AWS Certifications in Perth (II)

I wrote last year about sitting AWS Certifications in Perth. I’ve done another two AWS Certifications in the last month (Networking Specialty, and Cloud Practitioner), and a few things have changed. Gone is Kryterion as the assessment provider, and in has come PSI; this means new venues- and there’s now only one in Perth at 100 Havelock St, West Perth.

It’s a new-ish building I know well; an old friend was working on the top floor for a while, and I spoke to his teams about AWS several times (they became and AWS reference customer). Small Italian-inspired coffee shop on the ground floor (more on this later).

The booking process for exams is much the same, but now via https://aws.training/ (funky new DNS TLD). The certifications with PSI happen via their customer rigged Kiosk systems: a PC with two webcams, one mounted on the monitor facing the candidate, and one positioned on mast protruding above the screen facing the desk (down). With these two cameras, a remote monitor can view the candidate and the desk at all times to ensure there is no compromise of reference materials; and one person remotely monitoring can theoretically be proctoring multiple students in many locations simultaneously (I suspect they are listening too).

With this customer rig, there are only limited seats — in Perth, there are two. And the booking process is scheduling candidates to one of these Kiosks — literally called Kiosk 1 and Kiosk 2 — are located in a small room on the 1st floor of 100 Havelock St, looked after by the friendly Regus staff.

The exam start time is often 8:30am, and advise on the booking emails recommends turning up 15 minutes before this. By contrast, some non-AWS exams scheduled with PSI on the same Kiosks recommend arriving 30 minutes before hand. But there’s a catch; the doors on the ground floor do not unlock for access until around 8:25am, and Regus doesn’t often get staffed until 8:30am (Regus checks you in and sets you up at the Kiosk).

Unlike the Kryterion centers, this doesn’t seem to be a big problem — previously being just a few minutes late was an issue; so, if you do get there with plenty of time, the aforementioned cafe on the ground floor is open much earlier (there were open at 8:00am they day I got there early).

Photo ID is critical to have with you; a scanner mounted on the Kiosk rig is used to get an image of documents like Passports and Drivers’ Licences. You should have two forms of photo ID, but if you have bank cards or others they can supplement (just cover some of your card numbers for security’s sake). The moderator looking at the camera compares the Photo ID with the image of you sitting there in real time.

The assessment interface itself is then very similar, with the addition of a chat window to communicate with the moderator at any time. Feedback comments can be left on questions. I found one question had assumed that multi-choice answers that did not include the answer that had changed in mid-December (just a few weeks ago) so I left a commend for the AWS certification team on this and followed up by my contacts directly.

I’ve had no problem scheduling certifications with a week’s notice, but I envisage that as demand grows, the lead time to book a slot may become an issue until more Kiosks are added (or additional venues). But that’s not an issue right now.