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HCA - HORTONWORKS CERTIFIED ASSOCIATE Certification Details

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Expert Contributor

I am planning for HCA - HORTONWORKS CERTIFIED ASSOCIATE Certification in next 2 months. I have already checked the exam objective and it is vast. I am reading below book for certification

Apress.Pro.Apache.Hadoop.2nd.Edition

Is this sufficient for passing the certification ? Can anyone tell me how to prepare for this certification ? Can someone share sample question being asked in this HCA certification?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

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You are correct that we do not post any sample questions for the HCA certification, but we will evaluate if that is a logical step for this entry-level certification. You correctly found the objectives at http://hortonworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ExamObjectives-HCAssociate.pdf and while these are "vast" as you described, please note that the HCA "provides for individuals an entry point and validates the fundamental skills required to progress to the higher levels of the Hortonworks certification program".

If you are comfortable with the materials discussed in the Hadoop Essentials course, http://hortonworks.com/training/class/hadoop-essentials/, then you are an ideal candidate for this examination. Good luck!

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36 REPLIES 36

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On the 2nd of January I accomplished successfully the exam for the HCA. Anyway I did not receive any certificate. Should I expect it or not?

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New Contributor

Hey can you suggest me where to start from ?Give some tips on the same ?Planning to take it up before march?Could you give us some details?Books ?Videos ?Please Recommend something ,im a newbee

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Expert Contributor

@Nicola Poffo

Can you please suggest how to start? did you read any book?

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Take the free self-paced course at http://public.hortonworksuniversity.com/hdp-overview-apache-hadoop-essentials-self-paced-training. Additionally, Hadoop: The Definitive Guide guide, https://smile.amazon.com/Definitive-version-revised-English-Chinese/dp/7564159170/, is still a very good resource.

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Hi,

I apologise if I did not answer quickly. Few notes on what I did to pass the exam.

1) It is not necessary a long time to be prepared, at least for me is was not necessary. I estimate that in a couple of weeks it is possible to gain enough knowledge to pass the exam. As someone before me stated, this is an entry point exam, so it is more about the use cases and the high level technology of the components comprised in an Hadoop Ecosystem.

2) As a reference you can use the objective sheet available on the Hortonworks certfication website. Normally on the HWK Site, for every architecture component there is a section What The (Component) Does and another one How the (Component) Works (check this http://hortonworks.com/apache/pig/ as an example). In my opinion it is better to integrate this with specific deep-ins particularly for: HDFS (important thing is what the technology does: namenode, datanode, replication..., don't get drown in too deep technical details), YARN and SPARK. For Spark I found useful this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv_mnjYhFAk&t=2866s (full of technical details, but in my opinion (personal and absolutely questionable...) provides some insights to see how the component works). I suggest also to have a look to some video from Hortonworks in YouTube for Tez (don't choose long long videos... you just need to understand the basic core of the technology). For YARN it exists an article from Hortonworks that marvellously explain the high level technology, I'm not sure to precisely remember the link, but it should be this one: http://hortonworks.com/blog/apache-hadoop-yarn-concepts-and-applications/). I remember there were two questions on Atlas, so don't forget it.

Hope it's helpful....

Cheers

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New Contributor

Hi, Anyone has faced any issue with screen resolution. The compatibility check tool says it requires minimum 1200*800 resolution but my screens max resolution is 1366 * 768. Is it going to create a problem, the screen height of 768 instead of 800?

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Explorer

@Lester Martin

- Please let me know if any decision taken by HortonWorks to make HCA Attempt free. I am deeply interested to attend this exam, but am afraid that i will loose my 100$ . Am not rich enough to pay for multiple attempts. Please let me know. Thanks

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No current plans to do that. We had vendors that host the exams which we have to pay and cannot turn this into an expense for ourselves; sorry. That said, we are ~~~considering~~~ bundling in a voucher with our https://hortonworks.com/services/training/class/hadoop-essentials/ class offering, but again, that is only an internal discussion at this time. Best of luck when you take the test!!

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New Contributor

@Lester Martin is there any time line which your planning to offer the course along with the bundle ?