HashiCorp Terraform Certification

TLDR: I passed. I used KodeKloud and read the website to prepare. KodeKloud doesn't cover the enterprise stuff.

Hola Humans! If your reading this it's too late. lol I'm kidding. I recently (yesterday) passed the HashiCorp Terraform Certification and I wanted to talk about why I took it and how I prepared.

The Why

It's no secret that I like the cloud and I like speeding up technical processes. As I look more into DevOps I realized that Terraform keeps coming up in my search as a key tool to know. If you have been here awhile you know I started a series to learn how to use terraform to spin up bots faster. During this time a group I'm in (s/o to HRV) posted about someone passing all 3 Kubernetes (k8) certs using this KodeKloud platform.

K8s is a bit far on the horizon but when I looked at the site it's all about DevOps things. I also remember someone saying Terraform had a certification. At this point my wheels are spinning and I'm like "you know what...this could help me move the needle." Worst case I learn something new that I can continue to write about, and best I get one of those cool cushy cloud jobs. 😬

The Preparation

Post investigation into KodeKloud I bought a year subscription and set a plan to test July 16th. No matter what I knew that by the week of the 16th I needed to only have the labs left. This meant that 1) I had to be ok with potential long nights and 2) I needed to refine my note taking strategy.

For this I used my knowledge management system, Obsidian. I would watch the videos on KodeKloud, hand write the important stuff, and then type them up the next day on breaks or before I started studying again. At the end of all this my notes looked like the highlighted node below.

When it came to the labs I only made notes if there was something I super blanked on. I liked how this platform had questions and hands-on learning built in. Now I also want to pause here and mention that this course talks about AWS. AWS is also mentioned on the test. You don't have to be the best at it but if your still a little confused after the lab I want you to go read a write paper for the service you used.

My last note here is that you HAVE to use the notes listed on the HashiCorp site as well. Why? KodeKloud only covers general use. If you look at the breakdown for the cert you will see that there are some enterprise things to know as well such as Terraform Cloud and Sentinel.

The Test

I took this test at midnight. To prepare I made sure I took a nap, ate at a reasonable time, stopped drinking water about 40mins before the test, and between my nap and the start time I was listening to music and reviewing notes.

Make sure your test area is clear (they will be annoying about it) and turn on a light so your face can be seen. Lastly before hitting the start button and before exiting the last survey take some deep breaths (I get super nervous so this helps).

At the end of it all enjoy your "PASS" and do whatever it is you do to celebrate.

Next Steps?

Next steps for me is to take the scripting class on KodeKloud, then docker, and then K8s. I want to take another DevOps related cert next month and I think K8s is a solid choice. I'm definitely looking forward to landing my first DevOps or cloud interview, but if I'm being honest I'm also not completely ready to toss mobile. It's my lil baby, my wealth builder if you will. I firmly believe that to be in a position to truly mix mobile and DevOps and security I must transition to a new field.