AWS has changed their policy and you can take exams from home. This changes things a little. I went ahead and did the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam from home (my third certification). This exam was a bit simpler than the previous ones I took, however I wanted to get a feel for taking one of these from home before taking on one of the longer ones. If you have questions about taking the exams from home, reach out and I will try to share what I did. #

LinkedIN post a lot great discussion here.

A couple comments I made during the discussion:

Yep find a room with doors and no extra screens. I put a small card table in my daughter’s room. I prefer the testing center too, however times like these we need to be adaptable. I have to set the room up for the exam and then take it back down afterward. I plan to take some more exams in the coming weeks so will be setting it up again. Small price to pay to still be able to stay on my 2020 learning track. Good luck on all your learning endeavors!

I would suggest getting an account on Udemy.com and waiting for a deal on a class related to the exam you would like to take. I would suggest doing the AWS Cloud Practitioner first. They have deals about once a week. There are even some that are free now https://www.udemy.com/courses/free/ The free ones could get you started, but are likely not enough to get you to all the way through the exams. If you have Cloud Academy, Linux Academy, A Cloud Guru or Pluralsight from work/school they can work also. I usually cram - watch one of these full courses in two weeks or less. I spend about an hour or so a day. Then I hit the practice exams hard for a few days and go sit for the exam.

You can now take all AWS Certification exams with online proctoring. Due to expected high demand, the wait time for online-proctored appointments may be longer than usual. To learn more about online proctoring—how to start, how it works, requirements, etc.—visit the Pearson VUE site. From: https://aws.amazon.com/certification/faqs/

I went with Pearson Vue as that is what my previous experience has been at the testing center. There was a zip file you have to download to set things up prior to the test. It will send you a text and you will submit a picture, your ID and pictures of the 4 walls of your test room. I suggest doing this a day or two early if for nothing else to think about your test set up. There is another zip file for the actual test. It does the same thing then takes over your screen and looks just like the test at Centriq or any other Pearson Vue site.

One tip, in addition to shutting all windows down, also restart your computer right before the exam. I had something go wrong that gave me a rocky start.