone!
Passed SAA
I wanted to give my personal experience. I have a background in IT, but I have never worked in AWS previous to 5 weeks ago. I got my Cloud Practitioner in a week and SAA after another 4 weeks of studying (2-4 hours a day). I used Cantril’s Course and Tutorials Dojo Practice Exams. I highly, highly recommend this combo. I don’t think I would have passed without the practice exams, as they are quite difficult. In my opinion, they are much more difficult than the actual exam. They really hit the mark on what kind of content you will see. I got a 777, and that’s with getting 70-80%’s on the practice exams. I probably could have done better, but I had a really rough night of sleep and I came down with a cold. I was really on the struggle bus halfway through the test.
I only had a couple of questions on ML / AI, so make sure you know the differences between them all. Lot’s of S3 and EC2. You really need to know these in and out.
My company is offering stipend’s for each certification, so I’m going straight to developer next.
Recently passed SAA-C03
Just passed my SAA-C03 yesterday with 961 points. My first time doing AWS certification. I used Cantrill’s course. Went through the course materials twice, and took around 6 months to study, but that’s mostly due to my busy schedule. I found his materials very detailed and probably go beyond what you’d need for the actual exam.
I also used Stephane’s practice exams on Udemy. I’d say it’s instrumental in my passing doing these to get used to the type of questions in the actual exams and review missing knowledge. Would not have passed otherwise.
Just a heads-up, there are a few things popped up that I did not see in the course materials or practice exams:
* Lake Formation: question about pooling data from RDS and S3, as well as controlling access.
* S3 Requester Pays: question about minimizing S3 data cost when sharing with a partner.
* Pinpoint journey: question about customer replying to SMS sent-out and then storing their feedback.
Not sure if they are graded or Amazon testing out new parts.
Cheers.
Another SAP-C01-Pass
Received my notification this morning that I passed 811.
Prep Time: 10 weeks 2hrs a day
Materials: Neil Davis videos/practice exam Jon Bonso practice exams White papers Misc YouTube videos Some hands on
Prof Experience: 4 years AWS using main services as architect
AWS Certs: CCP-SSA-DVA-SAP(now)
Thoughts: Exam was way more familiar to me than the Developer Exam. I use very little AWS developer tools but mainly use core AWS services. Neil’s videos were very straightforward, easy to digest, and on point. I was able to watch most of the videos on a plane flight to Vegas.
After video series I started to hit his section based exams, main exam, notes, and followed up with some hands on. I was getting destroyed on some of the exams early on and had to rewatch and research the topics, writing notes. There is a lot of nuance and fine details on the topics, you’ll see this when you take the practice exam. These little details matter.
Bonso’s exam were nothing less than awesome as per usual. Same difficulty and quality as Neil Davis. Followed the same routine with section based followed by final exam. I believe Neil said to aim for 80’s on his final exams to sit for the exam. I’d agree because that’s where I was hitting a week before the exam (mid 80’s). Both Neil and Jon exams were on par with exam difficulty if not a shade more difficult.
The exam itself was very straightforward. My experience is the questions were not overly verbose and were straight to the point as compared to the practice exams I took. I was able to quickly narrow down the questions and make a selection. Flagged 8 questions along the way and had 30min to review all my answers. Unlike some people, I didn’t feel like it was a brain melter and actually enjoyed the challenge. Maybe I’m a sadist who knows.
Advice: Follow Neil’s plan, bone up on weak areas and be confident. These questions have a pattern based upon the domain. Doing the practice exams enough will allow you to see the pattern and then research will confirm your suspicions. You can pass this exam!
Passed the certified developer associate this week.
Primary study was Stephane Maarek’s course on Udemy.
I also used the Practice Exams by Stephane Maarek and Abhishek Singh.
I used Stephane’s course and practice exams for the Solutions Architect Associate as well, and find his course does a good job preparing you to pass the exams.
The practice exams were more challenging than the actual exam, so they are a good gauge to see if you are ready for the exam.
Haven’t decided if I’ll do another associate level certification next or try for the solutions architect professional.
I cleared Developer associate exam yesterday. I scored 873. Actual Exam Exp: More questions were focused on mainly on Lambda, API, Dynamodb, cloudfront, cognito(must know proper difference between user pool and identity pool) 3 questions I found were just for redis vs memecached (so maybe you can focus more here also to know exact use case& difference.) other topic were cloudformation, beanstalk, sts, ec2. Exam was mix of too easy and too tough for me. some questions were one liner and somewhere too long.
Resources: The main resources I used was udemy. Course of Stéphane Maarek and practice exams of Neal Davis and Stéphane Maarek. These exams proved really good and they even helped me in focusing the area which I lacked. And they are up to the level to actual exam, I found 3-4 exact same questions in actual exam(This might be just luck ! ). so I feel, the course of stephane is more than sufficient and you can trust it. I have achieved solution architect associate previously so I knew basic things, so I took around 2 weeks for preparation and revised the Stephen’s course as much as possible. Parallelly I gave the mentioned exams as well, which guided me where to focus more.
Thanks to all of you and feel free to comment/DM me, if you think I can help you in anyway for achieving the same.
Another Passed Associate Developer Exam (DVA-C01)
Already had passed the Associate Architect Exam (SA-C03) 3 months ago, so I got much more relaxed to the exam, I did the exam with Pearson Vue at home with no problems. Used Adrian Cantrill for the course together with the TD exams.
Studied 2 weeks a 1-2 hours since there is a big overlap with the associate architect couse, even tho the exam has a different approach, more focused on the Serverless side of AWS. Lots of DynamoDB, Lambda, API Gateway, KMS, CloudFormation, SAM, SSO, Cognito (User Pool and Identity Pool), and IAM role/credentials best practices.
I do think in terms of difficulty it was a bit easier than the Associate Architect, maybe it is made up on my mind as it was my second exam so I went in a bit more relaxed.
Next step is going for the Associate Sys-Ops, I will use Adrian Cantrill and Stephane Mareek courses as it is been said that its the most difficult associate exam.
Passed the SCS-C01 Security Specialty
Mixture of Tutorial Dojo practice exams, A Cloud Guru course, Neal Davis course & exams helped a lot. Some unexpected questions caught me off guard but with educated guessing, due to the material I studied I was able to overcome them. It’s important to understand:
KMS Keys
AWS Owned Keys
AWS Managed KMS keys
Customer Managed Keys
asymmetrical
symmetrical
Imported key material
What services can use AWS Managed Keys
KMS Rotation Policies
Depending on the key matters the rotation that can be applied (if possible)
Key Policies
Grants (temporary access)
Cross-account grants
Permanent Policys
How permissions are distributed depending on the assigned principle
IAM Policy format
Principles (supported principles)
Conditions
Actions
Allow to a service (ARN or public AWS URL)
Roles
Secrets Management
Credential Rotation
Secure String types
Parameter Store
AWS Secrets Manager
Route 53
DNSSEC
DNS Logging
Network
AWS Network Firewall
AWS WAF (some questions try to trick you into thinking AWS Shield is needed instead)
AWS Shield
Security Groups (Stateful)
NACL (Stateless)
Ephemeral Ports
VPC FlowLogs
AWS Config
Rules
Remediation (custom or AWS managed)
AWS CloudTrail
AWS Organization Trails
Multi-Region Trails
Centralized S3 Bucket for multi-account log aggregation
AWS GuardDuty vs AWS Macie vs AWS Inspector vs AWS Detective vs AWS Security Hub
It gets more in depth, I’m willing to help anyone out that has questions. If you don’t mind joining my Discord to discuss amongst others to help each other out will be great. A study group community. Thanks. I had to repost because of a typo 🙁
Exam guide book by Kam Agahian and group of authors – this just got released and has all you need in a concise manual, it also included 3 practice exams, this is a must buy for future reference and covers ALL current exam topics including container networking, SD-WAN etc.
Stephane Maarek’s Udemy course – it is mostly up-to-date with the main exam topics including TGW, network firewall etc. To the point lectures with lots of hands-on demos which gives you just what you need, highly recommended as well!
Tutorial Dojos practice tests to drive it home – this helped me get an idea of the question wording, so I could train myself to read fast, pick out key words, compare similar answers and build confidence in my knowledge.
Crammed daily for 4 weeks (after work, I have a full time job + family) and went in and nailed it. I do have networking background (15+ years) and I am currently working as a cloud security engineer and I’m working with AWS daily, especially EKS, TGW, GWLB etc.
For those not from a networking background – it would definitely take longer to prep.
What an exciting journey. I think AZ-900 is the hardest probably because it is my first Microsoft certification. Afterwards, the others are fair enough. AI-900 is the easiest.
I generally used Microsoft Virtual Training Day, Cloud Ready Skills, Measureup and John Savill’s videos. Having built a fundamental knowledge of the Cloud, I am planning to do AWS CCP next. Wish me luck!
Passed Azure Fundamentals
Learning Material
Hi all,
I passed my Azure fundamentals exam a couple of days ago, with a score of 900/1000. Been meaning to take the exam for a few months but I kept putting it off for various reasons. The exam was a lot easier than I thought and easier than the official Microsoft practice exams.
Study materials;
A Cloud Guru AZ-900 fundamentals course with practice exams
I am pretty proud of this one. Databases are an area of IT where I haven’t spent a lot of time, and what time I have spent has been with SQL or MySQL with old school relational databases. NoSQL was kinda breaking my brain for a while.
Study Materials:
Microsoft Virtual Training Day, got the voucher for the free exam. I know several people on here said that was enough for them to pass the test, but that most certainly was not enough for me.
Exampro.co DP-900 course and practice test. They include virtual flashcards which I really liked.
Whizlabs.com practice tests. I also used the course to fill in gaps in my testing.
Passed AI-900! Tips & Resources Included!!
Achievement Celebration
Huge thanks to this subreddit for helping me kick start my Azure journey. I have over 2 decades of experience in IT and this is my 3rd Azure certification as I already have AZ-900 and DP-900.
Here’s the order in which I passed my AWS and Azure certifications:
SAA>DVA>SOA>DOP>SAP>CLF|AZ-900>DP-900>AI-900
I have no plans to take this certification now but had to as the free voucher is expiring in a couple of days. So I started preparing on Friday and took the exam on Sunday. But give it more time if you can.
Here’s my study plan for AZ-900 and DP-900 exams:
finish a popular video course aimed at the cert
watch John Savill’s study/exam cram
take multiple practice exams scoring in 90s
This is what I used for AI-900:
Alan Rodrigues’ video course (includes 2 practice exams) 👌
John Savill’s study cram 💪
practice exams by Scott Duffy and in 28Minutes Official 👍
knowledge checks in AI modules from MS learn docs 🙌
I also found the below notes to be extremely useful as a refresher. It can be played multiple times throughout your preparation as the exam cram part is just around 20 minutes.
Just be clear on the topics explained by the above video and you’ll pass AI-900. I advise you to watch this video at the start, middle and end of your preparation. All the best in your exam
Just passed AZ-104
Achievement Celebration
I recommend to study networking as almost all of the questions are related to this topic. Also, AAD is a big one. Lots of load balancers, VNET, NSGs.
Received very little of this:
Containers
Storage
Monitoring
I passed with a 710 but a pass is a pass haha.
Used tutorial dojos but the closest questions I found where in the Udemy testing exams.
Regards,
Passed GCP Professional Cloud Architect
First of all, I would like to start with the fact that I already have around 1 year of experience with GCP in depth, where I was working on GKE, IAM, storage and so on. I also obtained GCP Associate Cloud Engineer certification back in June as well, which helps with the preparation.
I started with Dan Sullivan’s Udemy course for Professional Cloud Architect and did some refresher on the topics I was not familiar with such as BigTable, BigQuery, DataFlow and all that. His videos on the case studies helps a lot to understand what each case study scenario requires for designing the best cost-effective architecture.
In order to understand the services in depth, I also went through the GCP documentation for each service at least once. It’s quite useful for knowing the syntax of the GCP commands and some miscellaneous information.
As for practice exam, I definitely recommend Whizlabs. It helped me prepare for the areas I was weak at and helped me grasp the topics a lot faster than reading through the documentation. It will also help you understand what kind of questions will appear for the exam.
I used TutorialsDojo (Jon Bonso) for preparation for Associate Cloud Engineer before and I can attest that Whizlabs is not that good. However, Whizlabs still helps a lot in tackling the tough questions that you will come across during the examination.
One thing to note is that, there wasn’t even a single question that was similar to the ones from Whizlabs practice tests. I am saying this from the perspective of the content of the questions. I got totally different scenarios for both case study and non case study questions. Many questions focused on App Engine, Data analytics and networking. There were some Kubernetes questions based on Anthos, and cluster networking. I got a tough question regarding storage as well.
I initially thought I would fail, but I pushed on and started tackling the multiple-choices based on process of elimination using the keywords in the questions. 50 questions in 2 hours is a tough one, especially due to the lengthy questions and multiple choices. I do not know how this compares to AWS Solutions Architect Professional exam in toughness. But some people do say GCP professional is tougher than AWS.
All in all, I still recommend this certification to people who are working with GCP. It’s a tough one to crack and could be useful for future prospects. It’s a bummer that it’s only valid for 2 years.
Passed GCP: Cloud Digital Leader
Hi everyone,
First, thanks for all the posts people share. It helps me prep for my own exam. I passed the GCP: Cloud Digital Leader exam today and wanted to share a few things about my experience.
Preparation
I have access to ACloudGuru (AGU)and Udemy through work. I started one of the Udemy courses first, but it was clear the course was going beyond the scope of the Cloud Digital Leader certification. I switched over AGU and enjoyed the content a lot more. The videos were short and the instructor hit all the topics on the Google exam requirements sheet.
AGU also has three – 50 question practices test. The practice tests are harder than the actual exam (and the practice tests aren’t that hard).
I don’t know if someone could pass the test if they just watched the videos on Google Cloud’s certification site, especially if you had no experience with GCP.
Overall, I would say I spent 20 hrs preparing for the exam. I have my CISSP and I’m working on my CCSP. After taking the test, I realized I way over prepared.
Exam Center
It was my first time at this testing center and I wasn’t happy with the experience. A few of the issues I had are:
– My personal items (phone, keys) were placed in an unlocked filing cabinet
– My desk are was dirty. There were eraser shreds (or something similar) and I had to move the keyboard and mouse and brush all the debris out of my work space
– The laminated sheet they gave me looked like someone had spilled Kool-Aid on it
– They only offered earplugs, instead of noise cancelling headphones
Exam
My recommendation for the exam is to know the Digital Transformation piece as well as you know all the GCP services and what they do.
I wish you all luck on your future exams. Onto GCP: Associate Cloud Engineer.
Passed the Google Cloud: Associate Cloud Engineer
Hey all, I was able to pass the Google Cloud: Associate Cloud Engineer exam in 27 days.
I studied about 3-5 hours every single day.
I created this note to share with the resources I used to pass the exam.
Happy studying!
GCP ACE Exam Aced
Hi folks,
I am glad to share with you that I have cleared by GCP ACE exam today and would like to share my preparation with you:
1)I completed these courses from Coursera:
1.1 Google Cloud Platform Fundamentals – Core Infrastructure
1.2 Essential Cloud Infrastructure: Foundation
1.3 Essential Cloud Infrastructure: Core Services
1.4 Elastic Google Cloud Infrastructure: Scaling and Automation
Post these courses, I did couple of QwikLab courses as listed in orderly manner:
2 Getting Started: Create and Manage Cloud Resources (Qwiklabs Quest)
2.1 A Tour of Qwiklabs and Google Cloud
2.2 Creating a Virtual Machine
2.2 Compute Engine: Qwik Start – Windows
2.3 Getting Started with Cloud Shell and gcloud
2.4 Kubernetes Engine: Qwik Start
2.5 Set Up Network and HTTP Load Balancers
2.6 Create and Manage Cloud Resources: Challenge Lab
3 Set up and Configure a Cloud Environment in Google Cloud (Qwiklabs Quest)
3.1 Cloud IAM: Qwik Start
3.2 Introduction to SQL for BigQuery and Cloud SQL
3.3 Multiple VPC Networks
3.4 Cloud Monitoring: Qwik Start
3.5 Deployment Manager – Full Production [ACE]
3.6 Managing Deployments Using Kubernetes Engine
3.7 Set Up and Configure a Cloud Environment in Google Cloud: Challenge Lab
4 Kubernetes in Google Cloud (Qwiklabs Quest)
4.1 Introduction to Docker
4.2 Kubernetes Engine: Qwik Start
4.3 Orchestrating the Cloud with Kubernetes
4.4 Managing Deployments Using Kubernetes Engine
4.5 Continuous Delivery with Jenkins in Kubernetes Engine
Post these courses I did the following for mock exam preparation:
Cloud computing has revolutionized the way companies develop applications. Most of the modern applications are now cloud native. Undoubtedly, the cloud offers immense benefits like reduced infrastructure maintenance, increased availability, cost reduction, and many others.
However, which cloud vendor to choose, is a challenge in itself. If we look at the horizon of cloud computing, the three main providers that come to mind are AWS, Azure, and Google cloud. Today, we will compare the top three cloud giants and see how they differ. We will compare their services, specialty, and pros and cons. After reading this article, you will be able to decide which cloud vendor is best suited to your needs and why.
History and establishment
AWS
AWS is the oldest player in the market, operating since 2006. Here’s a brief history of AWS and how computing has changed. Being the first in the cloud industry, it has gained a particular advantage over its competitors. It offers more than 200+ services to its users. Some of its notable clients include:
Netflix
Expedia
Airbnb
Coursera
FDA
Coca Cola
Azure
Azure by Microsoft started in 2010. Although it started four years later than AWS, it is catching up quite fast. Azure is Microsoft’s public cloud platform which is why many companies prefer to use Azure for their Microsoft-based applications. It also offers more than 200 services and products. Some of its prominent clients include:
HP
Asus
Mitsubishi
3M
Starbucks
CDC (Center of Disease Control) USA
National health service (NHS) UK
Google
Google Cloud also started in 2010. Its arsenal of cloud services is relatively smaller compared to AWS or Azure. It offers around 100+ services. However, its services are robust, and many companies embrace Google cloud for its specialty services. Some of its noteworthy clients include:
PayPal
UPS
Toyota
Twitter
Spotify
Unilever
Market share & growth rate
If you look at the market share and growth chart below, you will notice that AWS has been leading for more than four years. Azure is also expanding fast, but it is still has a long way to go to catch up with AWS.
However, in terms of revenue, Azure is ahead of AWS. In Q1 2022, AWS revenue was $18.44 billion; Azure earned $23.4 billion, while Google cloud earned $5.8 billion.
Availability Zones (Data Centers)
When comparing cloud vendors, it is essential to see how many regions and availability zones are offered. Here is a quick comparison between all three cloud vendors in terms of regions and data centers:
AWS
AWS operates in 25 regions and 81 availability zones. It offers 218+ edge locations and 12 regional edge caches as well. You can utilize the edge location and edge caches in services like AWS Cloudfront and global accelerator, etc.
Azure
Azure has 66 regions worldwide and a minimum of three availability zones in each region. It also offers more than 116 edge locations.
Google
Google has a presence in 27 regions and 82 availability zones. It also offers 146 edge locations.
Although all three cloud giants are continuously expanding. Both AWS and Azure offer data centers in China to specifically cater for Chinese consumers. At the same time, Azure seems to have broader coverage than its competitors.
Comparison of common cloud services
Let’s look at the standard cloud services offered by these vendors.
Compute
Amazon’s primary compute offering is EC2 instances, which are very easy to operate. Amazon also provides a low-cost option called “Amazon lightsail” which is a perfect fit for those who are new to computing and have a limited budget. AWS charges for EC2 instances only when you are using them. Azure’s compute offering is also based on virtual machines. Google is no different and offers virtual machines in Google’s data centers. Here’s a brief comparison of compute offerings of all three vendors:
Storage
All three vendors offer various forms of storage, including object-based storage, cold storage, file-based storage, and block-based storage. Here’s a brief comparison of all three:
Database
All three vendors support managed services for databases. They also offer NoSQL as well as document-based databases. AWS also provides a proprietary RDBMS named “Aurora”, a highly scalable and fast database offering for both MySQL and PostGreSQL. Here’s a brief comparison of all three vendors:
Comparison of Specialized services
All three major cloud providers are competing with each other in the latest technologies. Some notable areas of competition include ML/AI, robotics, DevOps, IoT, VR/Gaming, etc. Here are some of the key specialties of all three vendors.
AWS
Being the first and only one in the cloud market has many benefits, and Amazon has certainly taken advantage of that. Amazon has advanced specifically in AI and machine learning related tools. AWS DeepLens is an AI-powered camera that you can use to develop and deploy machine learning algorithms. It helps you with OCR and image recognition. Similarly, Amazon has launched an open source library called “Gluon” which helps with deep learning and neural networks. You can use this library to learn how neural networks work, even if you lack any technical background. Another service that Amazon offers is SageMaker. You can use SageMaker to train and deploy your machine learning models. It contains the Lex conversational interface, which is the backbone of Alexa, Lambda, and Greengrass IoT messaging services.
Another unique (and recent) offering from AWS is IoT twinmaker. This service can create digital twins of real-world systems like factories, buildings, production lines, etc.
AWS is even providing a service for Quantum computing called AWS Braket.
Azure
Azure excels where you are already using some Microsoft products, especially on-premises Microsoft products. Organizations already using Microsoft products prefer to use Azure instead of other cloud vendors because Azure offers a better and more robust integration with Microsoft products.
Azure has excellent services related to ML/AI and cognitive services. Some notable services include Bing web search API, Face API, Computer vision API, text analytics API, etc.
Google
Google is the current leader of all cloud providers regarding AI. This is because of their open-source Google library TensorFlow, the most popular library for developing machine learning applications. Vertex AI and BigQueryOmni are also beneficial services offered lately. Similarly, Google offers rich services for NLP, translation, speech, etc.
Pros and Cons
Let’s summarize the pros and cons for all three cloud vendors:
AWS
Pros:
An extensive list of services
Huge market share
Support for large businesses
Global reach
Cons:
Pricing model. Many companies struggle to understand the cost structure. Although AWS has improved the UX of its cost-related reporting in the AWS console, many companies still hesitate to use AWS because of a perceived lack of cost transparency
Azure
Pros:
Excellent integration with Microsoft tools and software
Broader feature set
Support for open source
Cons:
Geared towards enterprise customers
Google
Pros:
Strong integration with open source tools
Flexible contracts
Good DevOps services
The most cost-efficient
The preferred choice for startups
Good ML/AI-based services
Cons:
A limited number of services as compared to AWS and Azure
As mentioned earlier, AWS has the largest market share compared to other cloud vendors. That means more companies are using AWS, and there are more vacancies in the market for AWS-certified professionals. Here are main reasons why you would choose to learn AWS:
Azure is the second largest cloud service provider. It is ideal for companies that are already using Microsoft products. Here are the top reasons why you would choose to learn Azure:
Ideal for experienced user of Microsoft services
Azure certifications rank among the top paying IT certifications
If you’re applying for a company that primarily uses Microsoft Services
Google
Although Google is considered an underdog in the cloud market, it is slowly catching up. Here’s why you may choose to learn GCP.
While there are fewer job postings, there is also less competition in the market
GCP certifications rank among the top paying IT certifications
Most valuable IT Certifications
Keen to learn about the top paying cloud certifications and jobs? If you look at the annual salary figures below, you can see the average salary for different cloud vendors and IT companies, no wonder AWS is on top. A GCP cloud architect is also one of the top five. The Azure architect comes at #9.
Which cloud certification to choose depends mainly on your career goals and what type of organization you want to work for. No cloud certification path is better than the other. What matters most is getting started and making progress towards your career goals. Even if you decide at a later point in time to switch to a different cloud provider, you’ll still benefit from what you previously learned.
Over time, you may decide to get certified in all three – so you can provide solutions that vary from one cloud service provider to the next.
Don’t get stuck in analysis-paralysis! If in doubt, simply get started with AWS certifications that are the most sought-after in the market – especially if you are at the very beginning of your cloud journey. The good news is that you can become an AWS expert when enrolling in our value-packed training.
Further Reading
You may also be interested in the following articles:
Hi everyone, I wanted to share the path I took to obtain the DP-203 certification with 854. This might help those who are preparing or considering it. Here’s how I went about it: 1. Starting with AZ-900 and DP-900: Before diving into the DP-203 preparation, I first completed the AZ-900 and DP-900 certifications. This gave me a solid foundation on Azure and the fundamental data concepts. 2. Deep Dive into DP-203: For DP-203, I started with Piotr’s video series, which I found extremely interesting and detailed. I followed the entire playlist while practicing simultaneously on my own Azure account, which helped me understand and apply the concepts in real-time. Here’s the link to the playlist: Piotr’s Playlist. 3. Strengthening with Microsoft Learn: Next, to solidify my knowledge, I went through all the content offered by Microsoft Learn for the DP-203 certification. The material provided by Microsoft is well-structured and covers all the necessary areas for the exam. 4. Practice with Test Questions: For the practical part, I focused on a series of questions available on YouTube. These questions helped me get familiar with the exam format and identify the areas where I needed to improve. Here’s the link to the practice questions video: Practice Questions Series. This whole process took me about a month and a week of full concentration. The exam questions weren’t too difficult, but it’s crucial to have a solid understanding of important concepts like partitioning, distribution, indexing, streaming, and a good knowledge of T-SQL in the context of Dedicated SQL Pool. Feel free to ask if you have any questions or need further advice! Good luck to everyone preparing for this certification! submitted by /u/No-Afternoon-4637 [link] [comments]
Finally! 863 🙂 Completed Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate. Got only 44 questions (including 9 question case study). And 100 minutes. Exam was way easier than Az-800, no unknown/ unexpected things/services, plenty of time for browsing MS documentation. Material used to prepare: - AZ-801 courses on linkedin (there are 5 of them there) - MS on demand instruction led training (15 videos): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/shows/on-demand-instructor-led-training-series/?terms=Az-801&source=docs went about half of Dan Zabinski videos on youtube https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf4LHvX8--d9OHjQOs5Mnk1nNE0BTD488&si=-CraNAitWsYWury4 And of course MS Learn submitted by /u/Glum-Implement9857 [link] [comments]
Are there any resources similar to Stéphane Maarek's slides for AWS, but focused on Azure? I found his slides perfect for quickly reviewing concepts during learning and exam preparation. Thank you! submitted by /u/IanglDev [link] [comments]
Free AZ-500 Practice Exams, coupon valid only for 100 redeems. https://www.udemy.com/course/practice-exams-certified-azure-security-engineer-associate/?couponCode=0CFD219DCDB761C927CA submitted by /u/Junior_Series3225 [link] [comments]
57 questions, 10 of which came in the form of a case study. No simulations, but a lot of drag and drop and multiple answer type of questions. The case study is sandboxed entirely away from the rest of the exam. It counts towards your total exam time, but when you mark the case study as complete, you cannot go back and review it again. You do have the opportunity to review it before you mark it as complete. I used the following resources: YouTube: Exam AZ 800 Administering Windows Server Hybrid Core Infrastructure Full Course (Geekdom Academy) AZ-800 - Administering Windows Server Hybrid Core Infrastructure (BurningIceTech) Microsoft: MS Learn Learning Paths: Deploy and manage identity infrastructure (6 modules) Manage Windows Servers and workloads in a hybrid environment (7 modules) Manage virtualization and containers in a hybrid networking environment (8 modules) Implement and operate an on-premises and hybrid networking infrastructure (7 modules) Configure storage and file services (6 modules) submitted by /u/dejjen [link] [comments]
Hey everyone, Back again. So I got the AZ-900 and DP-900 and wanted to get the PL-900 but after much reading a lot of people are saying if you have a lot of experience doing this then it's not worth it and should just jump to doing the PL-400. Some context: I have been a BI analyst since April of 2023. I do a lot of data work using power BI and some azure and I also customize and deploy solutions for the CRM (CE). This can be from simple field customizations to creating complex power automate flows and every once in a while implementing JS as needed. I started taking the fundamental Azure certs because recently there was a need to move some data from AWS to Azure for simpler data processing and better integration with other MS products. I am the only one who can do this or have the aptitude to do this (building and managing azure pipelines, analysis etc). So my question ultimately is, should I also pursue the PL-900 or just get into PL-400? The certs I am currently thinking of taking are: AZ-104, DP-203, AZ-305, PL-400 Thank you and if anyone has any other suggestions let me know. I am trying to increase my opportunities in the market and eventually get into freelance work in the future. submitted by /u/Brave_Win2464 [link] [comments]
Hi guys, I made a post a few weeks back when I took my exam and failed with 687, I recently tried again after spending hours every day during the week and the weekend (+- 4 hours daily) since my last attempt, this time focusing on practice tests extensively and learning to navigate MSLearn effectively. This time around I made sure not to repeat my biggest mistake from my first attempt that took up so much of time, which was relying on MSLearn when I got stuck on a question. Doing this on my first attempt left me with 15 minutes or so and I still had to do my case study, while having a few questions for review. So definitely be careful and watch the timer. On my second attempt I marked each question I was unsure about for review (While still trying to choose the most appropriate answers in case I did not have time to go back and review it), this left me with 25-30 minutes left to review 15 questions and make use of MSLearn to find the answers. This worked much better for me, especially since I have used MSLearn a lot while studying, I knew where to find most of the information I needed, but still had to trust my instinct for others. I also found out that I actually skipped one Yes/No question when I went back to review, this was because of the small screen I was on that cut off the last Yes/No question. I had questions based on pretty much all the topics this time, but I had much more Networking and Compute related questions. So I definitely would make sure to cover all the topics of the exam and not also try to solidify your weak points, for me it was Entra ID and DNS questions since there's normally a lot of reading for DNS related questions where you need to try to create a mental mind map of the scenario. I am currently a Developer and have about under 2 years of professional experience, I don't really use Azure at all in my day to day (Just basic App Service setup once in a while), although I'm trying to land a job in DevOps/Cloud, so I had to grind to learn most of what Azure offers within about 7-8 weeks, spending hours daily. If i had any advice to someone taking the AZ-104, I would highly recommend practice tests, I've only used TutorialsDojo, using the timed-mode you get to experience how it will feel on the exam day, where you biggest constraint is the time. Another resource I really grinded since my initial attempt was Youtube playlists on practice exams, this helped a lot since they will explain everything, tell you why an answer is incorrect, and where it can be found on MSLearn for you to go through yourself. Channels like TechwithJaspal, TheTechBlackboard are what I mainly used. Regarding case studies, I don't believe you should read the entire passage of text they give you, there are multiple sections that you need to switch between to comprehend all the information. You should just head to the questions immediately, then head to the case study afterwards to look for the appropriate sections that are applicable. (Technical requirements, User Requirements, Existing environment). This way you avoid wasting time reading information that doesn't apply to the questions. There are also all the labs from Microsoft that show you how to do everything in the Portal (Compute, Networking, Storage etc) that I went through a couple times. The Azure 104 path on MSLearn is decent, but does not cover close to the amount of content you need to pass, so do not rely on that only. I was scoring about 85-90% consistently on TutorialsDojo practice tests and the AZ-104 practice test by Microsoft, but it is not really a good indicator since the questions become familiar after a while. This is my first certification and I'm glad it's done, I scored high 800s this time, now I'm just hoping to get any entry-level role in the space since I enjoy Cloud and DevOps. submitted by /u/New-Peanut-5610 [link] [comments]
Hi, I come from the Azure side, and Microsoft offers vouchers for enterprise employees via the so-called Enterprise Skills Initiative program. I am curious if Google has similar thing? Thanks for any hint! submitted by /u/Logical-Tip5222 [link] [comments]
Less than a week ago I passed AZ-204, and a few weeks before that I did my first Azure certification by passing AZ-900. The AZ-204 felt as quite an effort, so I planned to take it easy for a while when it comes to studying. However, after reading about AI-900 in this forum, I suddenly felt inspired to try one more Azure certification. Since I have a A Cloud Guru subscription from my employer, I watched the corresponding course from there. I really liked the course, and it prepared me well for the exam. Well, except it was slightly outdated since I think a module about Generative AI may have been missing from it. I almost have no experience from AI development from before, and I studied maybe 5-6 hours for this exam (not counting waiting time for machine learning model training 😊). The exam still felt super easy. I still think the certification is useful, since I got acquainted with the AI service offerings available from Azure, and got to work with them as part of the studying plan. I must say it was actually fun to work with AI Vision, and also the Azure Machine Learning Designer. submitted by /u/astrohijacker [link] [comments]
Pretty confusing, especially since I confused the naming conventions between both the service names on GCP and Azure. submitted by /u/_areebpasha [link] [comments]
I have scored 90% on the practise test of Microsoft. Am I prepared to apply to the real test, or is the real exam much harder? submitted by /u/rommaneus [link] [comments]
I have set Azure Solutions Architect (AZ-305) as my ultimate goal, so I want to get Azure Administrator (AZ-104) certification. And found that I need to have at least 6 months of hands-on experience in Azure administration. Will it prevent me from applying for AZ-104 if I have no work experience? Or would it be a better option to take the Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) exam? submitted by /u/used4 [link] [comments]
Failed with 609 I got the chance to read every question, and I didn’t freak out. I got through the exam with about 40 minutes to spare. I did this on purpose because I wanted to review everything with ms learn. Mid way through my exam it froze, and while I was doing the MS learn it would take like 1-2 minutes to load. Because I made a chart and I knew I needed to put 120 hours in, and I only did 47 hours, I know I didn’t do my best: I know that if I had drilled more activities, if I had worked things forward and backwards more, I would have been able to read the questions and I would have less 50/50 need to check that at the end moments and I would have been successful. That’s on me. I would say my prep made me less confused with the answers, unlike az700 which was truly outside of my comfort zone…but lead to strong networking component in my exam results on the 104. I prepped good, but if I wanted to pass with no excuses I should have worked harder. Not really sure what to do now… I don’t work in the space so I’ll decompress for a bit and figure something out. Good luck everyone! submitted by /u/Theprettiestthings [link] [comments]
The deal ends on December 9th, if you are not ready for the exam yet you can purchase the test and activate it later (I believe you can activate it within a month of the purchase date). Upon checking out, use this code AWEBZGSX to get another 10% off the discounted price. Good luck! submitted by /u/HardLearner01 [link] [comments]
I am studying to get certification of Azure 204. I am checking exams of whizlabs and teacherset. On whizlabs I get 75-80% but on TeacherSet I get 60%. I am not sure which resource has more realistic questions and I cannot tell when I am ready to give the exam. Anyone has experience? Additionally any other advice? Thanks submitted by /u/fotf91 [link] [comments]
Hello, i am going to take the SC-300 exam in 3 weeks. Currently i am learning with Microsoft learn and bought the MeasureUp test exam. Are those questions similar to the questions in the PersonVue exam? submitted by /u/R_Bane [link] [comments]
Hello everyone, Thank you very much for the collaboration here. I have thought about giving AZ-900 exam. What kind of study plan do you suggest and approved source of learning material? So I would consider some video material first and then practice questions. Thanks in advance! submitted by /u/Strong_Carpenter1484 [link] [comments]
Top-paying Cloud certifications:
Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect — $175,761/year AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate — $149,446/year Azure/Microsoft Cloud Solution Architect – $141,748/yr Google Cloud Associate Engineer – $145,769/yr AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner — $131,465/year Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals — $126,653/year Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate — $125,993/year A Twitter List by enoumen A Twitter List by enoumen
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What do you think of the list? What would you add? LeBron James scores 40,000 career points Mondo Duplantis smashes Olympic pole vault records Spain’s historic Euro 2024 victory, featuring - - Lamine Yamal’s stunning debut Rafael Nadal bids farewell to tennis with an emotional retirement Novak Djokovic finally captures Olympic gold in Paris Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese redefine women’s basketball and its impact Record-breaking Super Bowl LVIII captivates millions The AFC Asian Cup and AFCON showcase football’s global influence Simone Biles makes a triumphant Olympic comeback with record-breaking performances Steph Curry delivers an unforgettable Olympic final performance submitted by /u/bakenzo [link] [comments]