Amazon Web Services Certified!

February 26, 2018
AWS

I was able to get my solutions architect Exam this past week and wanted to share my experience. This was the solutions architect exam available before Feb 2018 and not the new one.

INTRO

Amazon maintains 9 different certifications and specialties that you become certified in. Most of the certifications are valid for 2 years. Some are pre-requests for others; for example, the Solutions Architect Associate is required before taking the professional but some exams such as the Cloud Practioner have no requisites.

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Solutions Architect Associates

I started at Cloudreach in January. We’re a public cloud consulting company and is a partner with all the major cloud platforms including Amazon. Many of my coworkers are AWS certified and so I was set on the path.

My Background

I’ve been a software developer for a while and have deployed my own own applications on my own infrastructure. However, AWS is my least used cloud platform and method of deploying applications. My most familiar VPS or public cloud provider was Google Cloud and digital ocean. So given the challenge, how quickly could I ramp on Amazon core services?

Scaling up

There were primarily 3 resources I used for a month regiment where I was able to skill up quickly.

  • ACloudGuru - A cloud education company. Their AWS certification course is a standard for anyone starting out on AWS. Their forums are also great for questions and tidbit of knowledge.
  • AWS Architect by DolphinEd - Great end of end course with detailed quiz and explanations of answers. Really prepares you for the type of questions.
  • Amazon FAQs - generously read all the AWS FAQS. They’re written really comprehensively at a high level about services.
  • Amazon Developer Guides - Hands-on knowledge of using specific API and services. Info more fleshed out that can be found in the FAQs.

Whats Next?

I’m moving on to my professional exam and start a new regiment! I will probably detail what resources worked for me and be more analytical this time around. The current solutions architect exam is being retired in the next 6 months so the content will be changing on the next exam. The resources for the solutions architect exam.

AWS Cert