On the road to being an AWS Professional

Mitechniq

So late last month I passed the AWS CSA Associate exam and just this week I received my bonus as my company promised - it actually came through a lot quicker than I expected. Yesterday we had a town hall meeting on AWS, the VP of my company encouraged some of us to pursue the Professional exam. No bonuses this time, but he did lead on that the Cloud space is in such demand that whoever passed the exam by August would have their compensation evaluated based on market value. I took that comment as a chance to get a nice salary bump. This was not part of my plans for the year, and I had no intentions of pursuing any cloud certifications. What is driving me now is that AWS might be adding a 'Security' certification by the end of the year - part of the prereq is having your professional certification. I am knee deep in Security, and this might not actually derail me in my career goals as I once thought.

DoubleNNs

Sounds awesome! What are your sources on that Security cert? Does it look like they'll be introducing any other new certifications this year?

Mitechniq

Our company is a Primier Consulting Partner and our VP mentioned a Security and Big Data certification coming out this year. I'm guessing they will probably introduce them during re:Invent.

chanakyajupudi

I have heard this too. But the timeline is a little varied. They did introduce the courses so hoping they introduce the certifications too.

Mitechniq

Well I have been deep in my studies for the last 3 months, I decided to take advantage of Linux Academy and take their Sys-Ops and Dev course to get a better grasp on some of the material that was light in the Architect course. This is the approach I took before even going through the CSA-Pro course:



Linux Academy







Developer Course







IAM Roles and API Credentials with Python




Amazon S3






Dynamo DB






SNS







SQS







CloudFormation






Simple WorkFlow Service




Sysops Course







Monitoring and Metrics





Networking






Deployment and Provisioning





Data Management






Ensure data integrity and access controls when using the AWS platform



AD and AWS







AD and AWS Service Options





Using the Directory





Ansible and AWS






Advanced AWS Security





Docker and Elastic BeanStalk





AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional




I am also enrolled in the Advanced Architecting on AWS and Exam Readiness Workshop, which I started on Monday. I hope to take my first crack at the exam mid-July. Thankfully I enrolled in AWS's educator program and they sent me a discount for 50% on their exams.

Mitechniq

So a little behind in scheduling the exam but I think I am finally at the end of my studies and booked the exam for August the 8th. Since the beginning of the year, I have gone through 3 AWS projects for my company, and I hope that experience helps me rationalize some of the awkwardly long questions and answers. This thread is mostly me posting to myself. Nonetheless, I will do an extensive write up once I complete the exam.

cowill

How long did you study for the CSA?

Mitechniq

It took me 2 months for the CSA -Associates and I am on my 3rd month of studying the CSA - Professional.

JoJoCal19

Do you feel the 2 months for the CSA was overkill? I've ready on A Cloud Guru and elsewhere that it's recommended 2-3 weeks for each associates level cert, and that anything more is too long as you'll forget what you learned at the beginning. I'm wondering if that's true.

DoubleNNs

I think it depends on how much studying you do per day/week on how long it'll take.
Additionally, with forgetting - I think it depends on how often you use AWS in the duration of studying and/or how often you review what you've already learned.

I don't think 2 months for the CSA is overkill - it's a lot of info to digest, especially if you are new to AWS.

Mitechniq

I will caveat in saying when I started this adventure into AWS I had 'no' experience whats over - honestly I didn't even have any desire in anything Cloud. I had to take several required APN courses and did a lot of hands on training. This approach has not only helped me for the exam but placed me in the forefront of my company and like I previously said, I have had the luxury of being on 3 full AWS projects since then.

Mitechniq

So it looks like I am #2445, didn't really think I was going to pass when I hit the submit button. As promised, here some things I did to pass the exam.

The other resources I used besides LinuxAcademy was the AWS Use Cases and the AWS Architecture site. I was surprised how some of the questions seem to align with the reference architectures.

https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/
https://aws.amazon.com/architecture/


Finally, these past two weeks I watched re-invent videos everywhere I could, I gathered a list of them below:


https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyD48uviZs50oJ0d6H2GcGGpi6SlgWNnq


As the exam goes, I tried to break down the question, for example, a question might ask for security. I would cross all answers that did not meet these criteria. Next, the question would say something like cost effective or high availability. Again I would cross out from the remaining answers any answer that did meet not the new criteria. Hopefully, that would get me to the final solution or at least 50/50.


Work to what is specifically stated or requested in the question, not what is omitted. Assumptions are always incorrect. If the question is focused or is requesting you to create the ‘most secure’ application, don’t assume that between RDS and DynamoDB, that DynamoDB is the accepted answer. From an efficiency standpoint, DynamoDB probably is the better DB solution. However, the RDS answer might be the most secure answer based on other parameters.


Anyone planning on taking the exam soon, please send me an email and I will certainly help any way I can.

SixtyCycle

Thanks for the posts. I started my free Tier more than a year ago but did not follow up after I spun up a few instances. I'm now ready to take a second crack and will be pursuing the CSA too. I'm finishing up the AWS Fundamentals course from Pluralsight as a primer and will be signing up to LinuxAcademy to prepare for the exam. What's the average hours per week you spent studying for the CSA? Any other tips? Congrats on the pass!

Mitechniq

For the associates probably 2-3 hours a day including my Saturday mornings. This is with no previous AWS experience.

Nadzz

Congrats