Passed AWS CSAA

AJ2k

Hey Guys
I passed CSAA this weekend.
I have no prior experience working with Cloud technologies. I recently passed AZ900 and CCP.

I used Stephane Mareek's CSAA course and Jon Bonso's practice exams from Udemy as well as the AWS site itself. I highly recommend these sources. Neal Davis's content is also very good. I also used YouTube for further breakdown on specific services.

I finished the test with about 40 minutes left on the clock. I would say the test was very challenging but not very hard. The questions were mostly straight forward. I had more questions with RDS than I expected. Apart from that, the test was well balanced and covered nearly all the objectives.

dandadynamite

How much more difficult is it than the CCP?

itdept

It is much more difficult. You would need to be comfortably scoring 75% on Jon Bonso's practice exams from Udemy to go for the exam IMO. CCP tests on "what does this service do?". CSAA takes same approach but asks what service would you use in this situation where you have X and Y to consider. Customer has a certain environment (RDS database) and wants to move to cloud. What AWS service would they use.

JDMurray

One good thing is that all of the AWS associate exams (and the CCP) contain a lot of overlapping material about AWS services (e.g., VCP, EC2, S3, Route53, EBS, etc.). Once you have the basic AWS operations and services down for one exam you have them for all. Being so service-heavy, this is one reason why the CSAA is usually the recommended first AWS exam to study for.

AJ2k

dandadynamite said:

How much more difficult is it than the CCP?

Its more in depth than CCP. The above resources should be enough. I found the test challenging but not difficult. It only took me about 3.5 weeks after CCP to feel ready for the CSAA but I had alot of free time to study. It also depends on your ability to learn and retain your information as well as how much time you put into studying.

Following CSAA, I started studying for both Microsoft AZ104 and AWS Developer Associate but with the upcoming changes to the AZ104, I took a break from AWS and focused on AZ104. I took AZ104 and passed it this week.  AWS Developer, I will be taking next month and possible Sysops Admin following since there is so much overlap between the services.