Preparation guide for HashiCorp Certified: Vault Associate
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/
leekhaz
Hi, thank you for sharing your journey towards getting your Vault certification.
May I ask, how much time did it take you to prepare and take this exam?
squastana
My preparation tokes me a big month
Rashmit
Your hardwork, detailed planning and preparation for Hashicorp Vault Associate certification does reflects in the details you captured above. I have recently started with Ned Bellavance’s Pluralsight videos and luckily come across this page.
Thank you very much for capturing your journey and helping fellow aspirant with right direction.