Back in late 2017 I obtained all three AWS associate level certifications in the space of around 2 months and thought I’d write a note to share my experiences on study techniques, resources and the exam itself in the hope that it may help others contemplating or undertaking certification themselves.
TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read)
Links to the materials identified above follow.
The official exam format is covered off here for the Solution Architect – Associate exam and here for the SysOps Administrator – Associate exam.
There is a lot of overlap (around 60%) between the exams so consider taking all three around the same time. I found SysOps Administrator the most difficult, followed by SA - Associate and finally the Developer Associate.
Start with the Solution Architect – Associate exam as it covers off the core services such as S3, EC2, VPCs and so on. These come up in the other exams but you may find that some courses for the Developer and SysOps exams treat this as assumed knowledge or skim this content as they assume you have already taken the Sol Arch exam. Sol Arch - Associate is also the key certification if you want to take the Professional or Specialty certifications.
My first course on AWS was a virtual classroom session. I personally didn’t find this particularly useful. The presenter was quite knowledgable however the virtual format was a bit limiting and as with any classroom type experience the group tends to be brought down to the lowest common denominator so some people may find the pace frustrating if they come with some prior experience.
Get an AWS account. You can get a ‘free-tier’ account which will let you play around with the management console for free, provided your resource usage stays below AWS’s stated thresholds. For learning purposes like running labs and so on the free-tier is perfect and you shouldn’t need to incur any costs. Tear down your resources when done to help manage your costs – this is pretty easy to do but note there are some resource types that have charges associated with them that may be less obvious – ELBs, EIPs so keep an eye on your billing page and set up CloudWatch notifications. If you’re using multiple regions you need to keep an eye on the resources you’ve created in each one.
I let too much time pass between my first AWS course and when I started studying in earnest, meaning I basically had to go back and learn the content from scratch.
I started with online training from cloudacademy.com. I felt it was lacking so eventually headed over to udemy.com and found the acloud.guru courses. I bought all of these and the question banks.
udemy.com acloudguru SA – Associate
udemy.com acloudguru SysOps Administrator – Associate
udemy.com acloudguru Developer – Associate
udemy.com acloudguru SA – Associate Practice Tests
udemy.com acloudguru SA – Developer Practice Tests
No test bank appears to be available at this time from acloudguru for the sysops exam.
OK – so the acloudguru courses were at the time of writing $15AUD, which is a steal. There are videos for all major areas of the exam and the focus is on passing the exam so you spend time on the questions that are likely to come up rather than reading about the sprawling set of services available on AWS. The courses also have video labs and some source code supplied. I used Microsoft OneNote to take key screen grabs and take notes as I watched the course which I revised prior to the exam. You can set the video to play at higher speed (up to x2) to get through the content more quickly. The Udemy mobile app is great as you can download the course materials and play them offline, say on the train. You can also take the practice tests on the go.
I also used the following two guides:
AWS Solution Architect – Associate Official Study Guide (Amazon.com)
AWS SysOps Administrator – Associate Official Study Guide (Amazon.com)
These are fairly hefty tomes at 500+ pages each however I strongly recommend reading them for two reasons. Firstly, they are more comprehensive and professionally written than acloudguru. Secondly, and more critically, they come with a large number of practice questions. I can’t underscore this part enough – these books’ practice questions are much closer to the AWS exam questions than acloudguru’s. To put this in context, I would score around 10% higher on the acloudguru question sets than the official study guides. The marks I achieved on the exam where almost the same as my scores on the official study guide question sets. Even if you aren’t going to take the official study guide’s test questions, just be aware that you need to be scoring in the 90’s on the acloudguru tests to pass comfortably.
Finally, at the time of sistting the exams I didn’t have a lot of hands-on AWS experience but still passed. I’d say this is largely due to my background in Technology Architecture. If you don’t have some kind of technical background involving infrastructure, networking, storage systems, virtualisation or being a sysadmin I’d recommend you get very hands-on to reinforce how the services work and some of their quirks.
As for the exams themselves there is some pressure to keep answering questions due to time constraints. I found with a relatively considered pace I still had 20mins to go back and double-check any flagged questions. The usual techniques for multiple-choice exams apply here – there are usually two options that can be eliminated immediately and you can take a guess (if necessary!) to choose between the remaining two options. Be careful with the 2nd type of multiple-choice question where you are required to pick 2 or more options from a list. Note that you need to get the selections exactly right or you will receive no points. I found the SysOps exam had many more of these types of questions than the Sol Arch exam, and several required you to pick up to 4 correct responses.
I hope this helps some of you out there and all the best on your path to certification! As always, feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read)
- get a free tier AWS account
- start with the Solution Architect – Associate certification
- take the acloudguru course(s) and practice exam questions
- read the AWS official study guides and take their practice questions (very close to actual exam)
- take the other certifications if you can at around the same time (60% content overlap)
Links to the materials identified above follow.
The official exam format is covered off here for the Solution Architect – Associate exam and here for the SysOps Administrator – Associate exam.
There is a lot of overlap (around 60%) between the exams so consider taking all three around the same time. I found SysOps Administrator the most difficult, followed by SA - Associate and finally the Developer Associate.
Start with the Solution Architect – Associate exam as it covers off the core services such as S3, EC2, VPCs and so on. These come up in the other exams but you may find that some courses for the Developer and SysOps exams treat this as assumed knowledge or skim this content as they assume you have already taken the Sol Arch exam. Sol Arch - Associate is also the key certification if you want to take the Professional or Specialty certifications.
My first course on AWS was a virtual classroom session. I personally didn’t find this particularly useful. The presenter was quite knowledgable however the virtual format was a bit limiting and as with any classroom type experience the group tends to be brought down to the lowest common denominator so some people may find the pace frustrating if they come with some prior experience.
Get an AWS account. You can get a ‘free-tier’ account which will let you play around with the management console for free, provided your resource usage stays below AWS’s stated thresholds. For learning purposes like running labs and so on the free-tier is perfect and you shouldn’t need to incur any costs. Tear down your resources when done to help manage your costs – this is pretty easy to do but note there are some resource types that have charges associated with them that may be less obvious – ELBs, EIPs so keep an eye on your billing page and set up CloudWatch notifications. If you’re using multiple regions you need to keep an eye on the resources you’ve created in each one.
I let too much time pass between my first AWS course and when I started studying in earnest, meaning I basically had to go back and learn the content from scratch.
I started with online training from cloudacademy.com. I felt it was lacking so eventually headed over to udemy.com and found the acloud.guru courses. I bought all of these and the question banks.
udemy.com acloudguru SA – Associate
udemy.com acloudguru SysOps Administrator – Associate
udemy.com acloudguru Developer – Associate
udemy.com acloudguru SA – Associate Practice Tests
udemy.com acloudguru SA – Developer Practice Tests
No test bank appears to be available at this time from acloudguru for the sysops exam.
OK – so the acloudguru courses were at the time of writing $15AUD, which is a steal. There are videos for all major areas of the exam and the focus is on passing the exam so you spend time on the questions that are likely to come up rather than reading about the sprawling set of services available on AWS. The courses also have video labs and some source code supplied. I used Microsoft OneNote to take key screen grabs and take notes as I watched the course which I revised prior to the exam. You can set the video to play at higher speed (up to x2) to get through the content more quickly. The Udemy mobile app is great as you can download the course materials and play them offline, say on the train. You can also take the practice tests on the go.
I also used the following two guides:
AWS Solution Architect – Associate Official Study Guide (Amazon.com)
AWS SysOps Administrator – Associate Official Study Guide (Amazon.com)
These are fairly hefty tomes at 500+ pages each however I strongly recommend reading them for two reasons. Firstly, they are more comprehensive and professionally written than acloudguru. Secondly, and more critically, they come with a large number of practice questions. I can’t underscore this part enough – these books’ practice questions are much closer to the AWS exam questions than acloudguru’s. To put this in context, I would score around 10% higher on the acloudguru question sets than the official study guides. The marks I achieved on the exam where almost the same as my scores on the official study guide question sets. Even if you aren’t going to take the official study guide’s test questions, just be aware that you need to be scoring in the 90’s on the acloudguru tests to pass comfortably.
Finally, at the time of sistting the exams I didn’t have a lot of hands-on AWS experience but still passed. I’d say this is largely due to my background in Technology Architecture. If you don’t have some kind of technical background involving infrastructure, networking, storage systems, virtualisation or being a sysadmin I’d recommend you get very hands-on to reinforce how the services work and some of their quirks.
As for the exams themselves there is some pressure to keep answering questions due to time constraints. I found with a relatively considered pace I still had 20mins to go back and double-check any flagged questions. The usual techniques for multiple-choice exams apply here – there are usually two options that can be eliminated immediately and you can take a guess (if necessary!) to choose between the remaining two options. Be careful with the 2nd type of multiple-choice question where you are required to pick 2 or more options from a list. Note that you need to get the selections exactly right or you will receive no points. I found the SysOps exam had many more of these types of questions than the Sol Arch exam, and several required you to pick up to 4 correct responses.
I hope this helps some of you out there and all the best on your path to certification! As always, feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
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