How to get certified in AWS in 36 hours
I’ve always been in the mood of learning something new. Especially when it involves solving a problem. Maybe it’s vice versa; I’ve always been in the mood of solving problems, even more so if it involves learning something new. It’s kind of a motivation. New problem? oh gosh…. wait, learning something new in order to fix that problem? OK, no problem! Give me a cup of coffee (a 72oz cup of coffee) and I’m in.
That’s kind of what happened this past weekend. The problem? Getting certified, but why? To demonstrate my skills easily (and get a job faster). At the end of the day, that’s what certifications are for, aren’t they? It’s like when you go to the doctor, or to the mechanic. If you see the (lab coat) or the overalls with some stethoscope or the 10mm socket, then you begin to believe that this person knows what they’re doing. Well, that’s my intention with obtaining a certification, to have a laptop running Ubuntu and an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner credential on my LinkedIn. If I lost you ten words ago, Ubuntu is something like Windows or Mac-OS, but for geeks. (If you know what Ubuntu is, don’t blame me. It makes my old laptop run like a breeze)
Actually, 36 hours is just the time it took me to study and try to remember everything I’ve done in the last 36 months experimenting with the platform, trying to understand how to use it for the company I founded during those good old days and that I’ve already left. As a consultant I’ve also recommended AWS for many projects from different industries. Projects that were looking for a digital transformation strategy, entrepreneurs looking for a better way to deploy their landing pages, and so on.
I know that there are cheaper options to achieve the initial goals that a startup may have, but thinking about scalability and security, I strongly believe that using AWS is way better. The secret relies on knowing what to use and how to use it. That’s why I invested my whole weekend into that. To build a solid foundation and be able to 1) know what I’m doing, 2) understand the documentation. I may not be an expert now in AWS, but for sure I know how to use their technology, how the pricing works, and how their services relate.
If I may show you my personal notes during those days (sending messages to myself) you would find things like “migrate to this” and “change that”, or “check billing to switch to a savings plan” and so on… I just realized that I could have saved some money and time… and also avoid several frustrating afternoons accompanied by a cup of coffee already cold because I was so engrossed in fixing that.
I won’t lie to you. It’s not an easy test. Actually, it made me sweat cold and for a moment I thought I wouldn’t make it to pass. But I did. The roadmap I followed was simple: understand what the domains of the certification are and what they ask, complete the official course on the AWS Training platform (paying attention to every detail), take the sample test just to familiarize with the style of the questions, and finally take the official preparation test with the 65 questions, three times.
Actually, I really enjoyed the process. It may be because I was working on this part time from my desk, and part time from the edge of a pool. High-risk sport, I know.
I like challenges, and this one was a personal one. When I saw that I passed the test, I was alleviated (and really happy) just enjoying the joy of duty fulfilled. Now all left was to write about it, so here we are.
Long time ago I enjoyed writing about different stuff happening around me, in Spanish, and it was kind of successful. People liked it and it led several times to interesting conversations. Now, I want to retake this writing and publishing habit, but this time in English. The reason? To share with the wwworld, because the wwworld has shared so much with me. Yes, the www is intentional, you may know why.
This is the very first post of many to come on my personal website, which is another project I have in progress right now. If you are looking to get certified on AWS, just contact me. I’m easy to find. Next I’m gonna publish about how I built my website, and then how I created a bot to send me daily messages with specific job listings to my phone by using OpenAI API, some Python, and … guess what, some AWS services.
ER
p.s. www = world wide web = internet