Getting Certified in C1000–109: IBM Cloud Professional Developer — Cloud v4 in 30 days
A practical how-to guide on getting certified in C1000–109: IBM Cloud Professional Developer v4 exam
If you are also looking to start your cloud journey and looking for some certifications, I’m here to help you with one of the industry’s reputed certification exams— IBM Cloud professional developer.
Personal Info/Experience: I’m currently certified as both an AWS developer associate and IBM Cloud professional developer! I have noticed that there are tons of information, documentation on how to clear your AWS certification exam but I couldn’t find one article which helped me with my action plan for the IBM Cloud Professional Developer. So it’s time for me to share the plan which worked for me! Hope the same method works for you as well!
Overview of Exam-sections
There are certain objectives IBM Cloud Subject-matter experts have prepared for the exam. After going through it all, I can now provide an estimate of where to concentrate and how much effort you should give to each section!
IBM does provide helpful material to study & prepare for the exam. Kindly register for it (recommended by me !) if you want to get an idea of what kind of questions will appear in certification! If you go through all the topics provided by them, you are increasing your chances of getting certified.
We are looking at 4 hours /day for study + practice for 30 or more days to clear the examination. You might clear the examination with fewer efforts if you just focus on the highlighted areas by me in the below sections. This plan worked for me, so I hope it does work for you as well.
There is no magic formula that will work here, only consistency with the plan. So enough of the intro, from here we will start your journey towards the cloud!
Section 1 — IBM Cloud Compute Options
Day 30–25 (24 hours)
Identifying the IBM Cloud Platform Compute Options (2 hours : Important)
For me, the biggest advantage that cloud computing especially IBM cloud provides is the almost infinite level of computing resources & I’m in awe of it just by realizing the possibility of scaling.
All during my graduation years -if someone told me about Cloud computing & the enormous advantage it comes with!
Theory — In this section, acquire knowledge to create cloud applications and explain the different service models like IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and FaaS. Understand the deployment options for the cloud (Private, Community, Public, Hybrid) & also understand the deployment options for the cloud.
Lab practice — Create a virtual server for your understanding of how easy it is to set up your own Linux server on a cloud.
Tip-One thing the course demands you to study is VMware solutions on IBM Cloud & VPC. Honestly, I did not face any questions regarding it in the exam. You can skip these sections. Expect 0–1 question.
Deploying Function as a Service and IBM Cloud Functions (3 hours : Important)
This is my most favorite feature of IBM cloud by far!
Come! Fall in love with the serverless world of computing! No more hassle of maintaining your physical servers. Focus on your code and application logic.
Theory — Acquire knowledge required to create a simple deployment for an IBM function on the cloud. Learn the best practices for creating IBM Function and learn the terminology for the different components in it.
Lab practice — IBM has provided great documentation for creating your very own slackbot! Develop it to understand how IBM Functions can be used with anything !!
Tip- Create one IBM function using CLI. You will gain a good amount of knowledge on how IBM functions work and how they can be used as the REST API service. Remember the key components and terminology for IBM functions. Expect 1–2 questions.
Introduction to Containers and Kubernetes (10 hours : High importance)
Remember the good old times when you used to SSH into the production server, go to the project directory, and run git pull to deploy your code? Before you deploy anything, at the very beginning of the life of your server, you’d install all the global dependencies for your app, curl most probably, then git, maybe the interpreter for the language you want to use, and some extensions for that as well, maybe nginx at some point. Once all the dependencies are installed, you’d bring your application to the server, run some commands to install and eventually start the application.
At this point, once you pulled your code to the server, you’d start the new version of your application, or you’d restart Nginx for some changes to take effect, or whatever. This setup probably worked for a long time, until it didn’t. One of the developers in your team relied on a system dependency that has a different version installed in the production server, and now your service is down. You quickly rollback your changes, but you will need to update that dependency at some point. A worse example may be the bugs caused by these kinds of dependency differences in an abnormal place of your app, which means you probably wouldn’t notice until it is too late, in other words, already shipped.
These problems have existed for decades now; keeping the processes separate is a huge pain, and this caused a lot of security problems as well as inefficient setups in the past.
Docker is the answer to this!
Theory —Maybe the most important topic for your certification (and also maybe for the upcoming cloud journey!).
Learn the basics of containers & their benefits in enterprise DevOps environments, the lifecycle of containers. Learn about Docker(very easy !) and Kubernetes basics (very important!)
Study the basics of Kubernetes, Architecture of Kubernetes, Different Objects of Kubernetes & their importance, Learn Kubetcl Command-Line. (very important !)
Learn about replica-set, autoscaling, rolling updates, persistent volumes, service binding.
Lab — Build & Run Container Image, Deploy Kubernetes clusters on your local machine for the basic understanding of how Kubernetes works, kubetcl command line. Experiment deeply with Kubernetes! It has a lot of potential and a proven track record as a container orchestration tool.
Expect 3–4 questions.
Deploying Applications on the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service (2 hours )
After going through this topic, you will get the skills and knowledge required to deploy an application on IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. Honestly, the topics below can become easily overwhelming. You can focus on the below important sections below and reduce the material by half if you don't have enough time to complete them.
Learn the process of deploying a serverless application to IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service with KNative and study the different elements in a Kubernetes native application specification. Go through the process of o setting up a service mesh with Istio on IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. Learn how to expose an application using an app exposure service, a load balancer, and an Ingress Application Load Balancer & how to add storage for your application using IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service.
Lab:- From my experience, I can say that this topic can be overwhelming, so you can break the entire topic into subsections. Go ahead with some other topic and come back to this topic to complete one subsection (that’s how I did it ). Expect 3–4 questions.
Deploying an Application on Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud (2 hours)
Learn the background knowledge required to deploy an application on Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud.
Tip:- Expect 0–1 question. No need to go into details for the purpose of certification. You can skim over the concepts once before the exam. (Note: — This topic can be huge if you are a freelancer as there is a lot of demand in the market out there for the Openshift platform)
Section 2 — Security and Identity
Day 24–21(16 hours)
IBM Cloud security product catalogs include all sets of policies, procedures, controls, and technologies that work together to protect cloud-based systems, data, and infrastructure. I have been certified in AWS as well, one stark difference I have noticed between AWS and IBM cloud is that IBM Cloud has a lot more focus on security than AWS (one reason I can think of is that IBM cloud is more focused on the Enterprise solutions and security is now everyone’s rather than client’s utmost priority over anything when they think about cloud solution).
Preparing for Cloud-Native Security
Learn about the security components needed for secure cloud deployment, development, and operations.
Study key security aspects of cloud-native applications & study the five facets of secure DevOps
Tip — Learn in detail about the cloud-native solution. Expect 0-1 question.
Introduction to IBM Cloud Identity and Access Management
Learn about IBM Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) as well as managing resources outside of IAM. One of the key differences you will notice while studying for this topic is how capable is IBM cloud for managing outside resources(I missed this component/feature in AWS.)
Lab — Perform basic user access administration & assign access to an account management service in IAM.
Tip — Study about the role types in IAM & basic understanding of the concepts should be enough. Expect 1 question.
Introduction to Secure Key Management
Learn how you can implement secure key management which protects against unauthorized access by those inside and outside the organization. Learn about the BYOK model. Study IBM key protects services in secure key management. Describe envelope and key rotation. Study in detail about the function of IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services
Tip:- This topic should be read in more detail as this is an interesting concept in the field of cloud security. However, For the purpose of this certification, study the course content provided by IBM & that should be enough(focus more on IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services). I would advise going ahead in more detail once you get the certification if you want to build your career in cloud security. Expect 1–2 questions.
Introduction to Application Security
Security is now increasingly by far the most important concern for Enterprises moving to the cloud. Now with the rise of SaaS platforms on the cloud, Enterprises should take security with utmost importance.
IBM Cloud provides some of the coolest tools to ensure your application is deployed securely onto the cloud and I also hope they increase their offering portfolio going ahead as the security is not the one-time solution but needs to be continuously updated.
Study the Vulnerability Advisor and the DevOps Insights, two tools that support application security. Learn how the Vulnerability Advisor secures images. Learn how to use DevOps Insights to analyze your code in IBM Cloud.
Tip:- Vulnerability Advisor and the DevOps Insights are very important topics for the certification exam and you can easily get confused between them. I would suggest going ahead with the official IBM cloud documentation for these 2 topics to gain a better understanding. Expect 2–3 questions.
Managing Security Visibility
Learn about LogDNA services, and how to use LogDNA for Log analysis.
Tip:- Very handy & easy to understand IBM Cloud service. Study in detail(if possible, go through official documentation as well ). Expect 2–3 questions.
Section 3 — Modern Integration
Day 20–16(20 hours)
The upcoming 3 sections are mainly focused on important cloud computing terms, so I would suggest focusing more on this section as these concepts are not limited to just IBM Cloud. You will get these terms more and more in your cloud journey and IBM Cloud documents are a good place to study them.
Deploying Cloud-Native Architectures and Applications
Provides the skills and knowledge to ensure the development of high-performing, reliable cloud-native applications.
You should be able to identify key components of a cloud-native architecture and differentiate between cloud-native services versus traditional applications.
Learn the concept of Microservices & Microservice Architecture Approach(By the time you complete the Kubernetes tutorial in IBM Cloud Compute Option— you should be already familiar with Microservices).
Tip:- Learn about the 12-factor App methodology before going into an exam. Expect 2–3 questions from this section
Overview of Modern Integration Patterns
Study the Enterprise Design Thinking Model and understand how it relates to modernization. You can further study Transformation Advisors and how they can assist in adapting an agile process for version currency, Dev/Test, Deployment, and scalability (but you can skip them as brief understanding at the current stage should be enough and IBM documentation for this topic can be overwhelming !)
In this section, one of the most important cloud concepts — Event-Driven Architecture gets introduced. Do focus more on understanding the concepts here as most of the IBM Cloud tools introduced in the next segment will mainly focus on the below paradigm.
Understand the Event-Driven Architecture, the concepts of the event stream, loose coupling, and cohesion, Hybrid Messaging
Tip:- Remember the terminology being used and understand the concepts behind it thoroughly as it will be used for a lifetime. Expect 2–3 questions.
Introduction to IBM Cloud Integration Services + Leveraging the API Lifecycle with IBM Cloud
In the official guide, there are 2 separate topics for IBM Cloud integration services and API Lifecycle management. You can combine both the topics into one easily.
Learn to use the different integration services in IBM Cloud.
If you understand the API and how to use it in your application, you will enjoy the below ride of different services! For me, the learning curve was indeed steep but it was worth it.
- IBM API Connect
- IBM API Gateway
- IBM App Connect
- IBM Event Streams
- IBM MQ
- IBM Aspera
- IBM Secure Gateway
- RabbitMQ
It is extremely difficult not to get confused among the plethora of services here and documentation is not that great at explaining the difference of the services, so read and understand carefully!
Tip:-IBM offers a bunch of integration services and I’m pretty sure out of all the cloud services the IBM cloud team provides, they must be the proudest for integration services (if not, then it must be a second place after the IBM Cloud Watson services )!! What a beauty they have created in name of Integration service! Marvelous !! I would highly recommend using IBM integration services and try to do the labs mentioned (many of the labs mentioned in documentation may not work for you! but do it anyway as it will give you a strong understanding .)
If you are a developer, then please please perform the lab for creating, importing, managing, exploring, and calling APIs in IBM Cloud. It will definitely fetch you good results in your certification exam.
Expect 6–7 questions out of this topic.
Section 4 — Data Services
Day 15–12(16 hours)IBM Cloud Data service is very user-friendly and for exam preparation- they provide excellent documentation. Although you may not create all types of databases in the IBM cloud (I was amazed how wide-ranged IBM Cloud offering is — from object storage to SQL world and No-SQL paradigm, it’s the journey worth enjoying). One assurance I can give you is that this topic is having the greatest reward in terms of the effort you need to give it in to learn. So let’s hop on to an amazing journey towards the IBM Cloud Database world!!
Introduction to IBM Cloud Object Storage
Learn about IBM Cloud Object Storage, its usage & ways to access storage using APIs and libraries. Study SQL Query and its relationship to IBM Cloud Object Storage & Content Delivery Networks and IBM Cloud CDN Service.
Tip- This topic is extremely easy — so you can way less time and learn it all. Expect 1 question out of this topic.
Overview of the IBM Cloud Database Ecosystem
Learn about the IBM Cloud Databases Ecosystem and learn about the different databases IBM is currently supporting—
- Database for MongoDB
- Database for PostgreSQL
- Database for Redis.
- Database for etcd
Learn about IBM Cloud’s very own Cloudant database offering
Tip:- If you just focus on the basic understanding of how these databases work underneath and how they differ from each other — that should be enough for this topic. Personally, I don't suggest investing time in connecting to all different databases. Expect 3–4 questions related to it.
Overview of IBM Db2 on Cloud
Learn about IBM Db2 on Cloud and IBM Db2 Warehouse.
Tip:- Expect 2–3 questions from IBM Db2 Cloud offering(Warehouse included)
Side Note: -
Currently, I’m working in the SAP world (mainly on the database side) & I was fairly confident on this topic. Boy, was I wrong!
This section was a complete disaster for me in the exam although the questions were very easy and basics. Gone completely bonkers!! I had to study this section again after the certification exam. So please be careful in this section and I still believe that this section is one of the easiest ones to understand.
For this section — personal suggestion would be to skip the Lab session and focus on understanding the concepts.
So lesson learned- Never be overconfident in your IBM cloud journey!
Section 5 — DevOps and Continuous Delivery
Day 11–10(8 hours)
Introduction to DevOps Capabilities
DevOps is the hot buzzword in the industry currently and DevOps engineers are in great demand. IBM cloud provided the entire toolchain to support the enterprise’s DevOps best practices. But before jumping into the sea of DevOps…..
Learn the concept of DevOps & how DevOps as an approach is helping businesses become lean, agile, and capable of responding to changing demands extremely fast …
Tip:- If you like the basic concept behind DevOps and want to learn more — there is a great book written on DevOps and IT — The Phoenix Project. Personally, I’m a great fan of this book and I would recommend giving it a try after your exam.
You need to also different terminology which is being used in the DevOps world. The most common of them are continuous delivery, continuous deployment, continuous integration. Most of the tools available for DevOps will help you to achieve one of the mentioned goals. Expect 2–3 questions.
Introduction to the IBM Cloud Continuous Delivery Toolchain
Now comes the IBM Weapons of DevOps and you don't need to put great effort to learn/understand them.
So go through the basic introduction of the IBM Cloud Continuous Delivery Toolchain and explore how to create integrated, customized toolchains. The documentation provided by the IBM Cloud team is sufficient to gain a basic understanding.
In this section, you need to learn Continuous Delivery and what the delivery pipeline is. You should be able to describe the Git Repos(If you don't, please stop everything and take a quick one hour crash course video on YouTube on the functionality of Git(Version control) . Thank me later !) and Issue Tracking
You should be able to explain the differences between Continuous Deployment and Continuous Delivery.
Tip: — DevOps is a huge topic and you should really focus on basic concepts and toolchains provided by IBM. Keep your understanding simple here! Expect 4–5 questions.
Section 6 — Using IBM Services
Day 9–6(16 hours)
Introduction to Watson API Services
Deep dive into below IBM Watson services and their functionality in detail.
- Watson Assistant
- Visual Recognition
- Personality Insights
- Text-to-Speech
- Speech to Text
- Language Translator
- Natural Language Understanding
Tip — IBM Cloud’s official documentation is enough to get a good understanding of the topic. But I would suggest digging deep even after examination. Expect 1–2 questions out of this topic.
Introduction to Blockchain Services for Cloud
In this section, you will learn about blockchain (the tech that is currently powering Bitcoin mania around the world!)
Study blockchain and its purpose & use cases for it. Go through the IBM Blockchain Platform & the basic steps to deploy the IBM Blockchain Platform.
Tip — Expect 0–1 question from this topic.
Introduction to Watson Internet of Things (IoT)
The Internet of Things refers to the growing range of connected devices that send data across the Internet.
Learn about the key features and capabilities of the Watson IoT Platform in this section.
Tip:- Very interesting topic and try to remember the different terminology for the data flow. Try some practical sessions only if you got some time left + IoT device with you. Expect 0–1 question on this topic.
Introduction to Mobile Foundation
After learning this module, you should be able to explain mobile foundation and how it is used & types and use of push notifications (Important)
- Tip:- Expect 1–2 questions on this topic.
Introduction to IBM Garage Services
Introduces the IBM Garage Method and explores how you can’t separate using cloud technology from process transformation.
- Learn about the prescriptive approach of the IBM Garage Method for IBM Cloud
- You should be able to explain the components and best practices of the IBM Garage Method, including Themes, Workflows, Activities, Practices, and Outcomes (Important)
Tip: — You should really understand each theme from the IBM Garage methodology and should be able to distinguish each other clearly. Expect 2–3 questions on this topic.
Miscellaneous Task — Register for an exam
By this time, you should fix the date for the exam and register for it at PearsonVue. More information for the exam registration can be found here.
Tip: — Pick the date/time carefully. There is N number of factors affecting your experience in the exam -so I would suggest booking the exam slot on a date/time where there is less disturbance in-home and better connectivity can be ensured during the exam time.
For my case, I prefer to book it on Saturday morning since I don’t want the anxiety of exams ruining my productive weekend 😺 . But that’s just my thinking and I would leave this decision to you.
Section 7 — Managing a Running Cloud Application
Day 5–4 (8 hours)
Using Auto-Scaling for Applications
Gain a basic understanding of scale-up and scale-down. Describe the usage of the ibm-iks-cluster-autoscaler plugin on IBM Cloud Kubernetes & learn how to use auto-scaling for applications on a Kubernetes cluster
Tip — You can skip the parts of auto-scaling for cloud foundry and Virtual Servers. Personally, I have skipped and no question was asked from that topic in the certification exam as well. Expect 2–3 questions on this topic.
Introduction to Application Monitoring and Logging
Explores monitoring and logging applications in IBM Cloud and Kubernetes clusters and covers logging tools.
Learn about application monitoring and logging and how it impacts cloud applications
Understand the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig service and get to know about different types of alerts that can be defined on IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig. Configure IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service cluster to forward metrics to IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig service
Study how you can analyze the logs with IBM Log Analysis with LogDNA & Learn to use the IBM Cloud Activity Tracker with LogDNA service to monitor the activity of your IBM Cloud account and how it is being used for cloud auditing purposes.
Tip:- It's super easy to get confused with an understanding of monitoring services and it's super important that you understand their specific purpose and how it is being used to fulfill that purpose. So, learn the differences by logging in to your cloud account and try some hands-on. Expect 5–6 questions from monitoring services(I guess this will be the highest question count for any topic.)
Section 8 — Overview IBM Cloud Paks
Day 3 (4 hours)
This is a very unique offering from IBM Cloud and I have not come across any similar offering from any other cloud vendor.
Ever wondered why there are tons of Cloud offerings doing almost the same thing with some unique feature embedded into them? And how do you decide which application is enough for your application’s journey towards the cloud? and most importantly how do you manage so many offerings?
Why can’t we have a single, complete solution with all the necessary tooling to modernize and migrate your applications?
IBM cloud answers the IBM Cloud Paks.
Learn what is each cloud Pak is and what are their different offerings included in each Pak.
IBM Cloud Pak for Data
IBM Cloud Pak for Applications
IBM CloudPak for Automation
IBM Cloud Pak for Integration
IBM Cloud Pak for Multi-cloud Management
IBM Cloud Pak for Security
Tip — Remember which application is in which cloud Pak. Expect 3 easy questions on this topic.
Now after acquiring all the knowledge for the past 27 days, don’t jump into an exam just yet. You must also complete the below important steps as well.
Before the Exam,
Mock Exam + Demo question
Day 2 (4 hours)
PearsonVue is the current partner for the online examination for the IBM Cloud certification. They do provide optional mock exams to prepare for the certification exam! The cost for the mock exam is currently at the 3rd of the certification exam, but I would highly recommend going for the mock exam first!
This exam is browser-based (unlike the main certification exam -where you will be asked to install PearsonVue software). So, please take the screenshot of each question since there won't be any review window after completion of the exam. Finish the exam and solve each question in a detailed manner.
There will be questions that you have not faced anywhere in official documentation — so google it out and search at different IBM blogs, IBM Cloud detailed official documentation to have more clarity!
Do not give the mock exam twice !! (the question won’t be different! I hope someone would have informed me 😝) . It does not matter whether you have passed the exam or not -focus on the revision. If it feels any better- I scored 50% in the mock exam.
Revision
Day 1 (4 hours)
Now you have a fairly good idea of what are the important questions and on which sections you should really focus — so these are the last 4 hours for your revision. Do not pick up any new topic to study, just revise what you have learned! Just skim over the topics and focus on the tips provided in each section. Try not to get confused with the different terminology of IBM Cloud offering as there are tons of features to explore for the certification exam!
Tip:- Before the exam day, run your system checks suggested by PearsonVue. Download the software provided by them and run the system checks and resolve the issues ( in case of any). A personal laptop is recommended over the office ones !! Keep your passport handy and exam room, desk neat & clean!
Schedule the Exam
Day 0
No tip for this day! You are prepared for acing the exam! Just go through the process & ace it !!
Give the exam with confidence. May the victory be with you!
P.S: I wish best of luck with the certification exam (if you need it!). In case of any further queries related to the certification exam which I have missed the mention in this blog — do reach out to me at shashankmistry31@gmail.com or drop a comment here!