My Golden Path To AWS Solution Architect Certification
Prologue
As a DevOps & Cloud architect and manager, I am required to understand the
developers’ objectives and their perception of the way to obtain
them. Accordingly, follow their thought process and continuously
introduce them with innovative solutions that cater to them
needs.
Through my interaction with the AWS Platform, I have explored
its unique and effective set of services to expand developers’
options.
To understand the potential solutions for my internal clients
I am constantly required to master this ever-changing frontier, I
have decided to test myself again (My second time) as a calibration mechanism.
Needless to say, I find it a pretty good skill measurement.
Content Outline
Before we dive into this article, please review the Solution Architect -
Associate certification exam blueprint.
My practical “Golden Path”
So after reviewing the exam’s blueprint, you are probably a little frightened, disoriented, and don’t know where to begin. Don’t worry, I will present to you my Golden Path for passing the exam successfully!
My “Golden Path” comprised of the following steps:
- Comprehensive understanding of the test’s material — Course
- Continuous memorization
- Focusing on the current cardinal exam’s topics
- Practice exams
- Tips for the exam
Course — The Backbone
Studying the topics for the exam on your own could be very hard. The number of nuances, offerings, and details is just too much to handle on your own, thus a course that will summarize everything for you is mandatory.
While scouting for the best courses online, I encountered these two great courses and eventually bought them both.
The Best Value For Money
This outstanding course by Stéphane Maarek is by far the best value for money course in the market for this specific certification.
Stéphane is a very methodical and articulated instructor, his course’s lectures are well explained and well demonstrated.
Nevertheless, be prepared to invest a considerable amount of time in this course.
The new version of the course is about 27 hours long, which is by far the longest course in this segment. The course costs around 14$ and is worth every penny!
Comprehensive And Real-Life Scenarios Oriented
This amazing course by Adrian Cantrill is by far the best course around.
Adrian is a very methodical and experienced instructor, his course’s lectures are well explained and well demonstrated.
The real advantage of Adrian’s courses is the real-life scenario-oriented explanations, including great decks, repositories, and diagrams
The course costs around 40$ and is worth every penny as well!
Memorization
You need to continuously memorize what you have learned in the course to the level of the details!
The exam strives to see whether you know the technical subtleties of the cloud offerings, a conceptual understanding alone would not suffice.
To achieve this mastery of cloud offerings, you will need to memorize a lot of material.
There are three popular ways to effectively memorize the material:
- Choose a “Cheat Sheet” and follow it:
A cheat sheet is a great method to constantly review everything you are learning.
I think those two are the best fee ones:
- Digital Cloud
- Tutorial Dojo
2. Flashcards
Create your own stack of flashcards with key elements that you wish to memorize or use other people’s stacks instead.
3. Write your own notes
By far the best method to prepare to the test you have two options:
- Digital notes- Udemy allows you to write notes on top of the video lectures of the course and review them later in a clear interface, which is nice if you are fond of it.
- Hard copy notes- Print the course’s PDF and write on top of the slides every clarification that you found important and every exam tip that the instructor tells you to take into consideration.
I found it to be the most effective way because it kept me concentrated at all times and helped me to review and continuously memorize the details of each lecture.
Focusing on the current cardinal exam’s topics
This is one of the most important sections that many people tend to ignore, which is very unfortunate.
When you completed the course check out this Reddit thread
It offers many test-taking information, tactics, and methods.
In order to pass the test you should have a complete understating of the following services:
- Ec2
- ASG & Loadbalances
- S3
- Databases
Besides those topics, all the other services tested are frequently changing.
Therefore, when you survey the Reddit thread mentioned above.
Practice exams
Sign up for the Tutorial Dojo practice exams.
The practice exams offered there are slightly harder than the real ones but they will give you a very good idea of what to expect from the real exam.
The practice exams cost 15$.
Tips for the exam
- Do not sign-up for the exam unless you are sure of your knowledge- Each exam costs 150$ and you will need to wait for two weeks to get a chance to retake it.
Better safe than sorry. - Test center- If possible, take the exam in a test center. There are various advantages to it, but the most important one is that (in contrast to the home exam format) you are able to go to the lavatory.
It may seem funny but believe me that you do not want to analyze serverless applications scenarios with a full bladder, while time is running backward :) - Do not linger- If you are reading a question for more than a minute just flag it and move on, it is quite easy to be sucked into an interesting and complex scenario question, but before you know it your time will be drained.
- Time extension- if you are not a native English speaker, you are eligible for a 30-minute time extension.
For more details click on this link.
Epilog
I am sure that if you will stick to the “Golden Path” game plan you will be just fine!
I hope you have found it helpful, please feel free to contact me with any questions.
Good luck!
Or Maman
www.linkedin.com/in/ormaman
Or.maman@nice.com
