What happens when certification expires

Background

There are a lot of articles about passing certification, however, there may be few things to be aware when the all cherished certification expires. A certification may be close to expiring, since You may be busy or it may not be the primary area you are currently working on etc.

What happened in my case

I have recently encountered this scenario for GCP (Google Cloud Platform), CKA (Certified Kubernetes Administrator) and AWS (Amazon Web Services). I would share my experience and hopefully, it may help You with some of the options. Please always refer to the latest documentation, though.

Few times, I got lucky too - for example AWS and CKA did change the certification period from 2 to 3 years, few years back, so got some additional time too.

Do you really need to bother

This is really a personally question, to some extent. I would try to list some of the things to watch out.

GCP

GCP has 2 years expiry for certification. So, before attempting a new certification, please also plan for renewal, if You want to keep it current.
GCP does give Series ID in its certification and I really wanted to retain the low series id I had for PCA (Professional Cloud Architect) certification. If this is important, please ensure that You take the exam at earliest.
If you have a free voucher for exam, this point may not be applicable - however, I generally have paid for most of my exams. Renewal mail typically gives a discount code and asks it to be used before expiry date.
My PCNE (Professional Cloud Network Engineer) did actually cross the expiry date, I was given a 21 day extension. So, I took the exam before the extension provided and able to retain the Series Id.

CKA

CKA has changed from 2 year to 3 year expiration and I felt happy to have an additional year for certification. Although, I paid for the exam after taking Linux Foundation membership, I missed scheduling it.
I scheduled after noticing an email that there is not much time left for scheduling. Finally I took the exam. After a wait of 24 hours, happy to receive the email that I have passed it.
But, my certificate did not come. I raised a request with Support team. Support team is very helpful, and the issue seems to be the gap in certification (which may have caused some automation to break, I guess).
It took 20 days to get the certificate with a new ID.
If you want to retain the start date of Your certification period, You may want to take it before expiry. If you are interested in re-certification, you may also want to look at my blog for tips for CKA exam.

AWS

AWS has also changed from 2 year to 3 year expiration. So, the first renewal went through fine. For the second renewal it was very close to the GCP renewals, since 6 is common multiple for 2 and 3.
I had quite a few discount codes available as I was holding 6 AWS certifications. But, once the 2 professional certifications (Solution Architect Professional and DevOps Professional) expired, I have lost all the discount codes related to 5 certifications (3 Associate and 2 Professional). If you get vouchers for Your AWS certification exams, this may not be applicable for You - however, if you pay for your exams, it may be better to use the 50% discount codes before the actual expiry.
So, I only have the discount code from the Cloud Practitioner exam, which I plan to use for Solution Architect Professional exam.

What happens when certification expires - GCP, CKA, AWS

Comments

General

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Background

What happened in my case

Do you really need to bother

GCP

CKA

AWS

References

Command Palette

Comments

General

Setting up my blog

More from this blog

Background

What happened in my case

Do you really need to bother

GCP

CKA

AWS

References