Hello, Sri. Normally the service should not be in maintenance mode if there are tasks that need to be completed on that service (like HDFS, YARN, HIVE, etc). If you have configuration/troubleshooting tasks around that service, you should be able to complete that task and restart the service in non-maintenance mode to ensure that the changes you made are working. If the service does not start properly because of a configuration issue, then the task will be wrong. So, as a norm, make sure the service is able to run in non-maintenance mode. Hope that this helps ... View more

This version of the exam does not contain those topics. As the exam objectives state, most of the tasks are dealing with RDDs and data to-and-from hdfs. Hope that this helps. ... View more

Hello, Abhijit, It normally takes a few days (2-5) to receive grades from proctor. You will receive an email when the grades are processed on our end. The email will state if you passed or fail. If you passed, then additionally you will receive a link to a e-badge from BadgeCert (https://badgecert.com). We do not have a hard copy certificate as most people prefer an electronic badge. Hope that this helps. ... View more

Hello, Dinesh, all good questions. You are correct that to "pass" the HDPCA exam you need to be at least familiar with the tasks in the Exam Objectives (http://hortonworks.com/training/certification/exam-objectives/#hdpca). The best way to prepare for the Exam is to run a Practice Exam on AWS (http://2xbbhjxc6wk3v21p62t8n4d4.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/HDPCA-PracticeExamGuide.pdf). This practice environment has the same version as the exam will have and the tasks in practice are similar to the ones on the actual exam. In the actual exam you will have a minimally configured cluster, so you will not need to install from scratch on a base OS, but you will be required to configure different services as per the Objectives. If you still want to create a cluster from scratch, which is always a great thing to learn, you would probably want to install an HDP version that is close to the exam. The exam is based on the Hortonworks Data Platform 2.3 installed and managed with Ambari 2.1. Hope that this helps. ... View more