Cloud+ Pass

notquitecertifiable

Today I sat, and more importantly, passed the CompTIA Cloud+ exam. It was 100 questions and you are allowed 90 minutes to answer them in. All were multiple choice in nature.

My preparation for the exam was to read http://www.amazon.co.uk/CompTIA-Cloud-Certification-Study-CV0-001/dp/0071828869/ and make an attempt at both sample exams (one on the disk, one downloaded from the site). After one read through the book I scored a high 90% in each. It's worth noting that the book comes with a 10% discount code so I consider that it paid for itself. The book flows well and is an easy read. 80% of the questions I encountered on the exam were covered in the book and the others were more general IT principles.

Quite oddly, considering the certs name, both the exam and book were surprisingly light on cloud specific material. Other than the ability to
distinguish between the *aaS types and a decent selection of virtualization and hypervisor questions it felt like they'd taken a couple of chapters from network+, security+ and server+ and used them as filler. You don't need to have done any hands on cloud experimentation to earn this exam and it's much of a principles and concepts test than I was expecting.

Considering the very basic level of cloud knowledge this exam tests on I'm actually quite curious as to what's on the 'essentials' exam. If you're looking for something to prove you have 'cloud skills' I think you'd be better off with the Amazon certs. Although they are vendor specific they seem to delve a lot deeper than this exam did.

jfitzg

Amazon certs are AWS specific. The reason that the exam and book were light on cloud specific material were because A. Its CompTIA who is known for entry level certifications and B. There are currently 17,000 cloud providers all doing this different.

ThePawofRizzo

Congrats notquitecertifiable. I've actually been reading for Cloud+ using the same book, and found it a bit "light", even after having taken Cloud Essentials. I'll be curious to take it now. I expect it to be foundational given that it's CompTIA, but I would expect it to be more difficult than Essentials. I must add that I did think Essentials was a bit more challenging than I expected.

antielvis

jfitzg wrote: »

. There are currently 17,000 cloud providers all doing this different.

Right now there are, but I suspect that number will narrow down. I see the Cloud like I saw the ISP industry during the dialup era. There were service providers everywhere in the early days. That number slowly declined as the industry matured. I think Cloud+ is a great idea, but a AWS certification couldn't hurt. You'd be learning how the "master" does it & that can be a good thing. You might not want the SysOp cert, but the AWS Solutions Architect has transferrable skills.

DAVIS NGUYEN

Congrats on the pass

ThePawofRizzo

So Notquitecertifiable, you found the questions in the practice exams that came with http://www.amazon.co.uk/CompTIA-Clou...dp/0071828869/ similar to what's on the Cloud+ exams? I expect much of the material to be introduction and basic, especially with my years working and studying IT, but the material seems to be a lot of Server+, Network+, and maybe a little Security+. I scored really high on these CD practice exams, and there isn't much else out there in the way of practice exams for Cloud+ to use to really test my knowledge.

ThePawofRizzo

I passed Cloud+ today. To anyone thinking of taking the exam, the McGraw-Hill book is good study source. At this point, there isn't really any other books specifically geared toward Cloud+, but I had also taken Cloud Essentials a couple months ago, and some of that test prep was helpful. Cloud+ is geared more toward the tech support side of Cloud computing, whereas Cloud Essentials is more service and marketing oriented. If anyone pursues one of the CompTIA cloud certs I'd suggest just going ahead and taking the other as your halfway there after taking one.

j33per

@PawofRizzo - Congrats & thanks for the insight... Just received my copy of the book you mentioned yesterday. Cloud+ is on my to do list hopefully before spring.

ThePawofRizzo

Hey I have the same VCA certs too! Took them to get more familiar with VMware since I'm using it more and more. Plan on VCP this year.

Anyway, that book for prep should work well. The practice exams were decent prep, although the exam was a bit more challenging. Based on the certs you already have, you probably already know a ton of what you'll run into.

cloudnewbie

I am newbie to cloud and would like to prepare for the comptia cloud +. I had a few questions


1)Is it possible for one to prepare for this certification without having had hands on experience on Cloud , by just reading through books .
2)If one doesn't have experience on networking / virtualization then can one still prepare enough from the exam prep book.
3)Also which book would be suggested in order to prepare for this exam.
I did see a book - Comptia cloud+ certification study Guide by Nate Stammer, listed on this site by some members. Would this be helpful considering my background

Please advise

Asif Dasl

@CloudNewbie...

Cloud+ builds on other CompTIA certifications like A+ & Network+. TBH there is no value in Cloud+, if I were you I would go for A+ & Network+ if you don't have them already. Then I would try something like the VMware fundamentals training courses which are FREE and build up your cloud knowledge that way slowly while doing other certifications like Microsoft or Cisco.

IaaS, PaaS, SaaS are the main topics on Cloud+ which are all covered by the VCA-DCV fundamentals course. The VCA-Cloud fundamentals course is not enough to pass the exam, you would have to break that training up and do the fundamentals training for each of individual parts that it covers to really pass VCA-Cloud IMO (vCloud Director fundamentals, vCloud Automation Center fundamentals, vCloud Networking and Security fundamentals, vCenter Operations Manager fundamentals, vCenter Chargeback fundamentals, vCloud Connector fundamentals, and vCenter Site Recovery Manager fundamentals). I have not tried VCA Workforce Mobility fundamentals yet.

After gaining experience learning VMware, gaining the VCP should be your goal, that, or learning Hyper-V - whichever path you prefer.

utahluge

As I just passed my Cloud+, I had to put my 00000010 in on this. You HAVE to have general knowledge from A/Net/Sec for this cert. For me, reading the book alone was not enough to pass the cert. Those are the basic feeder certs for Cloud+ and if you only had knowledge from that book, you would fail. Also, come up with situations in which different cloud solutions would apply. If you know how things are implemented and why, you will do much better.