Preparation guide
How to prepare for a certification
A Runbookly certification is earned in two steps: in the simulator, then in an exam made of practice and theory. This guide explains both, what the practical tasks and the questions look like, the rules, and how to study for each level.
The levels at a glance
Each lab has five certifications. Their name says the availability you can keep a system at, and the role it proves.
| Level | Role | Practical tasks | Questions | Duration | Pauses | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| One Nine · 90% | Operator | 2 | 15 | 1 h | 1 × 10 min | Free |
| Two Nines · 99% | Builder | 3 | 15 | 1 h 30 min | 1 × 10 min | 29 USD or included in a plan |
| Three Nines · 99.9% | Engineer | 3 | 20 | 2 h | 2 × 10 min | 59 USD or included in a plan |
| Four Nines · 99.99% | Specialist | 4 | 20 | 2 h 30 min | 2 × 10 min | 89 USD or included in a plan |
| Five Nines · 99.999% | Architect | 4 | 25 | 3 h | 2 × 10 min | 129 USD or included in a plan |
Every level: practice counts for 70 % of the score. You pass with 70 % overall and at least 60 % in practice.
Step 1: earn the track badge
The exam of a level opens once you have solved at least 80 % of that level's exercises in the lab. Only results graded by our servers count, so the badge proves you did the work in the simulator, not just read about it. The badge is free, shows on your public profile, and we email you the moment you earn it.
- Solve exercises without opening the reference first: you learn more, and you keep all the Uptime points.
- When a design fails, read the debrief: it names the exact behaviour that broke, and links the concept behind it.
- Redo the exercises you passed with help a few days later, from a blank canvas.
Step 2: the exam, practice and theory
The exam has two parts on one page, in tabs: you go back and forth between them as you like until you finish.
70 %
Practice in the simulator
From 2 tasks (Operator) to 4 (Specialist and Architect, one of them a capstone that counts double). Each task opens the lab you trained in, with a system to build from a brief or to repair.
30 %
Theory
From 15 to 25 questions on production situations and concepts. A certified engineer must make systems hold: under 60 % in practice, the exam is not passed, whatever the total.
The questions are drawn for you from three sources, then shuffled, answers included: no two candidates get the same exam.
About a third
Production scenarios
Situations taken from the level's exercises: you choose the change that makes the system hold.
About a quarter
Concepts
An idea the level teaches, described without its name: you recognise it.
The rest
The certification's own questions
Written by the team for each level: decisions, trade-offs and diagnosis, with one or several right answers.
The practical tasks
A task looks like an exercise of the level, with one big difference: during the exam you cannot run the simulation (in the containers lab, the terminal works, but not the production test). You build or repair, your work is saved as you go, and you submit. After the exam our servers replay each system through its day of traffic and failures, with the same engine as the labs, and grade it against its objectives.
Some tasks come from the level's exercises, with other data. Most were written for the exams only: they are never published, and their solutions never leave our servers. Knowing the answers of the public exercises by heart is therefore not enough.
- Read the brief to the end: every number you need is in it (traffic, sizes, failures and their time, budget).
- A task scores the weight of the objectives it meets. If it misses a required objective, it keeps at most 40 %: make it hold first, optimise the cost after.
- The last saved version is graded. Saving is automatic, and the Save my answer button saves at once.
- Train like the exam: in the labs, build your design, predict the result in your head, and only then press Run.
What the questions look like
Scenario
At 10:00 the recommendation service will go down for an hour. Last time, the whole store went down with it. The storefront calls recommendations on every page; Java threads block while they wait, and immediate retries hammer the failing service. What keeps the store selling?
Why: the breaker opens when errors pile up and answers instantly with an empty list, so threads are never blocked. More servers only block more threads.
Several answers
Your API must survive the loss of one availability zone with no manual action. Which two changes are needed? Choose two.
During the exam, the right answers are of course not shown. Your answers are saved as you go, so a lost connection never costs you anything.
The rules
- The clock is held by our servers. It starts when you click Start and keeps running if you close the page. When it ends, everything you saved is submitted automatically and the exam closes.
- Pauses: one of 10 minutes up to Builder, two from Engineer. A pause stops the clock and hides the exam; it cannot be cut short and ends by itself.
- While your exam runs, the rest of Runbookly is closed to you: every other page brings you back to the exam. Leaving the exam page or the full screen is recorded and checked by the team with your result.
- You can move between the tasks and the questions and change your work until you submit. After that, the exam is closed.
- Work alone and without AI assistants: a certificate is only worth something if it means the same for everyone.
- One exam at a time. After an attempt that does not pass, you can retake the exam 7 days later, at half price for 90 days.
- Every paid plan includes one exam a month, up to its level. One Nine is free for everyone.
Results in 24 hours, and fair reviews
As soon as you submit, you get an email confirming your exam. Our servers then replay your practical tasks and grade the questions; the result is published 24 hours later, by email and on the exam page, with the objectives each task met and your score for each kind of question. If you pass, your certificate is attached to the email.
If you believe a question was graded wrong, ask for a review within 7 days of your results: choose the questions and explain why. The review costs 5,000 Uptime; a member of the team regrades your exam, and if they agree with you on any question, your score is corrected (and your certificate issued if you now pass) and the fee is refunded.
A study plan for each level
One Nine · Operator
One week. Solve every Beginner exercise, read each concept they link, and make sure you can explain why a single server, a single zone or a missing cache fails.
Two Nines · Builder
Two weeks. Intermediate exercises twice, the second time from scratch; practise sizing (requests per second, memory, connections) and budgets.
Three Nines · Engineer
Three weeks. Consistency, sharding, queues and failure cascades: for each exercise, write down the trade-off you made and the one you refused.
Four Nines · Specialist
Four weeks. Multi-region, consensus, streaming and disaster recovery: reason in RTO and RPO, and in what happens when a whole region disappears.
Five Nines · Architect
Four to six weeks. Cost, migrations, compliance and teams: defend an architecture against business constraints, in the labs and in the Studio.
- The concept library of each lab is the syllabus: every concept a level teaches can be asked.
- The Architecture Studio is the best place to rehearse the Expert and Architect levels: draw, run the tests, price it.
- Want a teacher and a group? Our live trainings follow the same levels and prepare you for the exams.
Your certificate
A PDF signed by the founder of Runbookly, with your name, the certification, its code, its dates, the mention of the practical exam and a QR code to its public verification page. Anyone can check it is genuine and valid at that address. One click adds it to your LinkedIn profile, and the share button writes a ready-made post in English or French for X, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and more. It is valid for two years; we remind you two months before the end.
Start with One Nine: it is free.
Solve the Beginner exercises, earn the badge, take the exam.