All you need to know about Cloudera CCA 175 Exam

Recently I have cleared Cloudera Spark and Hadoop Developer Certification — CCA 175. During last few months I have visited multiple websites and blogs to clear my doubts regarding certification registration, scheduling , pre-requisites, exam environment, preparation , scoring, evaluation and retake policies.

I would like to provide all these details in one place , so that it will be easy for future aspirants.

About CCA175:

CCA175 is performance-based (hands-on) exam conducted on Cloudera CDH to test candidate skills on Apache Spark (1.6 / 2.3) , Scala / Python , Hadoop , Hive, HDFS and Sqoop.

Cost : USD $295 ( ~ INR 21000)

Duration: 120 Minutes

Passing Score : 7 out of 9 Questions need be solved correctly.

Number of Questions: Total 9 questions (1 Sqoop Import, 1 Sqoop Export , 7 Spark )

How to Register and Schedule :

You have to create an Account in https://university.cloudera.com/ to register for exam.

Once you create account, you can pay fee and register for exam in https://university.cloudera.com/content/cca175 page.

As specified exam cost is $USD 295 . If you are registering from India, first you need to have a Debit Card / Card Card with International Transactions enabled. Now a days most of the banks are disabling the international transactions feature by default in the interest of security. In that case you have to speak with bank and get it enabled.

Total you have to INR 21102 + INR 738 (International Transaction / Conversion charges) = INR 21840.

Once you complete the payment , you will receive an mail from Cloudera to create an account in examslocal website with same email used in cloudera website.

After creating account in Exams Local Website, exam can be scheduled within 1 Year from the date of payment.

Exam can be scheduled and cancelled before 24 hours for any number of times. You can choose any time slot round the clock on any day (24/7) based on the availability .

Resources Required / Rules to be followed to take up the Exam :

1. Laptop or Desktop with webcam and Chrome Browser with Innovative Exams Screensharing Plugin installed . Try to get bigger screen . You can connect your laptop to LED or Desktop during exam. 15 inches screen is not much comfortable to code on Cloudera VM Terminal, which you have to access using Chrome.

2. Internet Connection with minimum 4 Mbps bandwidth is required . It is recommended to use LAN connection instead of WiFi for good speed and reliability if you are taking up exam from India.

3. Closed Room with bright lighting and no disturbances in between .

4. There should not be any notebook/phone/ paper on laptop table.

5. No Drinks, No Breaks , No Food during the examination. Basically you shouldn’t move away from the screen for 2 hours once exam is started. Protractor will be watching you throughout the exam with webcam.

6. You will be asked to Share the screen, Enable Webcam and Microphone.

7. You should close all other software/ processes running on Windows except Google Chrome.

8. You are not allowed to open any other tab except ExamsLocal tab.

9. During the exam if you need any help, you can ping the Protractor in the Chat box. Protractor won’t have any idea on Data Sets and Questions Content. If there is any issue in connectivity issue from Cloudera side, he will help you. If any dataset is missing / requirements are not mentioned properly in question, then you have to send a mail to cloudera support team after Exam. Cloudera will provide Free attempt if it is a valid scenario.

10. If there is any internet connectivity or power outage problem from your side during the exam , then Cloudera Exam Protractor won’t stop the timer and there won’t be any second chance.

Preparation and Practice :

Exam Content : check https://www.cloudera.com/more/training/certification/cca-spark.html

First you have to understand fundamentals and concepts in Apache Spark (Scala / Python) , Hive , HDFS and Sqoop.

Then rigorous practice is required on different use cases , scenarios using Spark and Sqoop.

You can learn more from below tutorials:

• ITversity CCA175 Scala Playlist
• ITVersity CCA175 Python Playlist
• https://www.udemy.com/cca-175-spark-and-hadoop-developer-certification-scala/
• https://www.udemy.com/cca-175-spark-and-hadoop-developer-python-pyspark/

For practice follow any of below options:

• Download and Install Cloudera VM in your laptop using VMWare from Cloudera Website.
• Subscribe to ITVersity Labs cluster
• Subscribe to CloudexLabs cluster

You can discuss about exam preparation in http://discuss.itversity.com/c/certificationsforum.

Tips and Suggestions for Exam :

1. Install and get hands-on feel on Cloudera Quickstart VM , so that you will be comfortable with exam environment tools like Terminal, Sublime Text Editor .
2. See exam demo video by Cloudera in CCA175 Exam page to understand how questions will be listed in browser and which tools will be provided as part of the exam.
3. Use Zooming (Ctrl + ) and Copy — Paste ( ctrl+shift+c and ctrl+shift+v) Commands for better productivity.
4. Cross Check the output directory path you are creating for each problem. If there is a small typo also, solution will be invalid.
5. You can take exam either in Spark 2.3 or Spark 1.6 using spark-shell or spark2-shell respectively.
6. If input is TextFile, then Cloudera won’t specify the delimiter . You have to open the file and check it before start with coding .
7. If you are setting parquet / avro compression in more than one problem , then use new terminal for each problem so that you won’t face any issues if you forget to reset it.
8. Use ~12 mappers in Sqoop Export to increase parallelism.
9. Any Spark API can be used to used to solve the problems.
10. No need to save the code anywhere, as cloudera doesn’t evaluate the code. It only checks the output requirements like data, folder path, file format and compression technique used.
11. Give 5 minutes to read all 9 questions.

Results Declaration, Retake Policy and Certificate Generation :

1. With in 30 to 60 minutes after completing Cloudera will send a mail with score card with pass/ fail status. Mostly it will land into your spam / junk folder. So keep an eye on spam folder.
2. If you clear the exam, cloudera will send the certificate in PDF format along with Licence Number in 2–3 US business days to your registered email. You can verify the certificate in http://certification.cloudera.com/verify/ by entering license number.
3. Once you clear the exam, you cannot retake for score improvement as per cloudera policy.
4. If you fail in exam, then you have to wait for 30 days to give another try .
5. Cloudera is giving 50% discount on purchasing the exam voucher following the unsuccessful attempt for limited time till Feb,2019. You can details in https://university.cloudera.com/coupon/codes/customer/eligibility.