I get my Hashicorp Vault Asssociate certification in august 2020 and it is time now to share my preparation notes for those who are interested to pass the “Vault Associate certification” exam and get certified.

This article is just one another preparation guide to Hashicorp Vault Asssociate certification but I hope you will find it useful 🙂

Even you don’t plan to take the exam, all this content is really interesting to read and understand if you want to discover and improve your knowledge on HashiCorp Vault. You will find below more than 320 slides, good articles, nice courses and excellent tutorials

Audience Profile : The Vault Associate certification is for Cloud Engineers specializing in security, development, or operations who know the basic concepts, skills, and use cases associated with open source HashiCorp Vault. Candidates will be best prepared for this exam if they have professional experience using Vault in production, but performing the exam objectives in a personal demo environment may also be sufficient

All details about this certification : https://www.hashicorp.com/certification/vault-associate

You will find there a lot of free resources to learn about Vault : https://learn.hashicorp.com/vault/certification/vault-associate#study-guide

In my case, I was “a beginner” so I also used others really really good courses especially :

Getting Started with HashiCorp Vault by Ned Bellavance
HashiCorp Vault is a secrets management platform providing a secure enclave for static and dynamic secrets. In this course you will learn the basics of using Vault, including managing secrets, configuring policies, and reviewing audit logs.
https://app.pluralsight.com/library/courses/getting-started-hashicorp-vault

Managing HashiCorp Vault by Ned Bellavance
HashiCorp Vault is an open-source secrets management solution. In this course, you will learn to deploy and manage Vault server, including deploying a highly available Vault cluster, configuring role-based access control, and monitoring Vault health
https://app.pluralsight.com/library/courses/managing-hashicorp-vault

I also check my knowledge before the real exam with practices tests on Udemy : HashiCorp Certified: Vault Associate Practice Exam – 2020 by Bryan Krausen
https://www.udemy.com/course/hashicorp-certified-vault-associate-practice-exam/

I also read a tons of official Hashicorp online documentation : https://www.vaultproject.io/docs

Last but not least : I practiced a lot with virtual machines and also with the fabulous Katacoda web site : https://www.katacoda.com/hashicorp

If you read this after the 31th of october 2020, you are lucky because a book dedicated to hashicorp Vault is available in Kindle format : https://amzn.to/3mHXVZ0

Finally, I compiled all my preparation notes and create a slidedeck that you need to complete with all additional resources below.

Vault use cases
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/use-cases

Vault HTTP API
https://www.vaultproject.io/api-docs

Vault secure introduction
https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/vault/secure-introduction

Storage backend
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/configuration/storage

Key Value Secrets
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/secrets/kv

K/V version 2
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/secrets/kv/kv-v2

Secret Engines
https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/vault/getting-started-secrets-engines

Active Directory Secret Engine
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/secrets/kv/kv-v2

Identity Secret Engine
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/secrets/identity

Azure Secret Engine
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/secrets/azure

Kubernetes Auth Method
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/auth/kubernetes

Internal versus External groups
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/secrets/identity#external-vs-internal-groups

Vault policies
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/concepts/policies

Tokens
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/concepts/tokens.html

Lease
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/concepts/lease

Vault Agent
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/agent

Vault configuration
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/configuration

Listener in vault config
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/configuration/listener/tcp

Transit Secret engine
https://www.vaultproject.io/api-docs/secret/transit

PKI Secret engine
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/secrets/pki

PKI as a Service
https://medium.com/hashicorp-engineering/pki-as-a-service-with-hashicorp-vault-a8d075ece9a

Vault server configuration
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/configuration

Auto-unseal
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/concepts/seal#auto-unseal

Vault High Availability
https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/concepts/ha

Vault enterprise
https://www.hashicorp.com/products/vault/pricing/

Consul and Complex Networks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRV4sAD0YrU

Labs :

Vault operation (installing, init..)
https://www.katacoda.com/hashicorp/scenarios/vault-operations

[Enterprise] Vault Enterprise Playground
https://www.katacoda.com/hashicorp/scenarios/vault-ent-playground

Vault identity
https://www.katacoda.com/hashicorp/scenarios/vault-identity

Vault policies
https://www.katacoda.com/hashicorp/scenarios/vault-policies

https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/internals/architecture.html

Vault Reference Architecture
https://learn.hashicorp.com/vault/operations/ops-reference-architecture

Disaster Recovery Replication
https://learn.hashicorp.com/vault/operations/ops-disaster-recovery

Videos :

[French] PKI as a Service avec HashiCorp Vault
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRhSxNgF6oE

Oh No! I Deleted My Vault Secret!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qly6sK9LnvU&list=PL81sUbsFNc5bGEmqmMY0qL9Tk-3pjhJYt&index=14

Hope this study guide will be useful for you. Don’t hesitate to share, or post a comment or send me a message on Twitter @squastana or on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stanislasquastana/

— Stanislas Quastana —