How To Pass Your Terraform Certified Associate Exam — First Time!
It’s clear, the Terraform Certification is new and it’s HOT!
So many people passing and getting certified, it’s time you joined in as well.
Since creating the WOLRDS FIRST dedicated Terraform Certification course, we’ve got the most experience of what to expect and the issues people run into.
About the exam
You’ve got 60 minutes to answer roughly 60 questions or less.
That sounds like a lot but a lot of them are very easy and you’ll be speeding through the exam with plenty of time to spare for reviewing the questions you’ve marked.
The exam is remotely proctored so no need to travel to a test centre! 🙌
HashiCorp recently changed who proctors the exam and a few students have had issues with the new proctor when connecting but nothing that hasn’t been resolved.
Make sure to “check-in” a few minutes earlier just in case.
The exam is all based on the new 0.12 Terraform syntax.
Which Cloud Platform?
The exam is COMPLETELY CLOUD AGNOSTIC!
Yes, that’s right!
If you’ve worked with Azure, GCP, AWS, Alibaba Cloud or no cloud provider at all, you’ll be able to sit and pass the exam.
What to expect
One of the biggest “gotcha’s” in the exam is typing in your answers.
Before you panic, this doesn’t mean writing out entire blocks of code.
You’ll be asked to type in your answer such as which command to run or values from the code presented.
It’s super easy and not something to panic over.
Be aware of it before you sit the exam.
The rest of it is multiple choice so you’ll be breezing through the questions.
The questions you’ll be asked are interesting and something that makes this exam unique.
They do a really good job of making sure you know how to work with Terraform.
This is where working with Terraform is a MUST to make sure you pass (more on this later).
It isn’t like an AWS exam where two questions are automatically wrong. With this exam, in some cases they’ll all be right but you need to pick the BEST one.
Don’t let this intimidate you, it’s very obvious which one the correct answer will be it’s just that there will be other answers that appear valid but aren’t quite right for the task you’re asked to resolve.
How to book your exam?
Go to this link to book your exam.
FYI, you’ll need a GitHub account to book it.
How experienced are you?
Here’s the best advice you can get to make sure you maximise your chances of passing first time:
Based on your experience, you’re going to be in one of three camps:
- ZERO experience with Terraform
- EXPERIENCED — Worked with it for 3–6 months
- VERY EXPERIENCED—Worked with Terraform for years
The Zero Experience
For those with little or zero experience with Terraform, I’m going to recommend the Terraform Cert Bundle
You’re going to need to hands-on experience with setting up resources and if you run into any errors, even better!
The more experience you have when things go wrong will help you tremendously in the exam.
The exam is one you’re going to need experience with Terraform, you’re going to be asked questions on how to resolve issues and which command will achieve a certain result.
Experience is king but that doesn’t mean you need to be out there creating prod environments from scratch with Terraform (although, that would be a wicked way of getting experience).
You’ll also need to get familiar with the Terraform commands and what they do as you’ll be asked which ones to use based on the situation or question asked.
Modules and State are two areas you really need to have a rock-solid understand on.
They’re so important they have their own section each in the exam criteria.
They’re also the bread and butter of Terraform so make sure you know what they do, what they’re used for and HOW to use them.
To say you all the time of piecing the information together and figuring it all out, the Terraform Cert Bundle will teach you everything you need to know.
We’ve done all the hard work for you!
The Experienced
I’m going to recommend the Terraform Certified Associate Course
There are quite a few “gotcha’s” in the exam you need to be aware of and there is a lot of material you may not have used day-to-day.
One example is all the Terraform State commands as well as all the other Terraform commands, you will be asked which one is the BEST option to achieve a certain result.
Unless you’ve been using them all, you’ll need to know how the differ and what they do.
There are other HashiCorp products to be aware of as well such as Terraform Cloud, Vault and Sentinel.
With the last two products, you don’t need a super in-depth knowledge on them, be aware of what they are and what they do.
The course will get you up to speed with everything you need to know to pass the exam first time round so you don’t have to spend weeks researching all this for yourself.
So quick indeed, you can watch the course in the morning and sit the exam in the afternoon — THE SAME DAY!
The Very Experienced
You can pretty much get away with just reading the documentation and brushing up on the areas you don’t know.
A word of advice is to make sure you brush up on Terraform Cloud, Sentinel and Vault as they call come up in the exam.
Here’s the link to the exam criteria
How long to prepare?
With the Warp 9 courses, there’s no reason you wouldn’t be able to clear and pass the exam in a week or less.
I’ve had some students pass it in 2–3 days and some even on the same day.
It depends how comfortable you feel working with Terraform.
It’s not an exam you need to spend a month+ studying for.
Wrapping Up
Before you go, here’s a couple of points to wrap up this post with
- Make sure you’ve got plenty of experience before you sit the exam
- Go through the exam criteria to make you’ve covered everything
- “Check-in” for the exam 10–15 minutes before exam time
- Relax, you’re going to do fine!
- Make sure to share your achievement on LinkedIn! #warp9
Best of luck with the exam!
You’re going to nail it! 😎
BONUS: Free Terraform Resource
To help you get up to speed with Terraform quickly and easily, checkout the Terraform 101 course to give you a rock-solid understanding.
BONUS 2: Discount just for you
This is the first Warp 9 blog post and to celebrate, here’s a 30% off discount code for the all the courses mentioned in this post.
When you get to the checkout, make sure to use the code: MEDIUM
It will expire on 09/11/2020 so hurry!
