Oracle is giving away their technical Oracle Cloud Infrastructure study guide and certificate. Free until May 15th for the following paths:

Last weekend I've decided to give it a try and get myself in shape to take the easiest of them all: Foundations. This is because the way Oracle structures their certification path, setting it as the basis for the rest of them:

What is Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Foundations Associate?

Foundations is a great way to get you started. Normally at less than €100, Oracle provides a good course by Rohit Rahi that was updated on February 2020 at the time of writing. The course is structured as following:

  1. Getting started with OCI
    1. Introduction
    2. Cloud Concepts - Cloud Computing/Cloud Terminology/ Serive Models/CAPEX v/s OPEX
    3. OCI Architecture - OCI Regions/Availability Domains/Fault Domains/High Availability Design/Compartments
  2. Core OCI Services
    1. OCI Compute Services - Bare Metal/VMs/Scaling/Container Engine/Functions
    2. OCI Storage Services - Block Volume/Local NVMe/File Storage/Object Storage/Archive Storage
    3. OCI Networking Services - Virtual Cloud Network/Gateway/Peering/VCN Security/Load Balancer
    4. OCI IAM - IAM/Authentication/Authorization/Policies
    5. OCI Database Services - OCI DB Options/DB Systems/DB Systems Backup/DB Systems HA and DR/Autonomous Databases
  3. Security in OCI
    1. OCI Security - Shared Security Model/Security Access/Identity and Access Management/Data Protection/OS and workload isolation/Infrastructure protection
  4. OCI Pricing and Billing
    1. OCI Pricing and Billing - Pricing Models/Pricing Example/Billing/Cost Management/Free Tier

The course provides around 3 hours and a half of video training, and you can tell that the trainer is well versed on all the concepts being discussed. I've decided to take some time during the quarantine and immerse myself on those videos last Saturday. After a day or so I took and passed the training exam. I did notice, however, that there seems to be a missing video on Support Model (mostly because the last video says so!).

What does it take to pass the exam? Well, although you could pass it just by learning the info provided, I would strongly recommend having some practical experience. You can quickly get to it creating an account on Oracle Cloud. They generally provide you with free credits for a month (around €300) and an Always Free tier including:

  • 2 Autonomous Database
  • 2 Compute Instances (w/Load Balancer, Storage and Network transfers)

About the test

The exam can be taken at a testing venue or at the comfort of your home. It is provided by PearsonVue and you need either a Mac or Windows machine and perform some pre-checks. Make sure you do this with enough time as they will ask you for:

  • Identification document (Passport/Driver's License)
  • Selfie
  • Front/Back/Left/Right photos of your environment
  • System test (screen resolution, network speed, no other app running)

They have some additional requests like:

  • No phones/extra monitors/electronic devices around (besides your laptop)
  • No one should be near you
  • No exam dumps (brain dumps)
  • No additional help

To put it plainly: NO CHEATING!

Anyways, after you get youself ready, then it comes the moment of truth: a 105 minutes exam with 60 multiple choice questions. They can be single or multiple answers accepted, and it works at around 1min 45secs per question.

This is more than enough if you have played around with Oracle Cloud for a while but it also helps that you have studied the required lessons.

The Results

After about 45 minutes I was done, having reviews my answers twice. Almost instantly, I got my Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Foundations Associate passing rate and here it is:

So if you are thinking about upskilling or showing off your knowledge, I think this is a great way to get you started!