How I passed – Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2020 Architect Associate (1Z0-1072-20) exam

The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) 2020 Architect Associate exam is one of the demanding certifications for 2020/21 as the OCI is growing rapidly and even Gartner reported twice as OCI is the visionary in public cloud platforms. OCI is unique in its reliable infrastructure, cost and support. As like other cloud service providers, OCI is having many cool features like data guard, fault domains, compartments and their biggest asset is “Autonomous Database”

Here are the topics I am covering in this post

1. Certification details (Cost, Registration process and Exam topics)
2. Examination preparation materials and my reviews
3. My experience through exam preparation and exam day
4. Syllabus in detail to prepare for the exam

1. Certification details:- 
   1. The exam duration is 85 minutes for a total 60 questions, where you need to score 65% in order to pass the exam, i.e 39 correct answers will get you certification. The examination costs you USD 150. See below link for more details.

https://education.oracle.com/oracle-cloud-infrastructure-2020-architect-associate/pexam_1Z0-1072-20

• Examination consists of multiple choice questions only, where you will have 4 or more answers to select from for every question. Some questions you may need to select 1 or more suitable answers. There will be a question or two which shows a graphic and asks the question (I will explain more in next sections)

• In order to register for the exam, you need to have an Oracle account and login through Certview to pay and schedule the exam. Below the link for registration

https://catalog-education.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=1010:26:2076046940597.

• You can attend the exam either at home or going to a PearsonVue test center and the exam price is the same in either of the cases. You will get the exam results immediately as pass or fail. Once you pass, you need to wait for 24 to 48 hours to receive your certification to your Oracle account. You will get the digital badge through Acclaim. 

• Exam topics cover 5 major areas. Exam verifies your knowledge in architecting various solutions by leveraging OCI services in a best possible way (Low cost, resilient, reliable, high performance and secured)

1. Identity
2. Networking
3. Compute
4. Storage
5. Databases

2. Examination preparation materials and my reviews:- Below the learning subscription from Oracle University. This subscription consists of workshop, examination preparation, practice test and exam voucher but it will cost more than 3000 USD for the entire package. I would recommend go through the freely available option in this subscription those are actual workshop and practice test only

https://learn.oracle.com/ols/learning-path/become-oci-architect-associate/35644/75658

This course will help you understand the various OCI services like compute, network, storage, containers, identity, security etc but will not provide the actual guidance to clear the examination like best practices, architectural patterns, design considerations, lessons learned, various use cases and time/situation based decisions which are required to pass the examination. I will cover how you can gain such knowledge in the upcoming sections

b.  The Official OCI documentation: Below the link for official OCI documentation that covers entire OCI services and features in depth.  

https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/home.htm

I strongly recommend reading the Compute, IAM, Networking, Security, Storage, Databases sections in order to better prepare for the exam.

c.  The book – “Architect Associate All-in-One Exam Guide (Exam 1Z0-1072)” published by  ‘McGraw Hill’, authored by Roopesh Ramklass. I also strongly recommend this book as it provides over all details of each OCI service that is required for the associate architect exam. 

Note:- Don’t miss the “Tips” section in this book which is completely examination oriented. These tips are also a game changer to pass the exam.

d. The Youtube Channel:- Below the link for the Youtube official OCI channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC60OcDzeEtn194-UPYNJs8A

There are great videos especially “Networking” and “Core Concepts” sections, which you can refer while preparing for the exam. Check other videos as well as they cover out of the box concepts in adopting cloud/OCI and other industry related information.

e. Explore and make your hands dirty with OCI free tier account. Practicing OCI will make you perfect in preparation to the exam. Below URL is for free tier OCI

https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/

3. My experience through exam preparation and exam day: I am a 6x AWS certified, CCSK and CCSP with 7 years of cloud computing experience in Cloud Security, Adoption, Migrations, Automation and DevSecOps, so this over all experience helpmed at least 30 to 40 % of OCI architect associate exam preparation. I have undergone all above said 5 different types of learning ways for about 35 days (each day 1+ hour and 2 to 3 hours during weekends). During the normal  business days, it is a little difficult to focus on studies, being full time employed and being a fulltime husband, father 🙂 

I have booked the exam at a local PearsonVue testing center (Knowing my kids may disturb me if I take the exam from home 🙂 ). I am ontime to the test center and finished check-in formalities and directed to my hot seat. 

The very first question I saw,  I thought I was going to fail the exam, as the question was two paragraphs and took 3+ mins to read and understand. In fact I even don’t have the right answer. My Tip here is – Don’t Panic if you don’t know the answer. If I don’t know the answer I try to guess the best possible option with my experience in Cloud Architectures. However there are not many questions that are lengthy but most of the questions are two to 3 lines of questions only. 

There the below types of questions I encountered 

1. Question with multiple choice answers which you have to pick one right answer

2. Question with multiple choice answers which you have to pick more than one right answer

3. Question with a graphic with multiple choice answers which you have to pick one right answer.

                      Note: There are no “True” / “False” questions that I see in my exam

 Time is also an essential part to consider, I have 5 mins left to answer 9 questions in my exam.  So you need to be cautious when you are spending more time on questions you are uncertain. Keep them in review stage and move on to the next question, so you can revisit the review marked questions in the last and think about them.  Finally I have submitted the exam right before it auto closes the session and I see the result as “Pass”. Hurray, I did it. Remember the core secrets of my success are my previous experience, OCI official documentation reading and the All-in-One book (specially the tips in the book).

Now you have everything you need to know, and it’s time for you to plan (based on your previous experience in Cloud/OCI), what to study, how to study and how long to study. Let me know if you have any additional questions. All the best !