How To Pass The AWS Solutions Architect Associate Exam With Minimal AWS Experience!
I was pretty motivated to pass the AWS Solutions Architect Associate. I’m an advocate of automation and adding business value to existing applications and processes. What little I knew about AWS excited me in general. I’ve done a ton of IAC work working with VMs, and I’ve always envied the ability many others have to do it all in the Cloud. Yes, there are still many companies out there doing DevOps on-prem! While I had this experience, I barely knew the differences in any of the AWS services. There is just so much more available in regards to PaaS and SaaS. There are 200+ services that AWS offers. I determined the SAA would be a perfect way to study what to use in AWS and get the acronyms and jargon down.
I recently started a new role, and I lacked certifications and AWS experience in general. I met with my manager, and we decided to pursue AWS Certified DevOps Engineer — Professional. I felt the Professional Exam was too much for someone brand new to AWS to tackle. Even for the Solutions Architect Associate, AWS recommends having greater than one year of experience with AWS. I had near Zero! The Solutions Architect Associate was a logical step for me as it would familiarize me with the AWS offerings and get me headed in the appropriate direction.
Resources
- Start by looking over the layout of the official site. At least skim the exam guide and come back to it several times throughout your learning process.
- I spent the majority of my time listening to lectures on A Cloud Guru. I took this entire A Cloud Guru Certified Solutions Architect Associate Course. Some of the courses I listened to at 1.5x and 2x speed. I did the majority of the labs and played around on my own a little in their sandbox. The money was well spent on this subscription because of the labs. This course was great for me as I’ve not heard of the majority of the terms AWS uses constantly. It’s a convenient ‘introduction to everything AWS.
- Many co-workers recommended a course on Udemy after starting the A Cloud Guru course; I did not take this to pass this exam, but I’ve since taken some of Stephane Maarek’s courses and highly recommend him.
- An advantage at A Cloud Guru is the automatic provisioning of labs, but you might prefer to purchase this course and have it forever instead of another subscription.
- I powered through the All-in-One Exam Guide as supporting material. I did not take any additional time to practice at this stage. I noted a few things I should research, researched them, and then moved on to the practice tests.
- The official AWS Practice Test. $20
- About 1.5 of the Udemy Practice tests. $30
Scenario-Based Exam
It was stated clear while studying that this is a scenario-based exam. You need to understand concepts and understand when things fit together. You will need to know when one solution fits better than the other. I’d say the AWS team didn’t put questions on the exam that left me thinking, “that question is dumb; I would have googled that and had the answer in 2 seconds”.
I didn’t memorize number-based facts about any service. There are just too many facts. For example, I didn’t memorize all the instance types or the number of 9s of availability or durability. You need to know that S3 Standard is currently the most expensive S3 tier and what happens if you want to reduce costs. For ECS, I didn’t even memorize the different classes; I get the impression many people do! I will likely explore those in much greater detail soon, as it’s just good to know. Interesting to note, there didn’t seem to be much focus on EC2 in general. You’ll want to understand the ways a service can scale or how to save money. For example, DynamoDB is very flexible in that you can have global tables; you can put DAX in front of it, etc.
Response types
There are two types of questions on the Exam:
Multiple choice: Has one correct response and three incorrect responses (distractors)
Multiple responses: Has two or more correct responses out of five or more response options.
Pillars
The chart below is directly from the AWS exam guide, my first resource. Read over everything there before you start anywhere else! I didn’t pay too much attention to it when I began studying; I should have. The structure of most of the courses are around services and not pillars; it’s essential to reflect on these throughout your preparation. The percentages didn’t matter to me; ensure the pillars are on your mind as you explore each service in detail.
Cost-optimized designs resonated with me as I was studying. You might guess that I struggled to focus on High-Performing Architectures in practice tests, which I will discuss below. In previous jobs, I’ve run into many engineers who over-engineer. For that reason, I’m always asking, “do you need that”?
Now, that isn’t to say you should think, “how can I just throw everything I can at this solution with no regard to cost.” But as you are studying, make sure you ask yourself how what I’m learning will apply to each domain.
On the note of cost-effective and performant solutions, they aren’t always mutually exclusive. It’s really about picking the correct solution for the scenario at hand. I never felt like AWS would suggest you take simply the most incredible or most overprovisioned solution available. However, the cost was always at the top of my mind initially, which was a mistake.
Implicit knowledge
There is a lot of implicit and assumed knowledge that I had that helped me pass. Make sure to take note of items not related to AWS that don’t make sense or resonate. I felt like A Cloud Guru did a great job highlighting some basics; this can be annoying when you know some of the topics very well. Make sure you note topics that you don’t understand. That’s a red flag. Dig in more.
I have been in IT and the DevOps space for quite some time. I have a solid understanding of networking, servers, application deployments, architectural design, troubleshooting, HA, migration, and many other skills that helped me on this exam. Is my experience quite different from yours?
Research outside of AWS on generic topics that are assumed by any of the coursework. One thing I have little experience with is NoSQL and Big Data. I’ve only heard of these conceptually. I watched a few cloud-agnostic lectures on these topics. I have to understand why AWS is pushing their flavor and how it compares to other people using it. This understanding helps to piece together why AWS will push you to a service for a given scenario.
Know your learning style
I’m a conceptual learner — Is that a thing? I’ve generally heard people trying to break learning styles into reading, listening, visual, or practical. I don’t favor any of these over the other. These learning styles don’t resonate with me. I need to understand why. I have to piece together who is using this in the real world and why. I can’t remember factoids if I can’t connect the dots.
I’m pretty aware that I need to take in material from multiple angles and give my mind some time to build it all up. You must pull from your experience and know what will work for you. Don’t simply listen to how someone else studied for an exam and assume you should do it the same.
Warning! Don’t let a personal project in AWS distract you.
Over the years, I’ve enjoyed building small projects and ‘applying them’ to different technologies. I enjoy creating applications several steps past “Hello World.” If you learn by doing, this certification offers plenty of distractions. It is just so much you can do in AWS; stay focused!
Practice Tests
The practice tests are invaluable in both confidence and preparation. I recommend you take a practice test immediately after you get done with a course or book. It will help you assess where you need to focus more. There were a few services in the exam that I didn’t recall during my studies. As stated earlier, realize where you are lacking and focus there.
First, I did the A Cloud Guru practice Exam. I felt like it was an excellent course recap, but it didn’t reflect the Exam structure. It was undoubtedly valuable as it highlighted some weaknesses, and of course, I did some additional research on my weak areas.
Then I took the official AWS practice Exam. It revealed that I needed to focus more on high-performing architectures as well as a few services. The problem with the official practice test is that you don’t get feedback question by question, but just an overall score, precisely like the actual exam. It did, however, reveal the pillar that I was weak. If I had to do this all over, I’d probably reserve the official practice exam for the end to get a feel for how the actual exam is structured, or skip it if you don’t have a free voucher.
There are six total Udemy Practice tests, and I feel like it’s likely as or more complex than the actual exam. The Udemy Practice tests let you know the questions you got wrong and great high-level explanations with supporting documentation on the reasons behind all the correct and incorrect answers.
When is enough, enough?
On Friday, I barely passed the AWS Practice test. Great! I’ll schedule the exam for early next week, and it will push me to study enough throughout the weekend to have greater confidence. A good motivator, right? Well, the exams are long. It’s very tiring to answer questions over and over again. If I had to do it all over again, I’d spread out the practice tests more. I’d say I don’t plan on doing a test except for every other day.
Because I purchased all six of the Udemy practice tests, and I intended on taking all six. However, I was getting a bit burned out. I took one and passed. I ran through about 20 questions of 3 more practice tests and then stopped short of finishing. This process lets me review answers and why I feel like the Udemy tests are a must.
Take the practice test and look at the pillars.
For each test, I asked myself, “What services were asked about or suggested as solutions that I haven’t heard of on the practice exams”?
There is so much information out there; narrow down on your weaknesses and move on to the test. It’s hard to be okay with not getting 95% on the practice exams. You only need 72% to pass, and I wouldn’t say they are less demanding than the actual exam.
Well, I passed. I wasn’t surprised by any of the questions as the courses and practice tests clarified what to expect. Onto my next exam!
