Why AWS Certify? — How I Got Certified
In my earlier post, I talked about why I think certification is worthwhile. The process is also interesting to those interested in their own certification, and this post outlines some of the details.
The Certifications
AWS offers a set of certifications at 3 major levels: Associate, Professional, and Specialty, plus an entry-level Cloud Practitioner certification. There are certifications at the Associated and Professional levels that cover some specific viewpoint approaches in AWS as a developer, an operator, or as an architect. The specialty certifications then cover more specific topic areas like security, networking, and big data. The exams I completed first are the Developer and Solutions Architect associate-level exams.
The Developer Associate exam covers topics focused on writing and running applications in AWS. This covers a lot of what you would need up front to successfully launch a workload and start to run it at scale. It introduces and explains some of the core services you would use. The exam dedicates a large section to EC2 concepts, including instance types, security groups, and storage options. One of the trickiest areas is VPC networking. The Developer exam covers the basics you would need to launch apps, but it still covers some tricky concepts. It covers other core services in detail like S3, SQS, and DynamoDB. New exams cover a lot of ground in Lambda and other serverless services as well. The exam is not so much about memorizing numbers and statistics, but there are some core limits and defaults that come up as exam questions. Otherwise, some of the exam questions are situational, posing questions about an application choice and there is a best correct answer.
The Solutions Architect Associate exam is broader and covers more services and how to run workloads in them. It overlaps quite a bit with the Developer Associate exam but asks a few more details on services like EC2 — especially VPC. There are additional topics that a solutions architect may need for migrating or supporting other business functions, like Workspaces, Active Directory and single sign-on. A large portion of the material covers the AWS architecture best practices and Well Architected Framework. The exam questions are primarily situational, posing decision making questions as if you were solving problems for a client. These situational questions and the broad variety of topics seem to rely less on simple reading and studying and more on experience within the ecosystem. It made studying for the exam more intimidating from the beginning, but by leaning on the best practices in the preparation material as well as my previous experience, the exam itself wasn’t so bad.
AWS updates the tests regularly, though when I took mine, they were a bit out of date in some specifics. I know that since I took it, the Developer exam was updated to include more serverless topics. In general, you do need to study a bit to the exam itself and its point in time, but they do allow for feedback on questions that may be unclear or out of date and take that into account on your final score.
Studying
I used acloud.guru’s excellent exam training programs to study. There are over 8 hours of video for each exam (though, for the two I took there is a bit of overlap), with tutorials you can follow along, quizzes after every section that have a number of random questions so you can take them a couple of times, and at least one “realistic” length and style exam on the whole program, which looks and feels a lot like the real thing. It was worth doing some of them multiple times to get different questions, in different orders, and gain some clarity, especially after doing more research into questions I got wrong the first time. Acloud.guru also has good comments sections throughout the training course where other students ask and answer questions and offer advice on where else to look for deeper information
I also reviewed a few official AWS white papers, especially the Well Architected series, and other best practices. Each service area in AWS also has a good FAQ that answers quite a few of the exam topics, and there are hands-on labs and in-person training available. The certification prep guide has links to these and other important materials.
Taking the tests
The exams are computer-based, multiple choice, and taken at an official test taking facility. You are locked into a room at a small cubicle, usually with other test takers taking a variety of other exams. You get your pass/fail result as you exit, but little else. I know that some people find this kind of test-taking very intimidating, and I had a little anxiety going into both exams I took. The way I dealt with it was arriving at the testing center (the back room of an H&R Block, if you can believe it) early, and not parking right in front, taking some time to myself to walk slowly and gather my thoughts. I took my exams at the first time slot, so I did not over-caffeinate but did eat a real breakfast. The facility offered earplugs and I did use them. Overall, the time offered was more than ample for me to complete the exams, so once I got through the first few questions, I was able to get into a groove. I used the ‘flag a question’ feature so that I could go back and closely review questions I had trouble with and skimmed through every question at least one more time.
Wrap up
Overall, I feel I learned new things about services, even those that I have worked with for years. I was also able to piece together other tidbits I had read or encountered into a more obvious structure, and I have already incorporated several new concepts in my day to day work. I was also able to finish these before AWS Re:Invent (their huge annual conference, which also hosts all exams during the week), and folks who completed their certifications get access to a couple lounge areas and some more swag!
My next goal is to complete at least the Solution Architect Professional exam, which is regarded as one of the toughest. I may also round out the Associate level with the SysOps exam and consider the DevOps Professional if I am feeling completionist (which, if I look back at my video game playing habits, will probably happen).
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