August 30, 2019
After less than a week from achieving the Google Associate Cloud Engineer certification, I took the Google Professional Cloud Architect exam.
Preparing this exam, I found odd the fact that Google provides three case studies to bring to the exam.
I was even more impressed by the number of questions around those cases.
It felt odd since it felt like you could prepare very well those three case studies and be advantaged in the exam.
Overall, I think that this is not the case, since having prepared the cases, will only help you not having to re-read the whole case before answering the questions.
Also, I found myself to read the case name, read the question, read the answers, choose the answer, and then read the case text again, just to be sure.
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August 24, 2019
As for a company certification goal, I decided to certify as a Google Associate Cloud Engineer as well as Google Professional Cloud Architect this month.
The Google Associate Cloud Engineer certification is mainly focused around GCP standard operations, such as managing IAM, osLogin, as well as many other core services such as compute instances, Cloud SQL and many more.
I found the certification to be fairly well balanced, with maybe a little bit a skew toward IAM and security, which I do appreciate due to the importance of these topics.
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March 1, 2016
A couple of weeks ago, I took the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator exam.
One interesting thing about this exam is that the participant decides which flavor and version of Linux he wants to use for the test.
The reality is that the Linux flavor changes very little on the tasks, but it puts the test-taker in a more comfortable situation due to the OS familiarity.
Overall I think the exam is pretty straightforward both in the way questions are formed and solving them.
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October 16, 2013
A month after the CompTIA Linux+, I decided to do the CompTIA Security+.
As for the Linux+, the Security+ uses on a multiple-choice test.
In this case, I think this kind of exam is a perfect fit since it’s essential that the candidate has and can demonstrate a solid understanding of the theory behind security.
Overall I liked the exam, and I would suggest it to anyone interested in starting a journey in security or wants (or needs) to have a certification that certifies a base knowledge around security.
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September 15, 2013
In August, I passed the CompTIA LX0-101 exam and a couple of days ago the LX0-102 exam.
Together, those two exams allowed me to earn the CompTIA Linux+ certification.
I did not found the two exams too hard, and in fact, I passed both with a considerable margin.
Those two exams are multiple-choice kind of questions.
I would find a scenario-based exam more valuable since it would test actual capabilities.
Still, I understand that for basic knowledge, the multiple-choice option can be a good one.
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April 30, 2013
After few months after the review of CompTIA Security+ Rapid Review, I’m now here to speak about it’s bigger brother: the Training kit.
With its 569 pages, this book is more than twice the length of the Rapid Review one. Even if someone can think that they did a better summary in the Rapid Review one, I have to say that this is not the case for these two books. While the Rapid Review allows you to pass the exam if you already know the certification contents and you only need to evaluate your level and to refresh some contents, the Training Kit will teach you the certification contents.
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March 5, 2013
After Microsoft’s CompTIA A+ Training Kit, here I am reviewing the Microsoft’s A+ Rapid Review.
This book is really similar to the book CompTIA Security+ Rapid Review (this too by Microsoft Press).
Darril Gibson, the book’s author, have compressed a huge amount of contents in a (relatively) small amount of pages (411). This is the first big difference in respect of the Security+ Rapid Review, since this book has more contents per page (and about the double of pages).
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January 29, 2013
I come to this book less than a month after reviewing the 70-410 Exam Ref.
As the title may suggest, this book is tailored to the preparation of the Microsoft 70-413 exam.
Speaking of the exam, I have to advice that the book does cover any exam objective, but does not cover every exam question.
The book is split into an introduction, 5 chapters and the index.
The first chapter helps to understand how to plan and deploy a server infrastructure. The other four are focused on the designing and implementation of the various components: network infrastructure services (chapter 2), network access services (chapter 3), Active Directory logical infrastructure (chapter 4) and Active Directory physical infrastructure (chapter 5).
A thing I liked about this book is the presence of questions (with detailed answers).
What is improvable for these question is the number.
I think they should put way more questions.
So, the questions, are a good idea not well implemented.
The only thing I hoped to see on this book but is missing is the emphasis on the security.
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January 15, 2013
Reading this book has helped me a lot understanding better how the A+ exam works. This book is tailored for the CompTIA A+ certification (and this led me to this book instead of another one, since I’m looking forward to take this certification).
I really liked the fact that every chapter does cover conclusively an argument. In this way, you can choose which arguments read based on your interests and your needs.
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January 8, 2013
This book is pretty short (258 pages long) but is very dense. It is divided into 6 chapters + one appendix.
For each atomic argument, the author does propose 1 to 3 True-or-False questions, their answer and the explanation. I did like the question-answer approach, since you understand immediately which is your level, therefore you can understand which parts you have to cover more and which less. What I did not liked at all about this structure is the layout. Every question is answered right below the question itself. I think this is a very bad approach, since is really hard to answer to a True-or-False question without looking at the answer that you know is there. I think they should have putted all the chapter questions and after all the chapter answers.
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(Fabio Alessandro Locati|Fale)'s blog