How to prepare for the OCI Architect Professional 2021 exam

As 2022 kicks off it’s time to dust off old resolutions to make professional progress through learning. If you are an experienced OCI Architect, and hold any edition of an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Architect Associate certification (including expired ones), you can take your credentials to the next level by taking the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2021 Certified Architect Professional certification exam (exam 1Z0-997-21).

So why take the course now? Here a couple of reasons:

1. The training course for this certification is free of charge.
2. You can create an Oracle Cloud Free Tier account, and leverage its 30-day free trial along with the always-free OCI cloud services.

Here are the steps to get you certified.

1. Review the exam topics

You can start by reviewing the Architect Pro certification exam topics. A few details to keep in mind about the exam:

• The OCI Architect Professional exam consists of  50 questions in total that need to be answered in 120 minutes.
• All the questions are in multiple-choice format.
• Many of the exam questions are scenario based, where you may need to be familiar with multiple OCI services. Given this is a professional-level exam, we expect exam takers to be able to “stitch together” services to create advanced solutions.

2. Take the free OCI Architect Professional training video course

The best way to prepare for this certification is to go through the free OCI Architect professional training. Here’s why:

• Included are over 15 hours of free training where we cover all the certification topics.  This includes planning, designing, implementing, and operating solutions; hybrid cloud architecture, migration; and security and compliance.
• The videos are recorded by product managers and subject matter experts whose goal is to help you ramp up quickly.
• Almost all the videos are less than 15 minutes long and many include demos. We understand that you are time-constrained, so these shorter videos can be consumed on the go.
• The learning path also includes 10 skill checks you can take to self-evaluate your learning. Quizzing is a proven method of learning, and the skill checks are designed for that purpose.

3. Take the OCI Architect Professional practice exam

In addition to the course, you can take a 50-question practice exam. This practice exam has the same scope as the real certification exam. This will give you an idea on what to expect during the actual exam.

Taking the practice exam and reviewing the answers, especially those that may have been answered incorrectly, can help you can understand the rationale behind the correct answers. This is an effective strategy for familiarizing yourself with the material and mentally preparing yourself for the exam. 

My recommendation is to take the practice exam at least five times, preferably until you answer all questions correctly – not by memory or recall, but because you understood without doubt why the selected answer is the best answer for the question.

4. Gain hands-on experience

Hands-on experience is another recommended way to gain relevant experience. Try to duplicate all demos that the instructor highlights during the lectures. Remember, if you have questions, you can always write an e-mail to the instructors. Each one of us spend at least two hours per day answering questions from students. We pay special attention to questions coming from the professional level course students. 

I gained my own Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Architect Professional certification prior to joining Oracle University. One thing that worked for me was to enroll in a study group. I found colleagues that were interested and set up time with them to comment on the videos, skill checks, practice test, and most importantly, doing the labs and duplicating the demos together. I highly recommend this.  

5. Additional resources

There are also resources that are outside of Oracle University that can help you gain more OCI knowledge and experience. For example, the Oracle A-Team Chronicles is a collection of articles in which experts document steps for configuring many OCI features. In the top right menu, select the Architecture category.

6. Enroll to expert-led Live Sessions

Finally, we will be conducting an OCI Certified Architect Professional live session every month, in which we will teach this course online and cover all the advanced topics required for the certification exam. You can enroll in these sessions and get to talk to the instructors in real-time. Below are the links to the sessions until March 2022:

I hope to see you in these sessions. Good luck with the exam!