Preparing for AWS Professional Certification Exams
Professional Architect
Review the Curriculum, spend good time on reading about each domain’s requirements
Consider taking an online course like — https://acloud.guru/learn/aws-certified-solutions-architect-professional. This will give a good jump start. While no course can cover and guarantee the passing, taking the course will give a boost and great starting point.
High Availability and Business Continuity
Read White Papers— http://media.amazonwebservices.com/AWS_Disaster_Recovery.pdf
Costing
Read https://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/aws_pricing_overview.pdf
Understand various instance types and consolidated billing. Read about Reserved instances and know when to use reserved vs on-demand vs spot. For example in EMR, use Reserved for Master, on-demand for Core and Spot for workers. Look for the situation and make an assessment. Another example is if you run only once every day and you have to finish within a stipulated time, then on-demand. If you have flexibility, then spot. If you run most or all times, then use reserved
Deployment management
Read Cloudformation, OpsWorks and Beanstalk. This is also needed in very detail for DevOps engineer Pro. So two birds in 1 stone. Its very possible most have no working experience in OpsWorks and Beanstalk. Its work checking out https://www.qwiklabs.com/. Worth taking all labs on OpsWorks/CFT/ElasticBeansTalk/Cloudfront. WIll give more confidence than just going through docs.
Network Design
Know BGP and Direct connect (VIFs)very well on top of VPC.
ELB Listeners — know when to use TCP (End to end SSL)
How NAT instance configurations can affect throughput and availability
Data Storage
Good understanding of Storage GW
Must read whitepaper
Storage Options (when to use EBS standard vs EBS PIOPS vs I2 insatances)
Security
Must read WhitePaper
How to authenticate Mobile devices to AWS services
How to authenticate Federated users to AWS Console
Good understanding of Cognito/STS Token service
How to use IAM roles to provide AWS permissions using STS
Cross account role for partner access
Use of CloudTrail to track API calls and use Cross account S3 bucket to store logs and analyze
IAM permissions thru Tagging resources
How to deploy IPS/IDS to scale (Intrusion detection/protection)
Scalability & Elasticity
Use of Read replicas and ElasticCache to reduce burden on Read-heavy workloads
Use Cloudfront to scale heavily — watch out for Geographically distributed users scenario
Use of Kinesis — watch out for “realtime analysis, access”
Use SQS to control writes and prevent throttling at DynamoDB etc..
Understand Read/Write capacity in DynamoDB — very much needed on DevOps pro.
Understand SR-IOV and enhanced networking and Jumbo frames
(http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/enhanced-networking.html)
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/network_mtu.html
Cloud Migration & Hybrid Architecture
Understand VM Import Export tool for migration
Storage GW/Data Pipeline/Import export/Snowball — evaluate situations when to use what — for example for several Terabytes of data, use Import export/Snowball. If you use data occasionally use GW cached volumes etc..
Misc
SWF — Know that it supports human interactions
FAQs
CloudFront/VPC/EBS/EC2/DirectConnect/OpsWorks/Beanstalk/DynamoDB/ELB/Cognito
Practice Exam
Make sure you take practice exam from AWS $40. If you score 50% or more, you can be confident you are near readiness. I would say 55–60 % is safe zone. Make sure you are taking in a quiet un-interrupted ambience. 40 questions and 90 min. It won’t be enough, so don’t be surprised if you have to leave a couple behind.
Many people have taken practice exams 2–3 times to get a practice to real exam. Its the same set of questions, but its worth taking more than once.
Exam tips
80 questions, 170 min. Approx 2 min per qn. Except may be 5–10 questions, almost all questions need at least 1 min to read if not more. So very likely many people will run out of time.
If you are not confident about answering, just move on after making a best guess.
Spend extra 30 secs on questions where you can be confident about.
You can mark for review, but very unlikely we will have time to review. Make your best judgement at the first time.
No breaks allowed, so plan around that. If you take a break, they will allow, but clock keeps rolling. Afternoons can have natural slump for many, I would recommend a good breakfast and a morning session.
Its a 3 hour assault, don’t be intimidated by tough questions, keep the motivation up — Good luck. If you pass, pls share the thoughts and help other candidates with useful tips.
DevOps Pro
Read the exam outline thoroughly https://d0.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-devops-pro/AWS_certified_devops_engineer_professional_blueprint.pdf
Consider taking an online course like https://acloud.guru/course/aws-certified-devops-engineer-professional/dashboard
Domain 1:Continuous Delivery and Process Automation
White papers (on top of all recommended WP in the blue print)
Must Read Whitepaper
(https://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/AWS_Blue_Green_Deployments.pdf)
(http://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/overview-of-deployment-options-on-aws.pdf)
Very thorough understanding of below — I recommend walking through entire developer documentation of each product, do tutorials or use qwiklabs to get a feel. Understand docker deployment in each option. Know when to use beanstalk vs opsworks vs CFT in various situations.
OpsWorks
BeansTalk
Cloudformation (Memorize each state, wait conditions/handles, nested stacks, exporting outputs, updating/deleting stacks)
Monitoring, Metrics, and Logging
Good knowledge of Cloudwatch/CW logs/CW events/Kinesis streams to process realtime logs
Security, Governance, and Validation
Must read WhitePaper
How to authenticate Mobile devices to AWS services
How to authenticate Federated users to AWS Console
Good understanding of Cognito/STS Token service
How to use IAM roles to provide AWS permissions using STS
Cross account role for partner access
Use of CloudTrail to track API calls and use Cross account S3 bucket to store logs and analyze
Detailed working on Identity providers / STS
High Availability and Elasticity
Full 9 yards in AutoScaling incl. Hooks/Lifecycle
Scaling / HA in RDS — Read replicas vs Multi-AZ, along with ElasticCache
DynamoDB — deep dive
Using SQS to create decoupled systems to scale and improve resiliency
Kinesis Streams understanding
Deep understanding of EBS performance
Exam tips — The Architect Pro exam tips apply
Good luck — I can be reached at @vagees
Sathiya Shunmugasundaram
AWS Certified Professional (Solution Architect, DevOps Engineer)
AWS Certified Associate (Solution Architect, Developer, SysOps Admin)
