AWS Solutions Architect - Associate: Pass. Here is what I did...
Tuningislife
Member Posts: 49 ■■■□□□□□□□
So my company needed to have two people that were AWS Solutions Architect - Associate certified for our reseller account, so I took the test last week to enable us to have it. I probably spent around 60+ hours watching videos and doing labs in additions to the real world experience I have.
Here is what I did:
Real world:
3 years of AWS experience as a Systems Engineer working in EC2, ELB, Route53, Lambda, Storage Gateway, S3, etc. So I was very familiar with this stuff. Also have a Vmware certificate for data center virtualization, and have worked with BIND previously, so well rounded experience helps.
Training:
Cloud Academy certification tract for the AWS Solutions Architect - Associate (way too much emphasis placed on learning some stuff that I would not need to know in depth, such as DynamoDB). Lots of labs. Doing labs is good.
acloud.guru certification course for the AWS Solutions Architect - Associate (purchased from Udemy on one of the $10 sales). Focused a lot more on all of the different aspects of AWS and didn't go into too much detail on information that was unneeded, and would note when the information was needed. Has some labs, but they are quick and you need to have your free tier account set up. Goes through how to do that though, which is nice.
Where I found I could have improved:
Little bit of security (Which is odd considering my background). Things like accounts between VPCs.
Big Data and Data Analytics programs (Athena, EMR, CloudSearch, Elasticsearch Service, Kinesis, Data Pipeline, QuickSight, AWS Glue). acloud.guru covered this information, but I ran out of time and sort of skimmed it. I would recommend learning it well.
A little more on Autoscaling.
Here is my breakdown:
Overall Score: 70%
Topic Level Scoring:
1.0 Designing highly available, cost efficient, fault tolerant, scalable systems: 75%
4.0 Troubleshooting: 40%
2.0 Implementation/Deployment: 80%
3.0 Security: 66%
Here is what I did:
Real world:
3 years of AWS experience as a Systems Engineer working in EC2, ELB, Route53, Lambda, Storage Gateway, S3, etc. So I was very familiar with this stuff. Also have a Vmware certificate for data center virtualization, and have worked with BIND previously, so well rounded experience helps.
Training:
Cloud Academy certification tract for the AWS Solutions Architect - Associate (way too much emphasis placed on learning some stuff that I would not need to know in depth, such as DynamoDB). Lots of labs. Doing labs is good.
acloud.guru certification course for the AWS Solutions Architect - Associate (purchased from Udemy on one of the $10 sales). Focused a lot more on all of the different aspects of AWS and didn't go into too much detail on information that was unneeded, and would note when the information was needed. Has some labs, but they are quick and you need to have your free tier account set up. Goes through how to do that though, which is nice.
Where I found I could have improved:
Little bit of security (Which is odd considering my background). Things like accounts between VPCs.
Big Data and Data Analytics programs (Athena, EMR, CloudSearch, Elasticsearch Service, Kinesis, Data Pipeline, QuickSight, AWS Glue). acloud.guru covered this information, but I ran out of time and sort of skimmed it. I would recommend learning it well.
A little more on Autoscaling.
Here is my breakdown:
Overall Score: 70%
Topic Level Scoring:
1.0 Designing highly available, cost efficient, fault tolerant, scalable systems: 75%
4.0 Troubleshooting: 40%
2.0 Implementation/Deployment: 80%
3.0 Security: 66%
Completed: B.S. & M.S. in Cybersecurity, and MBA @ UMUC
Comments
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gateway
Member Posts: 232
Congratulations!!
Blogging my AWS studies here! http://www.itstudynotes.uk/aws-csa -
averageguy72
Member Posts: 323 ■■■■□□□□□□
Congrats!CISSP / CCSP / CCSK / CRISC / CISM / CISA / CASP / Security+ / Network+ / A+ / CEH / eNDP / AWS Certified Advanced Networking - Specialty / AWS Certified Security - Specialty / AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional / AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional / AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate / AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate / AWS Certified Developer - Associate / AWS Cloud Practitioner -
nawanis
Member Posts: 20 ■□□□□□□□□□
Congratulations on passing. Thanks for sharing your journey to achieve AWS & very helpful for all who are preparing to get this done. My journey starts soon. I just cleared CCSP and want to relax couple of weeks
Thanks again.
Ashok -
userav
Member Posts: 56 ■■□□□□□□□□
Cleared CCSP and I want to relax couple of weeks tooCongratulations on passing. Thanks for sharing your journey to achieve AWS & very helpful for all who are preparing to get this done. My journey starts soon. I just cleared CCSP and want to relax couple of weeks -
Tuningislife
Member Posts: 49 ■■■□□□□□□□
I personally like the study material from acloud.guru. I will probably end up using it for studying more certs.
https://acloud.guru/learn/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate
I have a subscription to Cloud Academy through work, but I don't feel like it was complete enough.Completed: B.S. & M.S. in Cybersecurity, and MBA @ UMUC -
stlsmoore
Member Posts: 515 ■■■□□□□□□□
Congrats and thanks for the info on your study methods. I plan on sitting this cert in late February, acloud guru is on my list of tools to use before the exam date.My Cisco Blog Adventure: http://shawnmoorecisco.blogspot.com/
Don't Forget to Add me on LinkedIn!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnrmoore
