Three years ago, I completed my first AWS certification, the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner. As it was time to recertify, I was quite happy that AWS offers a beta for renewing the Cloud Practitioner certification via CloudQuest, the gamified learning platform. This article is a brief review of how I recertified with CloudQuest.

Cloud Practitioner Role in CloudQuest

The most urgent information first: Recertification is only available up to January 2025.

Within that time, visit CloudQuest and activate the “Cloud Practitioner” role. If you worked on this role before, all your progress will be used for the recertification. If you are new to CloudQuest, you have to complete the role first.

To get started, you’ll need your candidate ID, which you used to get the certification for the first time. You can find it after logging in to https://www.aws.training/Certification. At the top right, you see your Candidate ID (like “AWS02512345”).

My tips for CloudQuest:

• Don’t just learn via CloudQuest. Instead, use other learning tools that suit you. I love learning cards such as Anki. I added a card for everything I learned, especially when shooting down drones.
• Hunting for those drones is fun, and I loved doing this. To get the best score, only answer the question when you are really sure. If you are not, take the time to research first and add this topic to your learning cards.

Hands-On Lab

The last step for recertifying is a hands-on lab, featuring services like EC2, RDS, IAM and DynamoDB. As always, the infrastructure in the city is kind of broken and you have to fix it by modifying security groups, adding databases and managing users.

Here are some tips for the lab:

• Be patient when the lab is loading. It took me more than the mentioned 15 minutes to get started, but it worked eventually.
• Read all available descriptions and hints for each challenge carefully. I created three databases with guessed names to finally find the correct name in the “additional clues” section. 😅

• Use multiple tabs to navigate in the AWS web console. I recommend one tab for the CloudQuest platform and one for each service you are working with for the current task.

  After completing both the cloud practitioner role and the lab, you’ll be rewarded by three more years that your certification is valid.

  Be patient: My Credly account was updated first while my profile in the AWS Partner Network took way longer.

Best of luck for your recertification! 👍