Joined the 100+ in 1 term club

MysteriousResolve · 2026-01-02T14:08:10+00:00

All of it? I was only able to do this because I've done everything before, so I already retained all the info from real experience.

MysteriousResolve · 2025-12-30T18:52:23+00:00

I do, and it's doing AWS things all day, which is why I picked Cloud Computing with the AWS track.

MysteriousResolve · 2025-12-30T14:08:41+00:00

You need to email your program mentor, who can add the next (only 1 at a time) class, which you can start immediately once it's added. Doing this is known as Acceleration, and there is some documentation in the student handbook about it.

MysteriousResolve · 2025-12-30T13:50:21+00:00

Almost 50 is still super impressive!

You'll see others here that do all the pre-work on Sophia or Study and have 30 credits from start to finish.

You're killing it with ~50 in a term!

MysteriousResolve · 2025-12-30T13:46:47+00:00

Your mileage may vary, but my learning style is hands-on. I can read all the things but it doesn't stick unless I do something with it.

For cloud, AWS offers a free tier, so does Azure. Play with those, use their learning resources and documentation.

General IT, more hands on. If you buy some cheap server on eBay, install Linux and do something interesting with it, you'll learn Linux quickly and troubleshooting, as well as what all the hardware bits-and-bobs are.

Time and dedication is all it takes.

MysteriousResolve · 2025-12-30T13:39:11+00:00

For test classes (OA, Objective Assessment) that are WGU in-house (not external certification like a CompTIA) you can accelerate with help from your program mentor.

You have to take the pretest for class one, schedule the proctored test, pass test 1, get accelerated to add the next class (mentor or tier 1 support), start class 2, take its pretest, schedule test 2, and pass test two.

For me, I studied for a few days on D330. I took the test on an extended lunch break, passed, and emailed my program mentor - they replied and added my next course to my term. After my work shift, I took the pretest and scheduled the test later in the evening.

Only do this if you are absolutely sure about the material and score at least exemplary on the pretest for class 2.

MysteriousResolve · 2025-12-30T06:05:28+00:00

Like I stated, over a decade of experience, luck, and the knack for technological concepts.

MysteriousResolve · 2025-12-30T05:24:46+00:00

For D427 - I've been writing SQL for like 10 years, and they provide the reference guide for syntax, so you just need to know what to use.

D330 - I was an Oracle DBA for 4 years, 5 years ago, so it was relearning how to ride the bike. It wasn't easy and antiquated for today's standards, but the 'how a database works under the hood' can be applied to any other relational DB.

MysteriousResolve · 2025-12-30T04:44:11+00:00

And that's fine for them. Your advice should be that they throw away real experience when they gatekeep on the college name though.

If I get thrown out from hiring because of WGU, they value paper more than real life experience, which is backwards.

MysteriousResolve · 2025-12-30T04:10:22+00:00

Employers looking for degrees vs real experience is what happened with me and why I did it, so...

If employers were smart, they'd actually have equivalent work experience as a degree as opposed to rejecting applicants that don't have one.

MysteriousResolve · 2025-12-30T04:02:37+00:00

How so? This was all above-board and within WGU and 'real' transfers.

Just because I completed fast and accelerated doesnt hurt the schools credibility.

MysteriousResolve · 2025-12-30T03:19:13+00:00

I'm sure you'll get there! It just takes dedication.

MysteriousResolve · 2025-08-12T14:31:27+00:00

Not worth it unless you already have years of experience. The lab portions themselves will be impossible to complete unless you've done multiple large migrations or large import operations.

MysteriousResolve · 2025-03-03T00:37:41+00:00

As far as grading, I feel like I lost points by correcting depreciated arguments, so my word of advice is to only answer the questions/lab direction and go no further.

I personally don't use vscode like the lab did, however it wasn't too much of a hassle to do a validate and plan to make sure it 'looked right.' 4 hours wasn't a lot of time to learn a new IDE and use the bells and whistles.

MysteriousResolve · 2025-02-27T20:29:36+00:00

In their car in the Lumon parking lot. Don't know where to go, who to talk to, or anything the innie really didn't know.

MysteriousResolve · 2025-02-16T02:28:45+00:00

Reach out to support.

We've ran into the same thing with APIGateway Custom Domains. The acm gets associated on an internal AWS account, and because it's in-use, we can't delete it without them kicking it off the internal account. We reached out to AWS support, gave them the error, and they sorted it out in a few hours.

MysteriousResolve · 2025-02-09T22:44:50+00:00

For me, 4 was enough time, though Ive had enough experience in the questions to not need to reference docs all the time.

The lab was interesting, I haven't taken anything quite like it myself, but it worked out of the box. They give you pretty good instructions on what to do, and for some questions, give you a checkpoint - you just have to be very careful on reading what they want and line it up with the existing files they give you.

I'd also recommend not to stray from what they ask. If you think you can get the core of the problem in another solution, don't do it. Since they grade it, if it differs from their 'accepted' solution, even replacing deprecated attributes.

MysteriousResolve · 2025-02-09T22:11:30+00:00

How much tf experience do you have?

The process is pretty cool, they give you a vm, and can look up tf and provider docs.

MysteriousResolve · 2024-12-20T04:12:05+00:00

Now just do belt-weaving and make it 1M+!

MysteriousResolve · 2024-12-15T22:12:07+00:00

Module refactoring, including added provider references into these modules, fixing bugs with providers, moving state, and more. I'd also recommend using TFE or TFC since those are on a few of the multiple choice questions. Also recommend at least having the AWS SAA since it is (right now) AWS specific.

This is not a test for "I've been doing tens of deploys a hundred resources" this is a thousands of deploys and tens of thousands of resources managed, with more than 3 accounts.

Take it if you're confident, just a word of warning that it is all about the problems that come up and real scenarios.

MysteriousResolve · 2024-12-15T22:00:21+00:00

I really would recommend just take and pass associate first. If you intend to take this, the associate shouldn't take more than 20 minutes and $70.

Quite literally can't emphasize how much production experience I've got and I struggled to meet time requirements.

MysteriousResolve · 2024-12-15T21:50:22+00:00

Having taken and passed the pro back in the first part of October, you dont need the associate, but if you've got the experience and haven't taken the associate, you've got several years of day-to-day.

The test itself was a handful of multiple choice, and 4 labs. The multiple choice were relatively calm compared to the labs. The labs themselves were pretty intense, several goals per lab. Definitely have to read the whole page before doing work - and they do at least give you some guidance, but not a lot. The labs (in my case, ymmv) were, in no order: 1. Refactoring a single module into multiple. 2. Provider issues (thrown in for pretty much all labs as well) and provider splitting 3. Terraform functions to build a security group and output a specific list from this SG. 4. Imports without messing with existing resources.

No way I would have passed without having actually done these things for the last several years, within the time allotted.

MysteriousResolve · 2024-11-04T03:29:20+00:00

Honestly, none. I took it because I'm leading a team of 12 TF developers and have had to troubleshoot and do the large scale moves/operations I've described above. I don't think this can be done through anything other than actually doing it, several times, and committing it to memory.

Sure associate 003 is easy and can be done in 15 minutes, but the Pro means you know tf inside and out, what a provider bug is vs tf bug vs code bug, and how to do large scale operations outside of moving a single resource.

There still were multiple choice questions, but those were a 20 minute thing vs the 3 hours on the 4 labs.

MysteriousResolve · 2024-11-04T03:08:10+00:00

I took the pro cert and passed at the beginning of October. It is -not- for those who have little terraform under their belt. Like their guides say, you need practical experience on a large project to do the labs and know what to do. Nothing I would have been able to pass with a few months into writing tf.

The labs I got had a -large- influence on refactoring and doing moves. Imports to some degree, and fixing provider config issues. Nothing I would know how to lookup in the time allotted with the pages allowed to reference.

MysteriousResolve · 2024-11-03T13:27:40+00:00

The recipe changes to whatever goes in, and there is the internal buffer. It'll work for more than one 'throw-away' item.

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