Becoming the cost-friendly HashiCorp Certified Consul Associate is simpler than ever before if you are equipped with the proper study guide and resources.
Networks are more software-based these days and need tools to automate operations to replace the manually handled operations. To deal with the changes, network engineers and managers should have automation-related certifications. HashiCorp certified Consul Associate should be one of the best to have a great career. Many aspirants feel restricted to get certified when they consider the price, but with a minimal cost of 70$, the Consul Associate could be helpful for many aspirants.
Who Should Take the Consul Associate Exam?
The Consul Associate Certification is best suitable for DevOps professionals, Site Reliability Engineers, Solutions Architects, or other Cloud Engineers with the basic technical concepts to maintain, build, and secure open-source HashiCorp Consul operations.
Candidates can be best prepared for the Consul Associate exam if they have professional experience using Consul in production, but working with the exam objectives in a personal demo situation may also be enough.
What Skills Could Be Helpful to Pursue the Consul Associate Exam?
The consul associate candidate could benefit highly if he has-
- Knowledge of the purpose of ACLs
- Basic terminal skills
- Networking skills, including load balancing and distributed systems.
- Knowledge of TLS certificate lifecycle.
- Containerization knowledge
What Topics Are Covered under the Consul Associate Certification?
The Hashicorp certified Consul Associate exam covers topics like-
- Secure agent communication
- Use gossip encryption
- Secure services with basic access control lists (ACL)
- Use Consul service mesh
- Back up and restore
- Access the Consul key/value (KV)
- Register services and use service discovery
- Deploy a single datacenter
- Explain Consul architecture
What Is the Best Study Guide to Ace the Consul Associate exam?
Take the First Step with Registration:
Registration confirms that a candidate is ready to take the exam, so make registration the first step of your exam journey. A candidate should make a verified account with Hashicorp; he must also activate the account when he logs into the certification section. The aspirant must buy his Consul associate exam token to appear for the exam and get a date. The covid scenario can delay getting the proctored center quickly. So, register early and get a confirmed exam date.
Try to Grasp the Consul Associate Syllabus Topics:
Grasping the syllabus topics is the essential part when preparing for any exam. You can plan a schedule and cover every syllabus section one by one. Make a target to cover at least two to three topics daily. Consul associate exam deals with various topics, and a candidate needs to deal wi8th the following topics during his preparation. Some of the areas include-
- Discussing the process of leader election among servers, including the communication protocol that supports the methods.
- Learning the main features of Consul service mesh (service discovery, health checking, etc.
- Checking the components of the Consul datacenter, including agents and communication protocols.
- Explore the available Consul CLI commands.
- Exploring the commands to set up a single development agent. Checking the commands that do not rely on the presence of multiple agents to complete.
- Separating Consul agent roles and the different roles that come with them.
- Gathering knowledge of how Consul compiles a list of registered services in the catalog which can be discovered using the DNS or HTTP interfaces.
- Gaining clarity that Consul should run as a daemon/service.
Manage Your Preparation Time using A Schedule:
When a candidate fixes a schedule for exam preparation, most likely, he can manage the preparation with ease. Fix a study time according to the most productive time you have, and use your productive time wisely. Study daily for at least 2-3 hours and cover targeted topics within the time.
Know the Exam structure to Face It with Ease:
The Consul Associate exam mainly comprises multiple-choice and true/false type questions. There are UI-based and type-in-the-command questions too in the exam. There are some scenario-based multiple-choice questions to test a candidate’s knowledge of Consul usages. A candidate must face the one-hour-long exam with 57 questions.
Practicing Helps You Complete the Exam on Time:
The Consul Associate exam is a multiple choice type and quite challenging as it asks 57 questions within one hour. Practicing is highly beneficial as you need to answer 57 questions, which means your speed needs to be high. Keep practicing to enhance your pace, and learn about your strengths and weaknesses. Keep practicing continuously to boost your confidence.
Consul Associate Exam to Rise & Shine as HashiCorp Certified – Consul Associate
Benefits of Network Automation in Business:
Probability of Errors Is Less:
As the human factor is removed from complex network methods, the likelihood of errors due to negligence and oversight is reduced drastically.
Better Operational Function:
Automating network tasks help to perform works in less than half the time it takes to do the same tasks manually, which significantly improves performance.
Lower Operational Cost:
Cutting down the errors, total time, and enhanced efficiency make the network fast and agile, which helps application development and deployment initiatives work well. Businesses thus can achieve faster results at reduced costs. Automation also cuts down the resources that need to be allocated to repetitive network tasks and puts them instead to good use, resulting in further cost savings.
Bottom Line:
Getting the HashiCorp Certified Consul Associate certification proves that the individual knows the basic concepts and skills to build, secure and maintain an open-source HashiCorp Consul. The knowledge about different subject topics and the proof on the resume undoubtedly help to clear any interview or boost the current job role.
