Highlights for Terraform Associate Certification — Study & Exam Prep
Motivation — Even if we work on tools daily, we might not use all the concepts, but it's good to understand them for future use. For example, while working on some terraform tasks, I thought of going through study videos from the Udemy course, which might help me improve the code. After I finished the job & the course videos, I thought, why not test it with the certification exam.
We had a long holiday of 4 days & I thought of attempting for Terraform Associate Certification exam. On the typical first day, I spent doing other things unrelated to the exam or studying, thinking I had enough time. The remaining three days, "Study-Eat-Walk-Sleep-Repeat," was on my schedule. Following are the sources I used to prepare for the exam. I hope it will help someone with their study.
Sources
Hands-on: No amount of reading, Q &A can replace Hands-on experience. If you do not have a chance to write any infrastructure code in your organization, you can follow some tutorials from the Official website. You will need AWS, Azure, or GCP account (check other supported cloud platforms). Some assignments might cost a few dollars.
Official Website Reading:
- https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/terraform/infrastructure-as-code?in=terraform/aws-get-started
- https://learn.hashicorp.com/collections/terraform/certification — It covers everything from "What is IaaC? Why do we need it? How does it work?" To real-world examples.
- The official document also shows the type of questions in the exam. It's an excellent revision to see if you cover all the required topics for the test.
Study Course:
- Terraform Study course Udemy— https://www.udemy.com/course/terraform-beginner-to-advanced/
- I went through this course to understand concepts in depth. The author of the course explained concepts very well with practical examples.
- Practice tests — Zeal Vora's course on Udemy have two practice tests & quiz at the end of the course.
Medium blog — https://medium.com/bb-tutorials-and-thoughts/250-practice-questions-for-terraform-associate-certification-7a3ccebe6a1a
Another resource — https://www.exampro.co/terraform
Before the exam day, I wanted to check if I could get good points from another trainer if I took another exam. I found exampro had good reviews.
First, I tried their Free test & failed with 66%; even if it's not bad, I might have done one more question wrong. There were some questions I felt like I had never heard before in my prep, or I didn't pay attention enough, thinking that they wouldn't be an exam question.
There is the section after each test in exam pro called "Master your mistakes" where you can see which questions you missed & what is the correct answer with some explanation. You can reattempt only those questions & see how well you do.
First of all, I would like to mention that it's an excellent way to look at your mistakes. It puts you in the mindset of correcting something rather than realizing a lack of preparation by saying "incorrect answers" or "wrong answers."
After seeing my results I wasn't happy, I thought of giving another exam & I bought the tests from exam pro, luckily they had some discounts. I didn't have time to go through all the videos, so I decided to go through exams only & evaluate what I could remember.
Sometimes it's not about how much you study but how much you can recall faster is what matters. I focused more on solving practice tests than on all of this I did the night before my scheduled exam. I did one test just after I woke up. After looking at all my practice test reports, I was confident enough to pass the test & I did with precisely the same percentage as my 3rd test, 82%.
A few hours after the exam, I received an email with details on percentage & section-wise scores from Hashicorp.
P.S. Even if I studied four days just before the exam, that doesn't mean it's how to pass terraform certification in 4 days type of blog. It's just the time I spent on revision & tests. It's essential to understand hands-on experience & time taken are different for individuals based on their experience with the tool. So don't be hard on yourself & keep learning.
All the best for your test & Happy Learning !!
