This Oracle Cloud Certification exam will take – on average – about one week of study to prepare for. Most people who seriously commit to their studies are ready to pass the exam within about four days.
My attitude is that you should attempt the exam even if you feel you are not ready, so that you gain practice through the examination experience.
What is Oracle Cloud Infrastructure?
Oracle is a technology company that been around since the late 70s and is well known for building enterprise on-premises software and specifically their Oracle database.
Oracle has its own cloud provider just like AWS, and they call their platform Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) – also know as Oracle Cloud.
Oracle does not have as many cloud services and cloud integration as AWS. But consider that Oracle was the second-largest software company by revenue and market share in 2019.
Oracle has carved its niche in the cloud market by doing what they know best: providing rich cloud features around their Oracle database.
The Oracle Foundations Associate Certification
The Oracle Foundations Associate is the entry-level certification for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
This certification is very similar to the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner. It focuses on getting you familiar with:
- Cloud Concepts
- Oracle's Global Infrastructure
- Oracle Cloud's Core Services (Computing, Storage, Databases, Networking)
- Oracle Cloud's Billing and Pricing
- Oracle Cloud's Security Services
If you are new to the Cloud, then you can pass exam this with under a week of study.
If you already hold the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, you could pass this exam with a few hours of study. You would just need to familiarize yourself with OCI's terminologies and some concepts around their account management and billing.
In this course, I'll show you a few examples of how AWS and OCI have very similar offerings in terms of technologies, but are just named differently. To name a few:
- AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is the equivalent of Oracle Virtual Cloud Network (VCNs)
- AWS Availability Zones (AZs) is the equivalent of Oracle Availability Domains (ADs)
- AWS Key Management System is the equivalent of Oracle Vault
- AWS S3 is the equivalent of Oracle Object Storage
- AWS Elastic Block Store (EBS) is the equivalent of Oracle Block Storage
- AWS EC2 is the equivalent of Oracle VM
The passing score for this exam is 68%. There are 60 questions – both multiple-choice and multiple-answer. This means you can afford to get about 19 questions wrong and still pass. Which is a considerable margin for error.
The exam fee generally costs $95 USD, and this Oracle Certification is valid for 1.5 years before you have to retake the exam.
The Free Oracle Foundations Course
My course will remain free forever. And it's ad-free, too.
This free course is nearly 3 hours in length. It includes hands-on exercises. You can follow along and set up your own Oracle Cloud account. Together, we will explore the Networking, Computing, Storage and Database services.
You can create an Oracle Cloud account for free. You will have to provide a valid credit card to complete the registration. But as long as you remember to cancel, you won't have to worry about unexpected charges because Oracle will give you $300 USD credits for 30 days. And you will be in a sandbox account. A sandbox account means you will never be billed unless you choose to leave the sandbox. So you are safe to explore without getting charged.
Then at the end of the course, I'll show you how to book your exam.
OK – now you know everything you need get started with your Oracle Cloud Certification journey.
Head on over to freeCodeCamp's YouTube channel to start working through the full 3-hour course.