How I passed Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Foundations 2021 Associate Certification Exam

Recently Oracle is providing free OCI Training and certification (Valid Upto 31 Dec 2021 28-Feb-2022). This is premium content and really very well structured. I was planning to take the opportunity and take advantage. I tried and passed the OCI Foundation 2021 Associate [1Z0-1085-21] certification exam. Let me share the journey experience.

I participated in an Oracle Cloud Developer hackathon in my company. There was a nice presentation from Oracle and from there I came to know about the Free Oracle Certification. Who doesn’t love free stuff? I visited the links https://education.oracle.com/learn/oracle-cloud-infrastructure/pPillar_640, explored some of the stuff, and found yah it’s real (generally there is always a catch in free item).

Initially, I registered with my company email id during the hackathon and got a 30-day free trial Oracle cloud account (without any credit card – that’s the sweet part). I didn’t do well in the hackathon but got some good experiences. After someday I forgot about this. After 25 days I got an email from Oracle Cloud, your free account is going to be expired soon. Then I feel Oh! I am going to miss an opportunity.

This time I created another account in the Oracle Learning portal with my personal ID. I planned to take the certification exam with my personal ID and do the lab (5 days remaining) with my company ID.

There are multiple OCI certifications available. One of the basic certifications is OCI Foundations 2021 Associate [1Z0-1085-21]. There are multiple steps in the learning path

OCI Foundation Associate Learning Path

So first step is to Learn about OCI. It’s a 7h 12m course. The concepts are cleared by Rohit Rahi, Senior Director of OCI Global Delivery. It is really very good course. There is too much information packed in the 7h 12m course. I had to view the videos 2 times to grab the concepts. What I followed, 1st time I watched the videos in 1.5x speed. There are quizzes in between the course. It’s named as skill check. I completed the skill check 1st iteration. There are some lab demos. I practiced those with the free OCI account. 2nd time I watched the videos in 1x speed took some notes which were helpful during the exam. I skipped the skill check and lab demos in 2nd iteration.

Below are my notes were taken during watching OCI Training Videos. This is not covered entire chapters. Some of the end chapters are missing but this is fair enough to grab some knowledge.

OCI_Fundamentals_NotesDownload

2nd Step is the Oracle Free Tire account. You can register from https://www.oracle.com/in/cloud/free/. Now you need a credit card to validate your identity. Luckily I got the account using my company id without a credit card. It will give 30-day Free trial with US$300 credit (I registered from India and selected Mumbai as the default region so got 600 SGD credit). Along with that, there are some always free services. Once the 30 days are expired your credits will be lost and you can use always free service without charge. After 30 days if you want to use paid service you need to upgrade your account. It’s good that without an upgrade you can’t use the paid service. The good part is there is no chance to get charged for using paid services my mistake.

3rd Step is to Prepare for the exam. Here you can get some instructions on how to give the exam. Some sample questions and what should be the approach to solve any question. The mentioned techniques are really good and they can be applicable for any kind of MCQ exam.

4th Step is the Practice exam. Here you can have some sample questions to practice the exam.

The final step is to appear for the actual exam. No need to schedule an exam and you can give it anytime. I took it at 11 PM when everyone slept in my home and there is no one to disturb. There are 10 attempts to pass. The exam is easy can easily be possible to pass on 1st attempt but you have 10 attempts as a backup. The exam is non-proctored (only 1Z0-1085-21. other exams are proctored). So you can take help from notes. You have to get only 68% to pass the exam (I got 90%).

Here is my Certification Badge – https://catalog-education.oracle.com/pls/certview/sharebadge?id=854A64A9373B6EC1042CB5B34F947F5C8F30B5484CB9609E6CE4454C7143A332

After passing the exam, you can share the badge on other social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc. You will get a certificate like below. This will be another feather in your hat.

OCI Certified Foundation Associate Certificate

It was really a nice experience. All the best for your exam. Give some time in learning, you will definitely pass the exam. 🙂

Reference Links

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