Saturday, November 12, 2016

AWS Solutions Architect - Associate Certification

I have been messing around with AWS on little side projects and experiments for about the last year. I did find it quite a daunting experience as there is just so much to learn, do, try, break, struggle, deploy, re-learn and then eventually cheer when everything works.
So I decided to focus a little more and spend the time actually learning how to hopefully do all this properly. I have always found a good way to force myself into the theory and step back from diving directly into implementing solutions is certifications.

I booked the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam for 4 weeks into the future and set a couple hours a day aside to study.

Main 2 resources I used:

  • A Cloud Guru
    • I did watched and worked through both the Associate Developer and Associate Architect courses. There is quite a bit of overlap, but still that just meant that I had covered some of the really important bits more than once.
    • I really enjoyed Ryan's courses, I did mostly watch on 1.3x speed as it does sometimes feel a little slow and I had set myself a 4 week dead line.
    • I would recommend them to anyone starting who's looking to learn about AWS, for practical real life use or certification.
    • The discussion section / forum is a great source of tips for the exams as well.
  • Cloud Academy
    • I only signed up for their 7 day free trial, so did not work through all of their labs. However they have a ton of quiz questions and explanations which is a great way to study / practice specifically for the certification.
    • Their summary video was also good and covered some content not covered in depth on a cloud guru.
    • They also had some quick easy reading blog posts highlighting important practical information when starting with AWS... listed in Other resources below.
Other Resources:

The main aws faqs to look at:

In the end I felt I had personally learnt a lot, not only on the exam topics but in general practical application as well. Main areas were especially with regards to VPCs, Networking and Security. It was well worth the intense 4 week study session.

End Result:

Overall Score: 90%
Topic Level Scoring:
1.0 Designing highly available, cost efficient, fault tolerant, scalable systems : 90%
2.0 Implementation/Deployment: 83%
3.0 Security: 90%
4.0 Troubleshooting: 100%











Next up.. AWS Solutions Architect - Professional

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