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:

• http://jayendrapatil.com
• http://cloudacademy.com/blog/aws-bastion-host-nat-instances-vpc-peering-security/
• http://cloudacademy.com/blog/top-13-amazon-virtual-private-cloud-best-practices/
• http://cloudacademy.com/blog/introduction-to-aws-billing-and-cost-management-tools-part-1-of-3/
• http://cloudacademy.com/blog/introduction-to-aws-billing-and-cost-management-tools-part-2-of-3/
• http://cloudacademy.com/blog/introduction-to-aws-billing-and-cost-management-tools-part-3-of-3/
• http://cloudacademy.com/blog/your-first-day-on-aws-10-pitfalls-and-how-to-avoid-them/

The main aws faqs to look at:

• https://aws.amazon.com/vpc/faqs/
• https://aws.amazon.com/s3/faqs/
• https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/
• https://aws.amazon.com/route53/faqs/

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