AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C01)

This episode provides an overview of the scope and purpose of the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam. You'll learn about the exam's intended audience and typical question types you can expect when taking the exam. You'll also learn some tips on how to use the exam objectives to help you become a certified AWS Cloud Practioner.

You're watching IT Pro Tv. [MUSIC] >> Welcome in, I'm your host Lauren Deal and I am joined with Jill West who is an author of multiple books. She's a cloud practitioner and also an instructor at the Georgia Northwestern Tech College, so welcome in Jill. >> Great, thanks Lauren, all right, so today we're talking about AWS cloud practitioner exam. >> My word, well, what is so great about that and why should we all try to take it? >> One thing I really love about this exam is that anybody can take it, right? It doesn't matter if you have a techie background, it doesn't matter if you're more of a business background or even if you're just the receptionist at the front desk, if you need to know more about AWS, this is the place to start. >> All right, well that gives me hope because I don't have a tech background but I'm really interested in getting in my tech career journey started. But are there any prerequisites I should consider before taking this? >> There are not, you don't have to have any background at all. Now you will need to learn about cloud before you get there, simply need to be familiar with AWS, with their services, with the pricing structure and we'll talk more about what's covered in this. But this exam is particularly targeted to business decision makers and technology experts and kind of that bridge between the two parties. So you learn to talk with each other, provides the communication, the common language so that as you're making decisions with IT and with the cloud, this is the way you're gonna be able to communicate together. >> That's a great graphic cuz I'm a visual learner and so it's really nice to know how will this apply and who does it apply to, but I guess my next question is what should I expect on the exam? >> Okay, well let's take a look at that, so actually I'll show you the exam guide down here. So this is for the AWS certified cloud practitioner, you can see there's a basic introduction that will give you just some tasks that you're going to learn as you're preparing for this exam. You'll need to be able to explain the value of the AWS cloud, you'll need to understand the shared responsibility model, we'll be talking about that, their security, best practices, costs and building practices and building structure. And then the AWS services themselves will talk about how they're in categories like compute, networking, databases and storage and then we'll talk about common use cases for each of these different types. The target candidate is like I said going to be either a business decision maker, non techie or techie if you're just getting started with the cloud and you want to learn the business language of AWS. So all of this is going to be covered in this course as we get you ready to take the exam. >> All right well, I love that we have the introduction piece of it but now I'm kind of curious about the different types of questions that I might see on the exam, what should I expect? >> Let's look at some practice questions that AWS has posted on their site. So this first one, why is AWS more economical than traditional data centers for applications with varying compute workloads, you want to take a stab at that question? >> All right Jill, based on what my basic knowledge of what I need to get a workload going. I would assume it's C, Amazon EC two instances can be launched on demand when needed cuz I think that's why I use the cloud is being able to use only what I need. >> Right, and that's a core value benefit that the cloud offers right, is that it's pay as you go that it's on demand. It's what you need when you need it, so you don't have to buy things ahead of time, put a lot of money into hardware that's not fully being used, so that's what we're looking for. Now this question type is called a multiple choice question and what you'll get like you see with this option is four options and then you'll pick one as the correct answer. We also will have multiple response questions on the exam and that's where you'll be given five options and then you have to choose two or more of them that will be correct together, so it's called a multiple response. Now unlike some exams you might see with Conte a there are no performance-based questions. So you don't actually get into AWS and then have to do things in it, it will all be either multiple choice or multiple response. You'll have 50 questions and then you'll have 15 experimental questions that makes 65 questions altogether. And you have 90 minutes to answer all of these questions, and then the score is a scale score. So if you get a lot of easy questions, you have to get more of them right and if you get a lot of harder questions, you don't have to get as many of them right. But you need to make at least 700 points out of that 100-1000 scale. >> Wow, okay, so that's good to know because when you're talking about the different types of responses, it's nice to know that there are multiple choices. But then that's interesting that they have ones that are, pick two because I think that's where I would get in my head a little bit. Now, before we move on though, can you tell me a little bit about, you said the there were 15 different types of questions, what did you call those? >> Yes, so we have 50 questions that count towards your score, right? And then we have 15 questions that they call experimental questions. So they have to run some questions through with a few test takers before they can actually use the question, it helps them to normalize those questions and make sure that they're fair questions and correct before they start testing you on it and scoring you on it. >> Thank you so much for the clarification, tests are not always my favorite thing but going in prepared is making me feel a little bit more comfortable. Now what kind of score do I need to make to pass, did you say 700? >> Yes, that's 700, and again, it's not a one for one correct score and points for that, so out of those 50 questions that are scored, you don't know how many you need to get right. If you get a lot of hard questions you won't need as many correct. If you get a lot of easy questions, you need more of them that are correct and they don't penalize you for guessing. So make sure you answer all of them even if you have no clue, [LAUGH] at least give it an attempt, do you want to try another question? Yeah, all right. Alright. I'm excited. Let's try one more. Alright, so here's question number two, ready. I'll read the question while you're looking at the options which aWS service would simplify the migration of a database to AWS. Okay, so I'm looking at some of the key words, I see storage gateway, I see database migration service, I C E two and I see appstream two point those are the key things that are differentiating in my mind, My gut is telling me to go with the database. The migration service, I love what you did there, that you were looking for those key terms and the question and matching up those key terms into the options that were given to you and you're exactly right. Is that database migration service? So, good job, Alright. Which AWS offering enables users to find buy and immediately start using software solutions in their AWS environment? Alright, same tactic as I did for the last one. I'm looking at the key pieces of each answer. So we've got config we've got ops works, we've got SDK and marketplace and when it's saying that it's an offering for software solutions, my mind is going towards marketplace because I want to be able to pick and choose exactly what I need. Is that right? That's correct, yep. So you're going to be looking for things that you can buy and then implement them into your your deployment and then that helps you to do whatever it is that you're needing to do. So, good job. Now, one thing I would give as a pointer on these questions and sometimes they'll throw in options for services that don't exist in AWS, so you need to know what those services are. What makes it easier is that if you're familiar with the services that are listed in the objectives, then you can eliminate some of the wrong options because they don't exist or they weren't listed on the objectives. So that helps kind of with the the elimination, that process of elimination. But then using those, those keywords to help you narrow down onto which one of these makes the most sense given the context of this particular question, I think that's so helpful going back, we both have an education background and so my first thought is eliminate the things I know are definitely not right. And then narrow in on my options now studying, I might use some pointers still on how to best study for this exam. What are your thoughts? That's really good. Okay, so let's start talking about what we we would use to study first. You can use this video course, right? So we're going to be going through all of the exam objectives to what we call the bloom's level of those particular objectives. And we'll talk about that in a later episode, but we'll be looking at every single one of the objectives that are listed in the AWS form that I showed you earlier and we will be covering them to the depth that's required by the exam. So this video course is a great place to start the exam objectives themselves. You need to understand what they're asking for in each of those line items need to be familiar with all the services that are listed and then you need to get into AWS and actually use the AWS services, get some of that hands on experience and we're going to be doing some of that as well. Okay. Alright. So we actually get to play around in the AWS but how do I even get access to AWS that is going to be for our next episode? We will actually get into AWS, They have an amazing free trial. We'll talk about that in a separate episode but in the next episode we'll be talking about, what do I do to get into a W. S and what will I see once I get there? What is the management console? How do I get around in it? And what can I do once I'm there? All right, well Jill, I'm really excited about the next episode and getting right into AWS and don't go anywhere but before you go Jill I see something on the table here. What is this? This is my textbook that we just finished, this is actually the first edition of the comp Tia cloud plus course from Sing gauge. I just finished the second edition that will be out later in the fall and this would be a certification that you could take before the AWS cloud practitioner, its vendor neutral but it's also super technical. So this would be more appropriate for an I T person to take this first and really understand how the cloud works, what cloud technology is, how to do the networking and the security and the storage and even automation in something like this. Or you could take this after the cloud practitioner where you're already familiar with some of what AWS offers. Alright, well I know that I'm gonna be getting my hands on that. I'm excited to be able to watch the videos with you Jill taking notes and also possibly having the textbook. I mean, talk about having all the best tools at your fingertips. So now I think we're ready to hop into our first episode. What do you think? All right, we'll see you there. Thank you for watching I. T pro T. V.