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Engineer – Professional: Evaluates the ability of the test taker to perform DevOps (that is, create an interface between developers and other IT professionals). This means having some level of skill in both administration and development. In addition, the candidate must have knowledge of processes that enable smooth design, development, deployment, management, and operation of applications.

      

If you find that potential employers really do want you to obtain certifications to prove your skill level, you may find that obtaining just an AWS-specific certification may not be enough to get that six-figure income. Cloud administrators typically need to demonstrate proficiency with more than one service. Fortunately, you can often find online aids to help you decide which certifications are most popular at a given time. For example, the article at https://anturis.com/blog/7-valuable-certifications-for-cloud-administrators/ provides a listing of the most popular certifications at the current time, one of which is the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator.

       Locating certification resources

      You can find all sorts of interesting aids online for getting your certification. However, the best place to start is directly on the Amazon website. Unfortunately, the information you find isn’t the best organized at times. Start by ensuring that you meet the requirements in the Candidate Overview section. Until you meet those requirements, it isn’t particularly useful to move forward (unless you want to end up with a paper certification – one that doesn’t actually mean anything).

      After you have fulfilled the minimum requirements, download the Exam Guide. The guide tells you that you need to be proficient in a number of areas in order to pass, which shouldn’t surprise you. AWS wants to ensure that you actually know the material. Fortunately, you can also find online sources to help you make sense of the Exam Guide. For example, there is an excellent video on the requirements for the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate exam at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCkD8lpadj8. Watching the video and going through the Exam Guide can help you get a better idea of what you need to do.

      At some point, you want to download the example questions. However, given that AWS provides only one set of example questions and that those precise questions are unlikely to appear on the exam, memorizing them won’t do you any good. What you need to do is study and when you feel you’re ready, try the example questions, which can help you determine your weak areas. Unfortunately, there are only a few example questions – not enough to give you a good feel for the exam.

      Every certification also comes with a Take a Practice Exam option. Be sure to save this feature for last. Again, you don’t get many questions, the questions don’t change, and they’re not likely to appear on the exam in the precise form you see them. The purpose of the practice exam is to help you sense whether you’re ready.

      

Most people need information presented in more than one way and more than one time to remember it. By going through this book and participating in the various examples, you build skills and gain knowledge that you can couple with other sources to build your AWS knowledge. The essential thing is not to try to rush the process, because you’re almost guaranteed not to pass if you do.

      As you go through the book, make sure to also look at the Getting Started and FAQs for each of the services covered. These two sources of information contain a great deal of information that Amazon is likely to use for exam questions. You don’t have to memorize the material, but being familiar with it gives you a definite advantage.

      

Everyone has different ways of learning material, and you may find that reading the exam materials simply doesn’t work for you. Hands-on training can help, but sometimes you need a little more than that. If you’re still confused, you may want to use Computer Based Training (CBT) courses, such as the ones found at https://www.cbtnuggets.com/it-training/amazon-web-services-training and https://linuxacademy.com/amazon-web-services/training/course/name/aws-certified-sysops-administrator-associate-level.

Getting a Well-Rounded Education

      Obtaining a certification helps you prove your level of proficiency to someone else, which is one level of the education process. In many cases, you can skip this level unless you have specific needs that a certification can address. However, you must continue to build on your expertise. Simply learning the basics and then never cracking a book again will result in your eventual termination as an administrator because computer technology continues to change. In short, education is continuous when you’re an administrator. Getting a well-rounded education is essential, as is continuing to learn more whenever you can and in whatever way that you can. Even dibs and dabs of time spent learning can make a big difference.

      

The problem with computer technology is the vast amount of available information. Information overload is a serious problem because spending time learning the wrong information using an inappropriate approach costs you time without helping you to continue to develop your career at all. That’s the point of this section: to list the approaches that other people use to improve their chances of getting the right information in the most efficient manner possible, enabling you to keep up with the current state of computer technology. Here are some techniques you can use to remain current when working with AWS and other cloud technologies:

      ❯❯ Get a free AWS account (see Chapter 2 for details) and use it to practice new techniques that you don’t dare try on your production system.

      ❯❯ Keep track of the free tier offerings and try anything new, even if you don’t have plans to use it in your business.

      ❯❯ Read the trade press – let the people with the connections get the latest news for you.

      ❯❯ Watch videos on sites such as YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/) that demonstrate techniques for working with AWS.

      ❯❯ Ask questions on professional sites, such as Quora (https://www.quora.com/), to obtain additional insights into cloud strategies from other professionals.

Chapter 2

      Obtaining Free Amazon Services

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      ❯❯ Considering the free service offerings

      ❯❯ Ensuring that you have the right hardware

      ❯❯ Ensuring that you have the right networking setup

      ❯❯ Getting your free account

      ❯❯ Using your free account for the first time

      One of the purposes of this book is to help you discover a lot more about Amazon Web Services (AWS) through experimentation. Of course, Amazon would just love to have you buy these services, but a free option, which is the focus of this chapter, is also available. The issue is one of figuring out just what Amazon means by free. This chapter’s first section clears up the questions you might have about what free means, because some services are always free and others are free for a limited time. In addition, you must consider the limits of free. If you use some of these services too much, you end up paying for them. Therefore, you need to know the rules in order to get the services free.

      The next two sections of the chapter consider hardware and network requirements. Note that Amazon likes you to have both Linux and Windows knowledge when you take your certification exams (see the “Understanding the AWS Certifications” section of Chapter 1), and such knowledge

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