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How to Get Alibaba Cloud Professional Certified: Tips From a Cloud Architect!

Updated: Apr 15, 2019



Co-Founder and CEO at nubeGO.io

I am an (ex) Cloud Architect, current CEO at nubeGO, an Alibaba Cloud Partner and Cloud and DevOps Consultancy.


My goal in this post, is to share how to get certified by Alibaba Cloud and gain the most important certification, the Alibaba Cloud Professional.


How did I start?


With more than 17 years of IT experience, I have worked as a SysAdmin, DevOps, Cloud Ops, and Cloud Architect. I’ve been extensively using cloud services for around 6 years and seen different projects success and fail in different industries.


Since 2018, I started the executive journey, but I am still very technical and always want to keep my hands dirty.


In my company we have daily challenges, mainly focused in building solutions for clients. Our goal is to provide the best advice for their projects on a timely, secure and unbiased manner.

But let’s get back to Alibaba and my ACP certification. That’s what you’re looking for, right?

Let me ask you something, do you want to certify just to have a piece of “paper” or because you want to become proficient in another cloud platform?


I hope you’re here because you want to extend your cloud knowledge!


This certification is designed for those familiar with cloud computing and a rich operational knowledge of Alibaba Cloud products. ACP Cloud Computing Certification covers a spectrum of Alibaba Cloud core services, including architecture, networking, cloud security, and best practices.


Let’s start with how many certifications are at the moment with Alibaba Cloud





We have 3 streams.


  • Cloud Computing

  • Big Data

  • Security


For each of those, we have 3 levels.


  • Associate

  • Professional

  • Expert


So a total of 9 certifications!


How to Get Certified by Alibaba Cloud?


I started with Alibaba Cloud 1 year ago, gaining my ACP certification in December 2018.

To maintain your Certified status, Alibaba requires you to periodically demonstrate your continued expertise on the platform.


Alibaba Certifications expire every 2 years and you need to take the exam again.


How the exam looks like?


So, are you wondering if the exam is different from other cloud platforms? Well, it’s not.

The exam has 70 questions and you have 105 minutes to complete. You can’t have any books or notes with you, so you need to be very well prepared.


What products are you assessed on?



How deep it goes the exam in regards to each product?


Well, I can’t say much about the specific questions, but I can help you with some hints. You need to:


Be familiar with ECS-related concepts, including regions and zones,   instances, disks, snapshots, images, networks, and security groups.Have knowledge about the advantages, billing policies, application scenarios,  APIs and SDKs of ECS.Be able to deploy applications based on ECS products.Be familiar with the basic concepts related to Auto Scaling, including scaling groups, scaling configuration, scaling rules, scaling activities, scaling trigger tasks, scaling mode and freezing time.Have knowledge about precautions during Auto Scaling use to prevent and solve common problems arising during use.Be able to implement application solutions based on Auto Scaling and ECS and Server Load Balancer products.


When you’re trying to pass any certification at the Professional or Expert level, you must prepare. You will not do well should you pick any answer by a process of elimination.

At this point in time the exam is only in English, so if English is not your mother tongue, make sure you have time allocated to check - and double check - the answers.


How can I register for the exam and how much does it cost?


As you’ve seen in the picture before, there are some discounts at the moment of writing this for taking the exam, so, when is the right time to take the exams? NOW!


First, you need to go to the Alibaba Cloud Academy (https://edu.alibabacloud.com/) and select the exam.


Here is where you can register and navigate through your certification journey, including picking certification time, paying for your certification exam, etc.


When it’s time to take your exam at the test centre, you’re required to provide 2 forms of government-issued ID at the test centre and your name must what’s on the ID exactly or you will not be allowed to test and will forfeit the fees. Please note that you cannot take any belongings with you to the certification area. You will also be required to take a picture, which is going to be in your final document when finishing the exam with the results (not the certificate).


What is the passing score?


First things first, nobody knows the passing score. They say that it usually hovers around 65%. The passing score pretty much depends on the overall performance of those who have taken the test. In other words, it’s flexible and impossible to predict.


You will learn the result once you have taken the test.  It displays in the screen, then the testing centre prints a formal page with the score report. Keep it safe as you will need the Candidate Client ID and the Registration ID to get the electronic certification online. The certificate will get displayed in your account 7 days after.


I hope this helps you prepare for Alibaba Cloud Certification. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. Best of luck!



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