How to pass Terraform Associate Exam
Terraform is a tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. Terraform can help with multi-cloud by having one workflow for all clouds. The infrastructure Terraform manages can be hosted on public clouds like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, or on-prem in private clouds such as VMWare vSphere, OpenStack, or CloudStack.
Terraform is an Hashicorp product. Hashicorp recently started the Cloud Certifications, which includes Terraform Associate Exam.
I have been working with Terraform for a while now in my workplace. I used it to provision infrastructure in AWS, Azure. I had been awaiting to appear for the exam, as i feel Terraform is a strong tool, which is used everywhere nowadays, and learning it would give me an edge over the others.
Here is my take on how to prepare and succeed for the exam.
- Initial Step: (Get Familiar)
Get your fundamentals clear
To get yourself familar with the platform you can refer TJ Adam’s Course on Terraform on Udemy which is a three hour course, which is enough to get you going.
Terraform for AWS — Beginner to Expert 2020 (0.12)
Resource Link : https://www.udemy.com/course/terraform-fast-track/
TJ has an easy way to get the concepts clear in your head. His videos are short and crisp and enough to get what you want. I beleive investing hours on a single course is not fruitful and exhasutive than learning and finishing it within single sitting. This course familiarizes you with AWS infrastructure provisioning.
2. Second Step: (Get Hands-on)
Do some dirty handson. Provision and Destroy infrasturcture
Write some code, to deploy resources. Delete them, recreate them. Get familiar with the Four Magical Words :
1. Terraform init
2. Terraform plan
3. Terraform apply
4. Terraform destroy
Refer to the Terraform Documentation for syntax and structure of the resources : https://www.terraform.io/docs/index.html
3. Third Step: (Prepare for the Exam)
After you have gained some confidence and you have worked a bit in and out of Terraform, you can jump into preparing for the exam. For the Exam you need to refer few advanced topics and services provided by Terraform like Terraform Cloud, Provisioners, Modules, State Management, Backends, etc
For the exam prep you can refer TJ Adam’s
Terraform Associate Certification Prep Course
Resource Link : https://warp-9.com/p/terraform-certification-prep-course
The course is 3 hour course, and is everything that you need for the exam. This is the only course you need to pass the exam. I only used this course for the exam prep. Another great course to lookout is Zeal Vora’s HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate 2020
Resource Link : https://www.udemy.com/course/terraform-beginner-to-advanced/
4. Fourth Step ( Practice Test)
Finally you need something to test your journey this far. Bryan Krausen’s Udemy Practice Tests are on stop solution.
Resource Link : https://www.udemy.com/course/terraform-associate-practice-exam/
These tests are of top-notch quality. They are very similar to the real exam. It consists of Two Tests. First is the Fundamental Level Test and Second is Advanced Level Test. Try to get 75–80% on both tests.
The real exam is tougher so you will get +-5% difference in real exam.
Tips :
- Refer Documentation if possible, to get better understanding of the concepts. https://www.terraform.io/docs/index.html
- Refer the Study Guide, while viewing videos to get better picture .
https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/terraform/associate-study
Q&A:
Q1) Do you need to refer documentation to pass the exam?
a) Not really, its better to go through it. However i didnt refer the documentation, as i heavily relied on videos and handson
Q2) Do you need solid hands-on before preparing for the exam?
a) No. You can appear for the exam at minimum or no experience. Exam doesnt test your experience on Terraform, but how well you know the tool and its services.
Exam Structure:
- Exam format: Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) & Multiple Answer Questions (MAQs), true or false & text match questions
- Exam duration: 60 minutes
- Exam cost: $70.50 plus taxes
- No of questions: 57
- Certification validity: 2 years
- Passing Score: 70%
I got all of the above types in exam also i got fill in the blanks ,where i had to write the terraform command.
After the exam:
You will get the detailed results instantly after exam. However the Badge from Credily will be allocated after 10 days. This is a web-enabled version of certification that can be shared online. You can also get the printable certificate once after accepting the badge from Acclaim.
Good Luck for the exam. If you need motivation for the exam you can reach out to me via Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/yash-thaker-aws
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