Passed: SAA-C01 AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Exam
Earlier this year I fell in love with AWS, and since then have drastically increased my knowledge on the platform and the services it offers via in-depth studying and working with it hands-on. Today I was able to validate the skills that I have gained by successfully passing the SAA-C01 examination and officially becoming an AWS Certified Solutions Architect!
The challenging part of AWS is the immense number of services available, and what one can do with all of those services. However, once you get a grasp on the core services, you learn just how easy it is to do amazing things with the platform. I can't wait to keep going!
As for resources used in studying for the exam:
- The AWS Solutions Architect Associate course on
LinuxAcademy.com
Associate (2nd Edition) from Sybex
- The AWS Cloud Best Practices Whitepaper
- The AWS Well-Architected Framework Whitepaper
- The AWS Solutions Architect Associate Exam Readiness
curriculum
- AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam sample questions
- Official AWS SAA-C01 practice exam (SAA-P01)
Additionally, prior to these studies, I had also used the resources found here, and completed the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam.
After working completely through the above resources, I actually found the exam to be a breeze. Hopefully that means that I was well prepared! The test is 65 questions, and you have 130 minutes to complete the exam. I finished with about 50 minutes left, taking my time and ensuring each question received my full attention.
The course on LinuxAcademy was fantastic, and provides you a lot of knowledge and experience in the 30+ hour course.
The Sybex study guide, while full of great information, goes much further in depth than the exam required. I am ok with this though, as it gives you a deeper learning experience and a more solid understanding of the AWS services and what can be accomplished with them. My only critique is that the quizzes at the end of each chapter often have poorly worded questions, or require an understanding of topics not yet covered.
The AWS whitepapers do a great job of not diving into the technical application of the covered services, but tying together scenarios in which certain services should be used and how they can work together.
The exam readiness course through the AWS Training website is a great resource once you are just about ready to take the exam. It drives home some key points to keep in mind during the exam, covers heavily tested topics, and goes over a lot of practice questions to familiarize you with how the exam will be formatting questions and what AWS is looking for. This two hour course is highly recommended - and free!
To get an even better feel for the exam, there are a couple of AWS-offered options. On the exam information page, AWS offers a PDF with 10 sample questions. It is free, and recommended! You get a feel of how questions are formatted, and it also is a good mini-test to see where you are in terms of understanding a number of services. AWS also offers the official practice exam, which is normally $20. Luckily, I had a coupon from passing the Cloud Practitioner exam to receive this practice exam for free, because it is not worth the $20. While it does give you 25 questions (and 30 minutes to complete the exam), you are only allowed to take the exam once and it will not tell you which questions you get correct or incorrect, or why they were incorrect. You will only be given a breakdown of the five areas of the test, what percentage you received in each, and your overall score, to give you an idea of areas in which you may require further study. For a single-shot and no in-depth information, it is not worth the $20. If you have a free coupon, take it, but otherwise, it is not worth your time. LinuxAcedmy's course includes a full (65 questions each attempt) practice exam, and they recommend you take it three times in order to get all (or most) of the questions in their question-bank. You can also take it as many times as you want, and it will breakdown your attempts to tell you what you got right and wrong, and why your wrong answers were wrong.
So, what is next? I am excited to keep diving deeper into AWS and building on my DevOps skills. First, I am going on vacation, but once I return, I look forward to diving into Chef and Puppet, and continuing to learn AWS CLI and other manners of using scripting to manage my AWS deployments.