How I passed my AWS Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) exam

After I passed my AWS CCP exam in July 2022, I gave myself 3 months to work on my hands-on skills and gain in-depth knowledge of AWS. And what better to prove your skills than to do some projects and get a relevant cert!

When going for Associate-level certs, AWS Solutions Architect is the most recommended one because it gets you to understand how the architecture works and how you can design cost efficient and fault tolerant architectures for your organization.

My SAA-C03 Cert

I booked my Exam for October 2022 and started playing around with the AWS console. For the certification specifically, I used the following resources:

1. I got the Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C03 course from Stephane Maarek on Udemy. He covers almost all the topics required to understand and pass the exam. The hands-on part is also covered well and I’ll recommend it.
2. I got some mock tests from Udemy too. They were from Jon Bonso and they helped me to get an idea of the exam and the type of questions I’ll be practicing. Highly recommended. Alternatively, you can get Adrian Cantrill’s course which is said to be alot more deep and gets your basics right before moving to more technical part.
3. The official AWS guide — Go to their certifications page and check everything related to the exam, including a few sample questions too. It gives you a rough idea about the exam which is also covered in Stephane’s course.
4. Hands-On!! I can’t stress this enough. Follow along the course videos or do something on your own, especially the networking part. Its really important to understand how VPC’s, load balancers, NAT gateways, etc. work, and doing it yourself is the best way to understand. I created several mini projects while preparing for the exam and it really helped with the preparation.
5. Join any AWS community groups. There will be some on LinkedIn or Reddit subs. AWS has also a forum that you can access once you’ve passed a certification: AWS Certified Global Community. Or on reddit, there’s a sub called AWSCertifications. These forums are amazing and a great resource to discuss and get any help.

Preparing for SAA-C03 is not that hard and with the right amount of efforts, its very much achievable. If you have any queries, feel free to reach me out on my LinkedIn. Good luck!