A few years back in 2021, during a break from work, I started to study in my free time for the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification. If you don’t know this cert, it is an entry level introduction to AWS, designed to give a high level overview of the services available, and the core concepts and terminology.
Despite spending some time preparing for this certification I never actually booked the exam. When I returned to work all of my forward momentum with the certification disappeared and I gave up on it.
This year, after parting ways with my former employer, I decided that before starting my new job hunt I would make good use of my time and finally get certified. I gave the practice tests for the Cloud Practitioner certification another go and failed miserably, but rather than learning all of this content again I decided that it would be more beneficial to focus on the more advanced Solutions Architect Associate certification.
Since the Cloud Practitioner seemed a bit too entry level for me, I looked into the next step on the AWS path - Solutions Architect Associate. This certification focuses on a broad range of AWS services and how to design architectures using them. There is a heavy focus on designing cost optimised, performant solutions which line up with the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
I already had a pretty good knowledge of several AWS services including CloudFront, S3, RDS (specifically Aurora) and IAM. But for a Solutions Architect this is scratching the surface of the stuff you need to know to take this exam, so I did a quick Google and got hold of the resources required to study for it.
There is a very well trodden path to success for this certification. If you follow r/AWSCertifications on Reddit you’ll have seen this advice many times, but if not, here it is again.
There are two very good courses to choose between to learn everything you need to know:
I opted for Stephanes course and found it really good.
Since I had used Stephanes Udemy course, I also got his practice exam pack. It has 6 exams with a wide range of questions covering all topics. I failed 4 out of the 6 first time, reviewed the questions that I got wrong and tried them again after a couple of weeks after re-studying the areas I wasn’t confident with (to avoid just memorising the answers). I passed them all with scores ranging between 75 and 98%.
The other excellent resource is the Tutorials Dojo exam pack by Jon Bonso. The format of these exams is very similar to the actual exam and the review mode is especially helpful. When you get a question wrong the explanation is very clear, which helps to actually learn from mistakes rather than just memorising the correct answer.
I’d recommend both of these test packs but if you’re on a tight budget and only want one, go for the Tutorials Dojo pack. The explanations for each question are excellent and these exams were crucial in helping me to prepare.
The offical docs and white papers are a bit drier than the material you’ll cover in the courses, but they’re still invaluable. Most of the answers to the exam questions can be found by reading the FAQs for each service. There’s a lot of ground to cover, but if you want to actually learn the services rather than just memorise facts, the official docs are pretty important.
I opted for taking the exam in a test centre. Aside from doing the test on a knackered old refurbed PC, everything went smoothly. The question pool in the exam had more machine learning questions than I was expecting, but otherwise I felt fairly well prepared after spending a lot of time doing practice tests.
I spent about 8 weeks preparing and I feel that this was more than enough time. I studied for 2-3 hours every day and filled 3 notebooks with notes, which felt like a lot, but really helped to consolidate everything that I learned from the course.
Finally, I wrote short notes about every question I answered incorrectly during practice tests and revised this list of facts before the exam.
After finishing the exam, results are emailed to you within a couple of days. I got my results about 24 hours later and passed the test.
While a certification alone doesn’t prove that you can actually do anything in AWS, it does go a long way towards building confidence in your knowledge. Gaining this certification has given me a great confidence boost and spurred me on to continue learning more about AWS and pursue the Developer Associate certification next.
Apparently Solutions Architect Associate is one of the most popular cloud certifications, and it definitely lays a good groundwork for building further AWS knowledge. I’d definitely recommend giving it a go if you want to work with the cloud.