Advanced Architecting vs Sysops Admin AWS training. Can anyone give insight?

Venom84

Hi guys,

me again.

I'm going to be able to take one official AWS training course this year. I was thinking of the Sysops training. Reason because apparently the Sysops Exam is the toughest of the associate exams and I'm just starting out with my AWS 'career'.

I'm very torn between the Advanced Architecting and the Sysops Admin training. Since I "only" get to attend one training, I want to get the most out of it. The Advanced training does sound very appealing but I'm not sure if it might be too advanced just yet. I can't take it before August though, so I do intend to have at least the SA associate exam under my belt till then.

Anyone one took both and can compare and give some insight/thoughts?

Thanks!

cochi78

Well, I teach both regularly as an AWS accredited trainer

The Advanced Architecting course is pretty heavy on stuff like Multi-VPC/Multi-Account, HA techniques as well as security, advanced networking design and so on. If you went with some cheap prep course (Acloud.Guru or LinuxAcademy) you will probably have the basics to understand Adv. Architecture. But those are still prep-courses and geared more towards the exams and not providing the full picture.

Without knowing more about your background, I would rather recommend the SysOp training. Although I must say, that I find it much too narrow on the IaaS services (specifically EC2 and such) and it doesn't give as broad of a picture about AWS' offers than the Architecting (not Advanced) course.

A lot of details matter here - what's the chosen cert path, what's your actual career plan and so on. Just choosing SysOp because it's the toughest Associate exam is probably not the best strategy. If you want to go along and later make the DevOps, though, it is :P

Feel free to nag me with follow-up questions

Venom84

Hi cochi78,

well...if I go by the description here: https://aws.amazon.com/certification/
I'd like to be able to do both at one point. Architect but also provision, operate and manage AWS solutions. I know both trainings probably have high value to them, but since I can only take one and they are both priced the same, I'm just trying to get the best bang for the buck.
As for my background, I worked as a VMware sys admin for many years (vcloud director). So I do know how cloud computing works. And yes I went with cloud guru courses for now.

Thanks!