Hello, my name is Philipp and I am working as a machine learning engineer at a technology incubation startup. At work Idesign and implement cloud-native machine learning architectures for fin-tech and insurance companies.
I started to work with AWS 2 1/2 years ago. Since then I had built many projects both privately and at work using AWSServices. I like the Serverless services of aws the most. For me, Serverless first always applies.
In short, I have several years of professional and part-time experience with AWS, but no certificate. I know thathands-on experience and knowledge are more important than certificates. But sometimes you need a sheet of paper to provethat.
Disclaimer
This article won’t show how everyone gets certified in under 30h of studying. Instead, it should motivate others whohave the same experience as me but are too lazy.
The Certificate
So a few weeks ago I decided to do the "AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate SAA-C02" certificate.
The "AWS Solutions Architect – Associate SAA-C02" certificate validates the ability to architect and deploy dynamicallyscalable, highly available, fault-tolerant, and reliable applications on AWS. The exam takes 130 minutes and consists of65 questions
Research
First I researched, what are the exam criteria. According to theAWSSolution_Architect-_Associate_SAA-C02_Exam_Blue_Printit consists out of those 4 topics.
Second, I researched online courses and summary/ cheat sheets. I quickly found an online course as I was alreadyfamiliar with a cloud guru. After some googling, I foundJayendra's Blog,which has a cheat sheet for almost every topic.
Study
Initially, I watched the"AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C02" course on a cloud guru.Due to my experienced, I watched the course at 2x speed. Every episode that contained a lab have I implementedindependently afterwards.
After I completed the course I did one practice exam from a cloud guru and achieved 78%. Therefore I booked my practicein 3 days. In these 3 days, I studied 4 hours a day, did 10 practice exams, and learned with the cheatsheets.
Learning Path Overview
| Week | Course Chapter | Topic | Time invested |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1&2 | Introduction & 10,000-Foot Overview | 1/2h |
| 1 | 3 | Identity and Access Management & S3 | 2h |
| 2 | 4 | EC2 | 3h |
| 3 | 5 | Databases on AWS | 2h |
| 3 | 6 | Advanced IAM | 1/2h |
| 4 | 7 | Route 53 | 1h |
| 4 | 8 | VPCs | 2h |
| 5 | 9 | HA Architecture | 2h |
| 6 | 10 | Applications | 1h |
| 6 | 11 | Security | 1/2h |
| 6 | 12 | Serverless | 1h |
| 7 | - | 10x Practice Exams & studying cheatsheets | 12h |
In total it took me 7 Weeks and ~28h to complete the "AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate SAA-C02"certificate.
Exam
On the day of the exam, I took the last practice exam and did every quiz from the a cloud guru course. I took my exam athome through PearsonVue. As an exemplary examinee, I fulfilled all requirements in advance and was ready for my exam.The check-in was very easy and the Instructor was very kind. It took around 10 minutes to start.
It took me 80 minutes to finish and pass thhttps://www.philschmid.de/static/blog/my-path-to-become-a-certified-solution-architect/certificate.pngarchitect/certificate.png" alt="My AWS Certificate">
Learnings
Practice exams are good, but due to the fact that AWS is developing so fast, they don´t have to be accurate. In my case,I had around 8–10 Questions about storage gateway, efs, fsx and in the practice exams way less of them. My learning fromthis is I should rather do one less practice exam and read some more documentation.
My second learning is that the confirmation of your abilities is something great to be proud of.
Thanks for reading and a special Thanks toJayendra's Blog anda cloud guru.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. You can connect with me onTwitter and LinkedIn orwrite me an email.
