Tech Exam Prep

About

Tech Exam Prep is a free, daily podcast by OpenExamPrep covering the most in-demand IT and technology certification exams — including CompTIA Security+, AWS Cloud Practitioner, CompTIA Network+, CCNA, CompTIA A+, and more. Each 5-minute episode breaks down one exam topic with concrete examples, common exam traps, and memory tricks to help you pass on your first attempt. No fluff, no filler — just the concepts you need to know, explained the way the exam tests them. This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation for everyone. For free practice questions, AI-powered explanations, flashcards, and full study guides, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ Subscribe and listen daily — your certification is closer than you think.

Episodes

• [AWS CCP] 47, AWS Cost Optimization Tools 2026-05-09

  This episode of Tech Exam Prep covers AWS cost optimization tools, including Trusted Advisor for resource checks, Compute Optimizer for right-sizing, S3 Intelligent-Tiering for storage, and Spot Instances for savings.

• [AWS CCP] 46, AWS Billing and Cost Management 2026-05-08

  This episode explains AWS Billing and Cost Management tools, including the Billing Dashboard, Cost Explorer, and AWS Budgets, and how to use AWS Cost and Usage Reports and cost allocation tags. It also covers AWS Organizations for consolid…

• [AWS CCP] 45, AWS Pricing Models 2026-05-07

  This episode of Tech Exam Prep discusses AWS pricing models, including On-Demand, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, and Spot Instances. It covers their flexibility, cost-saving potential, and ideal use cases, as well as AWS data transfer…

• [AWS CCP] 44, AWS Analytics Services 2026-05-06

  This episode covers key AWS Analytics Services: Amazon Athena for serverless SQL, EMR for big data frameworks like Hadoop and Spark, Kinesis for real-time streaming data, AWS Glue for ETL and data cataloging, and QuickSight for business in…

• [AWS CCP] 43, Machine Learning Services on AWS 2026-05-05

  This episode covers AWS machine learning services, including Amazon SageMaker for custom models and pre-trained AI services like Rekognition, Comprehend, and Translate. It also highlights key distinctions for exam preparation, such as diff…

• [AWS CCP] 42, Amazon CloudWatch Monitoring 2026-05-04

  This episode of Tech Exam Prep covers Amazon CloudWatch, detailing its Metrics, Alarms, Logs, and Dashboards. It explains the differences between Basic and Detailed EC2 monitoring, clarifies CloudWatch's role versus CloudTrail, and notes t…

• [AWS CCP] 41, AWS Developer and Deployment Tools 2026-05-03

  In this episode of Tech Exam Prep, Ran Chen covers AWS developer and deployment tools, including CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline, CloudFormation, and Elastic Beanstalk.

• [AWS CCP] 40, Amazon Aurora and Redshift 2026-05-02

  This episode covers Amazon Aurora, a high-performance relational database for transactional workloads, and Amazon Redshift, a data warehouse for business intelligence. It highlights Aurora's compatibility with MySQL/PostgreSQL and Redshift…

• [AWS CCP] 39, AWS Compute Services Comparison 2026-05-01

  This episode of Tech Exam Prep compares AWS compute services. It explains when to use EC2 for control, Lambda for event-driven tasks, ECS and Fargate for containers, Lightsail for simple apps, and AWS Batch for large-scale processing.

• [AWS CCP] 38, Amazon SQS and SNS Messaging 2026-04-30

  This episode of Tech Exam Prep covers Amazon SQS and SNS messaging. It explains SQS queue types (Standard and FIFO) and SNS's publish/subscribe functionality, highlighting their roles in building scalable and resilient decoupled architectu…

• [AWS CCP] 37, AWS Storage Services Comparison 2026-04-29

  This episode compares AWS storage services like S3, EBS, EFS, and FSx, explaining their fundamental differences and ideal use cases. Learn about object, block, and file storage, including S3 for hosting and backups, EBS for EC2 instances,…

• [AWS CCP] 36, Amazon Route 53 DNS 2026-04-28

  This episode covers Amazon Route 53, explaining its functions as a domain registrar and DNS service. It details various routing policies including simple, weighted, latency, failover, and geolocation, and the role of health checks in failo…

• [AWS CCP] 35, Elastic Load Balancing 2026-04-27

  This episode of Tech Exam Prep, hosted by Ran Chen, covers AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB). It details the functions of Application Load Balancers (ALB), Network Load Balancers (NLB), and Gateway Load Balancers (GWLB), alongside health ch…

• [AWS CCP] 34, Amazon CloudFront CDN 2026-04-26

  This episode of Tech Exam Prep covers Amazon CloudFront, a global CDN that reduces latency by caching content. It details CloudFront's use of various origins, HTTPS enforcement, built-in DDoS protection via AWS Shield Standard, and disting…

• [AWS CCP] 33, AWS Lambda and Serverless 2026-04-25

  This episode explains AWS Lambda, a serverless compute service, detailing its pay-per-use pricing model and common event triggers such as API Gateway, S3, and DynamoDB. It highlights the 15-minute maximum execution timeout as a key exam po…

• [AWS CCP] 32, Amazon VPC Networking 2026-04-24

  This episode of Tech Exam Prep covers AWS VPC networking fundamentals for the CCP exam. It explains VPCs, subnets, internet access control using IGW and NAT Gateway, and compares VPC Peering with the scalable AWS Transit Gateway.

• [AWS CCP] 31, Amazon DynamoDB 2026-04-23

  This episode of Tech Exam Prep covers Amazon DynamoDB, explaining its nature as a serverless NoSQL database. It details capacity modes, Global Tables for multi-region access, and the DAX in-memory cache for performance, while warning again…

• [AWS CCP] 30, Amazon RDS and Database Services 2026-04-22

  This episode explains Amazon RDS as a managed database service, detailing Multi-AZ deployments for high availability and Read Replicas for performance. It clarifies the distinction between these features, which is crucial for certification…

• [AWS CCP] 29, Amazon S3 Storage Classes 2026-04-21

  This episode explains Amazon S3 storage classes, differentiating between Standard and Infrequent Access (IA) for cost savings. It covers the trade-offs of S3 Standard-IA vs. S3 One Zone-IA, the cost optimization of S3 Intelligent-Tiering,…

• [AWS CCP] 28, Amazon EC2 Instance Types 2026-04-20

  This episode of Tech Exam Prep, hosted by Ran Chen, covers Amazon EC2 instance types, including General Purpose, Compute Optimized, Memory Optimized, Storage Optimized, and Accelerated Computing. It explains On-Demand pricing, Reserved Ins…

• [AWS CCP] 27, AWS Firewall and Access Control 2026-04-19

  This episode explains AWS WAF for web application protection, AWS Network Firewall for VPC traffic filtering, and the differences between stateful Security Groups and stateless Network ACLs. It also covers VPC Endpoints and AWS PrivateLink…

• [AWS CCP] 26, AWS Compliance Programs 2026-04-18

  This episode explains AWS compliance programs, covering how to differentiate SOC 1, 2, and 3 reports, AWS

• [AWS CCP] 25, Incident Response on AWS 2026-04-17

  This episode covers AWS incident response, detailing how AWS Trusted Advisor identifies security issues, the steps to take upon receiving an AWS Abuse team notification, and the correct procedure for responding to compromised IAM credentia…

• [AWS CCP] 24, Security Best Practices 2026-04-16

  This episode of Tech Exam Prep covers AWS security best practices relevant to the Certified Cloud Practitioner (CCP) exam. Key topics include enabling Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for the root account, using IAM Roles for temporary cr…

• [AWS CCP] 23, AWS Secrets and Parameter Management 2026-04-15

  This episode of Tech Exam Prep, hosted by Ran Chen, compares AWS Secrets Manager and AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store. It highlights Secrets Manager's automatic rotation capabilities, ideal for databases, and Parameter Store's suitabili…

• [AWS CCP] 22, Identity Federation and SSO 2026-04-14

  This episode explains AWS IAM Identity Center for workforce SSO and Amazon Cognito for customer identity management. It highlights the key distinction between internal users (Identity Center) and external customers (Cognito) and discusses…

• [AWS CCP] 21, Logging and Monitoring Security 2026-04-13

  This episode covers AWS logging and monitoring services for certification preparation, including AWS CloudTrail, Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Inspector, and AWS Security Hub. It highlights the functional differences between these tools for ide…

• [AWS CCP] 20, DDoS Protection and AWS Shield 2026-04-12

  This episode covers AWS DDoS protection services, including AWS Shield Standard and Advanced, AWS WAF, and Amazon CloudFront. It explains how to implement a layered defense strategy against common network and application-layer attacks.

• [AWS CCP] 19, AWS Compliance and Governance 2026-04-11

  This episode covers AWS compliance and governance, explaining the Shared Responsibility Model, AWS Artifact for compliance reports, and AWS Config for resource monitoring. It clarifies the distinction between AWS and customer compliance re…

• [AWS CCP] 18, Network Security on AWS 2026-04-10

  This episode of Tech Exam Prep, hosted by Ran Chen, explains AWS network security concepts. It details how Security Groups function as stateful firewalls at the instance level and NACLs as stateless firewalls at the subnet level, highlight…

• [AWS CCP] 17, Data Encryption on AWS 2026-04-09

  This episode explains data encryption on AWS, covering the differences between encrypting data at rest and in transit. It details AWS KMS, CloudHSM, S3

• [AWS CCP] 16, AWS Organizations and SCPs 2026-04-08

  This episode of Tech Exam Prep covers AWS Organizations, detailing its use for central management and governance of multiple AWS accounts. It explains how Service Control Policies (SCPs) function as guardrails, the override hierarchy with…

• [AWS CCP] 15, IAM Policies and Permissions 2026-04-07

  This episode covers AWS IAM policies, detailing the JSON structure (Effect, Action, Resource), types of policies (AWS Managed, Customer Managed, Inline), and how permissions are evaluated. It emphasizes that explicit denies override allows…

• [AWS CCP] 14, AWS IAM Fundamentals 2026-04-06

  In this episode of Tech Exam Prep, host Ran Chen explains AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) fundamentals, covering best practices like using MFA for root users, the principle of least privilege, and the differences between IAM users…

• [AWS CCP] 13, Shared Responsibility Model 2026-04-05

  This episode explains the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, detailing the security obligations of AWS versus the customer. It covers responsibilities for IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, emphasizing that users are responsible for securing anything the…

• [AWS CCP] 12, Containers on AWS 2026-04-04

  This episode covers AWS container services, explaining Docker containers, Amazon ECS, EKS, and AWS Fargate. It guides listeners on selecting the right AWS compute option based on portability, event-driven needs, or full control.

• [AWS CCP] 11, Serverless Computing Concepts 2026-04-03

  This episode explains serverless computing concepts, focusing on AWS Lambda as the core compute service. It covers the pay-per-use model, typical serverless architecture components like API Gateway and DynamoDB, and common exam scenarios c…

• [AWS CCP] 10, AWS Support Plans 2026-04-02

  This episode covers AWS Support Plans, detailing the differences between Basic, Business, Enterprise On-Ramp, and Enterprise tiers. Key distinctions include the availability of technical support, the number of Trusted Advisor checks, acces…

• [AWS CCP] 9, High Availability and Fault Tolerance 2026-04-01

  This Tech Exam Prep episode, hosted by Ran Chen, covers High Availability vs. Fault Tolerance, Multi-AZ deployments in AWS, and Amazon RDS Multi-AZ. It also explains RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective).

• [AWS CCP] 8, Elasticity and Scalability 2026-03-31

  This episode of Tech Exam Prep covers AWS elasticity and scalability. It clarifies that elasticity adapts to demand, while scalability handles growth. The podcast explains horizontal scaling via Auto Scaling Groups and Load Balancing as th…

• [AWS CCP] 7, AWS Cloud Adoption Framework 2026-03-30

  This episode explains the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF), a strategic guide for cloud adoption that helps reduce business risk. It covers the six perspectives: Business, People, Governance, Platform, Security, and Operations, highlight…

• [AWS CCP] 6, Cloud Migration Strategies 2026-03-29

  This episode covers various cloud migration strategies like Rehosting, Replatforming, Repurchasing, Refactoring, Retiring, Retaining, and Relocating. It also touches on how AWS Migration Hub and Application Discovery Service aid in the mig…

• [AWS CCP] 5, Well-Architected Framework Overview 2026-03-28

  This episode covers the AWS Well-Architected Framework pillars relevant to the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam. It details how Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, and Sustainabili…

• [AWS CCP] 4, Cloud Economics and TCO 2026-03-27

  This episode of Tech Exam Prep covers AWS Cloud Economics and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), comparing on-premises data centers with AWS. It explains the shift from CapEx to OpEx, the use of the AWS Pricing Calculator, the importance of ri…

• [AWS CCP] 3, AWS Global Infrastructure 2026-03-26

  This episode explains AWS Global Infrastructure, distinguishing between Regions and Availability Zones, and highlighting the importance of multi-AZ deployments for high availability. It also covers Edge Locations for content caching and de…

• [AWS CCP] 2, Benefits of Cloud Computing 2026-03-25

  This episode of Tech Exam Prep, hosted by Ran Chen, discusses the benefits of cloud computing. Key topics include the shift from Capital Expense to Operational Expense, economies of scale leading to lower prices, elasticity, and the abilit…

• [AWS CCP] 1, Cloud Computing Fundamentals 2026-03-23

  This episode covers cloud computing fundamentals, explaining on-demand and pay-as-you-go models, the differences between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, and public, private, and hybrid clouds. It also details the AWS global infrastructure, focusing…