We are excited to announce that the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) 2024 Architect Associate Certification and course is now available.
OCI Architect Associate certification provides you with a competitive edge in the industry and is one of the most sought-after certifications in OCI, with hundreds of thousands of learners already enrolled and certified. For the 2024 release, we have made significant changes explained in this post.
Evolution of Cloud Architect Skills
The role of the cloud architect has undergone significant evolution in recent years and our certifications and skilling programs have been meticulously designed to mirror this expanded scope of expertise. As shown below, our architect certifications and courses are categorized into two broad segments: Generalists and Specialists.
OCI generalist cloud architects boast comprehensive knowledge across core OCI services, including compute, storage, networking, database, security, cloud-native, and automation technologies. Meanwhile, specialist cloud architects are distinguished by their proficiency in designing hybrid and multicloud architectures and in migrating workloads, data, and databases to OCI.
In this framework, OCI Architect Associate certification focuses on the core OCI Primitives – Identity, Networking, Compute, and Storage. We recommend beginning your cloud journey with the OCI Architect Associate certification to acquire essential knowledge and skills pertaining to these core OCI primitives. Subsequently, you may opt to advance your expertise by pursuing the OCI Architect Professional certification, thereby deepening your understanding of OCI services.
Whiteboards and New Recordings
As mentioned above, the Architect Associate course is designed to give you an in-depth understanding of the core OCI constructs – Identity and Access Management, Networking, Compute and Storage. These core OCI constructs are the building blocks for migrating existing apps or building new apps in the cloud, hence this course is a must have for cloud architects and developers. Let me quickly touch on the changes we made for the 2024 version of this course.
- Visualizing concepts on a whiteboard can make complex concepts easier to grasp and retain. Networking concepts are difficult to understand especially when you are starting as a cloud architect (and really don’t have networking background), hence we have adopted a new whiteboarding approach to help you understand these services better. All six modules on OCI Networking now feature whiteboards in addition to lessons and demos. Shown below is an example of a Dynamic Routing Gateway whiteboard.
- The entire networking module (~100 lessons/demos) have been recorded new with this whiteboard methodology. We hope to hear from you – do let us know if you like this new design.
- OCI Identity and Access Management has evolved during the last few months with new services around Identity Domains, Access Governance and others. We have re-recorded all the IAM modules to reflect these changes.
- We have moved the modules on Security and Observability to the Architect Professional course. This change aims to help you focus and solidify your understanding of core constructs such as Identity, Networking, Compute, and Storage in this course.
- With these changes, the 2024 course consists of 160+ lesson and ~100 demo videos – if you watch these (at 1X speed), you would be spending an entire day watching the course (with a 2-hr. break in between).
Hands-on-Labs and Expert Tips
Learning by doing is the simple idea that we are all capable of learning more about something when we perform the action. That is why we have an option of Oracle University Lab where you get an activity Guide with 15 hands-on labs. We also have “Expert Tips” where you will hear from an expert about tips and tricks to succeed as a Cloud Architect. The subjects here include:
- Tips and Tricks to get maximum out of this course
- As an architect is it must to have a hands-on experience?
- Roles and Responsibilities of Cloud Architect
- Day-to-day challenges faced by Cloud Architects
- How do you get a job as a Cloud Architect?
About the Exam
The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2024 Architect Associate exam is designed for individuals who possess a strong foundational knowledge of architecting infrastructure using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) services. This certification validates a deep understanding of topics such as Identity and Access Management, Networking, Compute & Storage. The exam comprises 50 multiple-choice questions, which must be completed within 90 minutes. To pass the exam, candidates need to achieve a minimum score of 68%. The following table lists the exam objectives and their weightings.
Continue the Journey: Architect Professional
You might be wondering that to be a professional cloud architect, you need to be proficient in more than the core cloud primitives. And you’re right – we have designed our certification keeping this in mind. Once you achieve the Architect Associate credentials, you can take up the Architect Professional certification course.
In the Architect Professional course, we cover the other core primitives such as databases, cloud-native/microservices architectures and Infrastructure as Code. In the 2024 version, we have also added Security and Observability services. The idea behind this design is that once you complete both Architect Associate and Professional certifications, you will be well-equipped to design and architect solutions on OCI. We are releasing OCI 2024 Architect Professional certification and course by mid of July 2024.
Get started today
Begin your learning journey by checking out the following:
- OCI Architect Associate Learning Path
- OCI Architect Associate : Hands-On Labs (Oracle University Lab)
- Review Exam Topics
We sincerely hope you like the updated course. The OCI team is continuously building and delivering training, integrating feedback, and monitoring user data. If something is broken or not resonating with our users, we want to know. Please feel free to rate this course and leave a detailed review. Specific comments will help us understand what we’re doing well and what we can do differently.
Thanks for reading, and good luck with the course and the certification exam!