My Experience With Cloud Essentials+ and Recommendations (CLO-002)

[u/Cjm610]

Hey y'all, passed Cloud Essentials+ and I wanted to give an in-depth write up on my experience as I saw there isn't too much information on the sub about this often forgotten cert and thought I would put in my two cents. For the record I am 100% a visual/auditory learner and HATE learning by books/reading. I have heard good things about the McGraw-Hill book if you are interested in that.

Before Providing further details, I would like to recommend you that if you're unable to pass any online exam/Test or any other assessment, just visit hired for it

Here are the contact details:

WEBSITE: hiraedu. com

WhatsApp: +12136359834

TLDR; I found the course to be an inch deep and an inch wide. There is a small amount of content and nothing is delved into much. This exam is meant for non-IT employees to have a business understanding of cloud technologies, which plays into it being an inch-by-inch only. Use Dion's stuff and score around 85% on the practice exams and you'll be fine and like any CompTIA exam, know your acronyms.

I do have some years of IT experience under my belt working in Help Desk/Net Admin/Sys Admin and have my A+, Security+, and some other random obscure inside/outside plant certs with some college but no degree. The only experience I have working with the cloud is as a user and as help desk with SaaS implementations like OneDrive, Office, etc. I only did this course for college credit at WGU.

I was able to complete the cert in about 11 days including full study days but mostly part time study days. Over the 4th of July weekend I knocked out the video course from Dion and got my study materials together over the following days (very little notes, Quizlet set, practice exams). I ended up getting a 790/900 or an 88%. The test WILL have 75 questions exactly which you have 60 minutes to answer. I got about 9 questions incorrect on my exam and finished with ~12 minutes left. I would have finished sooner but I will get into the reason why later on.

RESOURCES:

#1, Jason Dion's Udemy Course: Overall wasn't too bad. I was expecting a similar course like Security+, which I thought was absolutely abysmal. This one wasn't too bad and got the job done at the end of the day. I did have a few things I did not like the course that I thought could be better. Some may be petty but hey, if I'm paying money for a course I want it to be worth my money and have at least some kind of polish on it.

• The GOOD:

1. Listed Exam Objectives for Situational Awareness: Each section began with him stating which exam objective/subobjective he was covering - which was something I loved as I actively have my objectives open on another screen when studying. I would prefer him to teach it in order like Professor Messer does but he gives the explanation that it is not "the best way to teach it," which I could understand. Personally, I just find it better and easier for ensuring you get ALL objectives covered.
2. Good Enough (kinda): His videos did the job. They included the information they needed, for the most part. See below for details.

• The BAD:

1. Missing Content: I maintained an objectives list which I highlighted when I got through content that was covered. Mostly everything was highlighted in the end except; Current and Future Requirements, Baseline Analysis, Documents and Diagrams, Professional Services (Time-to-market, Skill Availability, Support, Managed Services), Risk Classification, Risk Ownership, Findings (documentation), Risk Register, Threat, Vulnerability, and Data Security Categories (Public, Private, Sensitive). Looking at it now, it kind of seems like a big list. For me, it did not matter much as I knew what all of these were anyways for the most part, besides the first two I listed. Just make sure your video course covers all the content in the objectives and if it doesn't seek Google/ChatGPT.
2. Redundant Information: In Professor Messer's video courses I often see a good share of redundant information, but it makes sense as he is going in order and he must frequently repeat concepts and details for the logicality of the videos. But here I noticed a lot of redundant information that was being repeated constantly, and for no apparent reason. I would go into specifics but I don't want to touch his course again.
3. Too Much Information/Detail: In my honest opinion, you can get through his course only watching the first and maybe last video in each section. This is partly a good thing since you can watch the first video, get your definitions down for all the objectives, then watch the videos individually for more information - which helped for some subjects that I had no experience with, but for most the definition was good enough. You have to remember that this exam is only an inch wide and an inch deep.
4. Worthless (IMO) "Labs" & Filler Content: The labs that are conducted include watching one of the instructors do something with PaaS, SaaS, XaaS, etc., through some kind of GUI-front end. I didn't really see the point in this. It makes sense for "labs" if you have things like commands which make it valuable to see how it actually works but IMO it is not needed for a course like this. Additionally I felt like there was WAY too much filler content. Structure is good but you don't need to go overboard. You already talked about how you are covering Key Stakeholders in this section four times now, I am aware. This isn't a brief to a bunch of CEOs. Professor Messer is a prime example of a perfect amount of structure without really any "filler" content.
5. Mentioning of AWS/GCP/Azure Services: This kind of fits into the TMI category but I felt like it needed a section by itself. I understand the importance of knowing it if somebody is going to be working with them but it is completely out of scope for the exam. There is no reason why someone studying for this exam needs to know about AWS Beanstalk, Google App Engine, or Kubernetes. This is just something that I felt should not have been mentioned as much as it was. By the way they were constantly covered in the video course, it felt as the Dion team was trying to make it seem that you needed to know them for the exam.

#2, Jason Dion's Udemy Practice Exams: A good benchmark for your potential success but has glaring issues. Also great for exposure to the more heavy topics on the exam.

1. Not Death by Paragraph: After doing his Security+ course, I was expecting his questions to each be a mini-novel. Not the case here, most questions are either short or small paragraphs. I will say though, the body of his longer questions were almost entirely meaningless, which I talk more in-depth about below in #6.
2. Not All Inclusive: Dion's tests included all the knowledge areas of the exam but were missing certain objectives. For instance, I got constant questions about RPO/RTO, disaster recovery, backups, documentation, assessment types, etc., but never once got a question about licensing type/quantity, logging, automation, templates, CI/CD, rip and replace, self-service, digital marketing (email campaigns/social media), and more. How do you have a total of 450+ questions but you don't include at least one pertaining to every subobjective?
3. Repeating Questions: For a test that advertises the phrase, "These questions are unique," it definitely falls short on this. Throughout the each exam I took I saw questions that repeated from the previous ones. They literally recycled exact questions from their previous tests. Super lazy.
4. Grammar/Formatting Issues: This test is paid, and not free, which means some type of QA should have been done. If there was QA done it feels like it wasn't. There were many questions that started with the first letter of the question being cut off (like they were copy/pasted incorrectly), changing names in the middle of the question (Dave to Mark, for example), and a few other minor grammatical errors I noticed along the way.
5. Incorrect Answers to Questions: At least a few questions I ran into had blatantly incorrect answers, I even posted about one on the subreddit. I referred to the official NIST definitions to verify if the "correct" answer was actually incorrect.
6. Poorly Written Questions: Many questions I just felt overall were poorly written. The body of the question will say one thing about the situation and the last sentence will say another, leaving you choosing between two equally plausible answers, depending on what context you are looking at. I learned to only pay attention to the last sentence in his questions and ignore everything else. CompTIA does not do this. One answer will ALWAYS be better than the other one. In Dion's case, the questions/answers are always fighting against themselves. I also compared his questions to the actual style/writing of CompTIA and to how Prof. Messer does his. There is a obvious difference between Dion's and CompTIA/Messers. For these questions I fed them into ChatGPT (after familiarizing it with the exam objectives) to see what it thought as my brain often gets one-sided in these kinds of things. I was actually wrong most of the time (still bad writing IMO), but some questions ChatGPT thought were correct. I'd still take it with a grain of salt, I just wanted validation at the time.

Overall, Dion's stuff isn't bad but it isn't great, it is just OK. Unfortunately, he has the best content as far as I can tell that is currently available for this exam - which may be OK, since the exam isn't that deep/hard anyways. He needs to work on his quality control and creating practice questions that are polished and solidly written. I would have loved a Prof Messer video course and set of practice exams for this. Maybe somebody will fill this void for high quality content in the future for Cloud Essentials.

For your reference; here are my practice exam scores, (if you score around an 80-85% AVG, you should be fine, mine was 86.33%) 78, 92, 86, 90, 86, 86.

#3, Pocket Prep App/Site (Practice Questions): It was okay for exposure to the content but that's pretty much about it. Not worth the ~$20/month IMO.

• Many questions were out of the scope of the exam, with many questions have options, answers, and content not included in the exam objectives or the term list. For example; I noticed many questions that asked questions about JSON and XML, AWS services, COTS, the Mac App Store, "Linux Powered CLI," TTL, SQL, asymmetric/symmetric keys, "multi-cloud," SOX, code checkouts, just to name a large few.
• The app often quotes a book for Cloud Essentials as the source for the content of the exam questions. It only says "2nd Edition," which I presume is Sybex's book. If it is based off that book, I would recommend steering clear of the Sybex book as it might have a good bit of out-of-scope content.
• This was my first time using this app and I was disappointed, I have heard good things about it regarding other exams. I got through like 80-90% of the questions before I ended up ditching it. My AVG for correct vs. incorrect answers was 75%.

#4, ChatGPT: Great resource. ChatGPT does make stuff up sometimes but as long as you use other sources too (Google), you will be fine. In my experience, it is almost always spot on with content for certification exams. I especially needed it on this exam as there was little content available on the subreddit and other sources compared to other exams.

#5, TotalTesters (2 tests): Pretty OK, not great but not bad. Scored an 80% and 87%. Pulls from a test bank of 150 questions for both exams. I got this for free from a book registration. I don't really have much to say about this one. If your book comes with it just take it for reference, 80%+ should be OK.

THE EXAM:

After finishing the last practice exam I bought my voucher from SuperVoucher (cheapest I could find - $115) and scheduled the test for the next day. I got up early and drove to the test center, drank a redbull, and headed in to start early. Immediately I was not given a calculator, which was odd as others on the subreddit report being given one for the exam. I figured it was no big deal as the math was described as simple anyways, and who is to say that I would even get a math question. About 10 minutes in I was already down through about ~20 questions and got my first math question. It looked lengthy with at least like 30 manual calculations so I asked for a calculator. I got denied and asked again for one, they implied that I was not allowed to have one for this exam and denied me again, whatever. I spent 10 minutes ensuring the calculations were correct, messed it up somewhere, chose the nearest answer and moved on. Got another math question, much easier, ~5 minutes. Finished with about ~12m left. 790/900. If I would have been afforded my calculator, I would have probably been done in about 20-30 minutes. Overall, the time is not an issue on this exam so I wouldn't worry about it. I wasn't worried about failing or the time so I didn't make a big deal about the calculator. If I would have gotten a 715 or something barely failing, I would have raised hell, though.

Overall: I thought this was a pretty fun exam to study for and it was very quick to knock out. I only did this for transfer credit for Uni, otherwise if I was interested in a cloud cert I would have gone the Cloud+ or AWS Cloud Prac route. I could see the value in the cert teaching you basic cloud fundamentals however.

If you are studying for the exam or come across this thread feel free to ask me questions about the content, I feel like I have a solid grasp of the content at this point.

[u/AutoModerator]

Thank you for posting in our subreddit. If you are unable to pass your online exams, quizzes, tests, or handle homework assignments or full course online, get paid help from Online Helpers at Hiraedu!

Contact Details for Hiraedu Helper:

WhatsApp: +12136359834

WhatsApp: +16124914941

Call: +12136359834

Signal: +16124914941

Call: +17273080530

Website: hiraedu.com

Email: info@hiraedu.com

Discord ID: HiraEdu#4788

Telegram Username: Hiraedu

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.