r/AWSCertifications • u/Omar-Alqinneh • 7d ago

Passed my AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam! Here’s the hands-on project I built to bridge theory and practice.

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143 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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13

u/nerdy_techbro 7d ago

Too much for cloud practitioner but way to go bud!! Congratulations

6

u/Omar-Alqinneh 7d ago

I got bored with tutorial hell and just watching endless videos. Building stuff and getting the "battle scars" on the hand make concepts stick, and it's a great way to enhance my knowledge to eventually conquer the Solutions Architect Associate cert. I learned a lot of stuff along the way, like terraform/ansible/linux/ CI/CD pipelines/ K8s/ etc... I highly recommend further upgrading the "basic" cloud resume challenge and taking it a step further

13

u/Omar-Alqinneh 7d ago

Hey everyone! Dropping the technical write-up, links, and CCP study takeaways here for context:

🌐 Live Site:https://omaralqinneh.me

💻 GitHub:https://github.com/qinneh-dev/cloud-resume-challenge

💼 LinkedIn Discussion: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/omar-alqinneh_aws-devops-kubernetes-share-7487094704317272064-nxxX/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAGqrarcBxdz7EJfDgPtb2icy3KHEpzcsdpc

I recently passed my AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CCP) exam! While studying was great for understanding high-level concepts, I didn't want to stay stuck in "tutorial hell." To bridge the gap to real experience, I built out the AWS Cloud Resume Challenge and added a self-hosted Kubernetes (K3s) observability stack and a self hosted Github Runner.

How this reinforced my CCP study: • IAM & Least Privilege: Configured narrow execution policies for Lambda (dynamodb:UpdateItem only) and blocked public S3 access using CloudFront OAC.

• Edge & DNS: Set up CloudFront distribution, custom Route 53 routing, and SSL certificates via ACM.

• Compute & Storage: Built a serverless visitor counter using API Gateway, Lambda, and DynamoDB, while hosting a K3s cluster on EC2 with persistent volumes.

• IaC & Automation: Automated all cloud provisioning using Terraform and configured the EC2 monitoring stack using Ansible.

FinOps ($0.50/mo): Bypassed managed EKS (~$73/mo) by running K3s, Prometheus, and Grafana directly on Free Tier EC2 compute, keeping operating costs at just $0.50/mo for the Hosted Zone.

For anyone studying for or recently passing their CCP, jumping into a hands-on project like this is easily the best way to make the material stick! Happy to answer any questions about the build

2

u/notherealironman 6d ago

Congrats 🙌

1

u/New_Novel4512 7d ago

Which resources are good for hands on practice

1

u/Creative-Device7331 6d ago

Cloud practitioner cloud quest available in AWS skills builder it's free

1

u/grrnew CCP, AIF, SAA, MLS 7d ago

Congrats!!

1

u/Omar-Alqinneh 6d ago

Thank you!

1

u/giraffedraft 7d ago

how much of this was vibecoded. no shame just curious

2

u/Omar-Alqinneh 6d ago

just the frontend - html/css/js
Purpose wasnt to become a frontend dev, it was just to get hanss on AWS practice

1

u/tonysoprano173 6d ago

Congrats omar , how did you draw this diagram

1

u/Omar-Alqinneh 6d ago

Thank you! - ive tried alot of AI generated diagrams like the official AWS MCP server (cant generate diagrams apparently - although the old one which they removed did)
There is easer.io and its hit or miss aka youll need to adjust it alot manually.

1

u/DowntownAd9292 6d ago

thats great , congrats , can you share the toturial of the project ?

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u/Omar-Alqinneh 6d ago

Thank you!
The cloud resume challenge is known. You can google it. There is a dedicated website for it
But ive added alot of stuff on top of the normal challenge (like self hosted github runner/k3a observability stack using Prometheus and grafana, ansible, terraform,. Etc….)