Prepare for the AWS Certification Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C02) Exam
Planning your AWS certification, study tips and materials
Why take AWS Certifications?
AWS certfications generally should help distinguish yourself when looking for a new job or improve the chances of career progression as the AWS exams are some of the most recognized if not the most sought after cloud certifications.
Certifications would also help the company you’re affiliated with as these highlight the company’s cloud professionals. If the company is part or plan to be part of the AWS partner network, a number of cloud certifications will help meet the partner status criteria.
Actually, I think just gaining a better understanding of cloud computing in the preparation for the exam is worth it in itself. AWS recommends one year of hands-on experience for the Solutions Architect Associate exam, but it’s not a requirement. If you don’t have this experience yet, the review materials contain hands-on lab activities and demos to help you bridge this gap. Most of the questions are related to best practices and practical scenarios so definitely going over the hands-on labs should help. Whether you’re a newbie or a veteran AWS professional, the certification builds reassurance that you have the basic understanding for your particular track.
Plus… getting the certifications gives you benefits like a free practice exam and a 50% off voucher for your next certification (quite nifty marketing there too, hey).
Is the SAA-C02 exam right for you?
Okay, so you’re convinced that you want to take the AWS exam, but is the Solution Architect Associate Certification (SAA-C02) Exam the right one for you?
As of this writing, there are 12 certifications with 3 associate-level courses. You’ll be spending hours of preparation for the certificaton, so definitely a good time to check which one you’ll go for.
Some questions for the core certifications might be:
- Should you take the Foundational, Associate or Professional?
- If it’s the associate level, should you take the Solutions Architect, SysOps Administorator or Developer?
The choice likely depends on your AWS proficiency, preparation time and learning path that you want to take. In the current certification scheme, AWS certifications have no pre-requisite certifications. If you are confident, you can take a professional-level certification without going through an associate level certification. Just take note that, as expected, the difficulty level increases as you jump from Foundational to Associate to Professional. Price also increases as the difficulty goes up (100 USD to 150 USD to 300 USD). High risks, high rewards.
I find the exam certification guides quite useful in choosing my certification path. Here’s one for the SAA-C02:
https://d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-sa-assoc/AWS-Certified-Solutions-Architect-Associate_Exam-Guide.pdf
Another thing that helped me was the AWS learning path tool. For example, if we look at the partner learning path tool for the Technical Consultant Role with Machine Learning as the area of focus, it provides the suggested courses and also recommends taking the AWS Technical Professional as a pre-requisite.
Personally, at the least for Technical Professional — Machine Learning path, I think the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam Certification can be skipped especially when you’re aiming for other AWS certifications. That’s not saying I won’t go through some of the content intended for the cloud practitioner. I did learn still from those materials and probably even helped me for the associate exam. However, I would focus my attention more to other certifications like the SAA-C02 when going through practice exams.
You may have another reason or two for choosing your paths, but hope the guides and learning paths have helped you as well!
What’s with the 2?
Cool, you’ve now decided that the Solution Architect Associate is right for you but what’s with the 2 in SAA-C02? That’s the updated version, and a noticeable difference from the SAA-C01 is the number of domains covered by the exam. It does not mean that content created from the fifth domain is obsolete. The fifth domain likely has been integrated into the other domains for this exam. It didn’t have too much emphasis (6%) in the SAA-C01 anyways.
Instead of trying to remove the fifth domain from your review materials, it might be better use of your time to learn more, say, about topics like Amazon FSx Lustre, Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Site-to-Site VPN and Direct Connect.
Any study materials?
Udemy Courses
- Stephane Maarek | Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate 2021 | Even the simple Q&A at the end of each section helps. The labs and end-of-course practice exam helped too. If you only hae a limited and can only try out one course, I would suggest Maarek’s course and go through the different practice exams.
- Ryan Kroonenberg (A Cloud Guru) | AWS Certified Solutions Architect 2020 | The content does have a lot of repetitions such as a recap at each end of video lecture and then another recap for the overall summary. And more than likely, the video will start again with a recap from the previous video. Yup, repetitions, but those repetitions are actually a good thing. It helps you remember the concepts.
- Neal Davis (Digital Cloud Training) | AWS Certified Solutions Architect & Developer Associate | Learning some of the concepts in action (through labs and demos) such as the encryption of EBS volumes made the concept stick around.
I can’t emphasize enough that you also take the full-length practice exams available with these courses. You can also take other practice exams like the practice exams from Jon Bonso (Tutorials Dojo) |AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Practice Exams.
Books
- Rehan Haider | SAA-C02 Practice Questions (500+): AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate 2020 | A handful of a few questions you can try here and there with pretty decent explanations. Not the most difficult questions but mainly builds your confidence that you’re on track.
- Official AWS Guide | AWS Certified Solutions Architect Study Guide: Associate SAA-C02 Exam (Aws Certified Solutions Architect Official: Associate Exam) | Why of course, you have the official exam study guide. I wouldn’t say really essential but just good to have a look if you already have access.
AWS FAQs
The AWS Whitepapers may help, but I think the valuable content for the exam can easily be digested by going through the Amazon FAQs. Below are some of FAQs I found useful in my exam:
AWS Exam Readiness Videos
AWS also provides exam readiness guides available in their training or online conferences. For example, the online 2020 AWS Re:Invent conference had the Exam Readiness: AWS Certified Solutions Architect — Associate video.
Last Tips for the Exam?
- Take advantage of the way questions (multiple choice and multiple answers) have been written. You may use strategies like elimination.
- Even if you think you know the correct answer from the choices, it’s better to still go through the other choices as there could be a “better” answer.
- Make use of the flagged-for-review feature and use the time left in the exam for review. Especially if your current answers are in the borderline 700 (700 is the passing mark), those 1 or 2 questions that you get from the review can make or break you for passing the exam.
- Very classic but do allot some time for review. If time-pressed for the day, you can just finish say a less-than-10-minute video from the study material, or a handful of practice questions. The habit of just taking up a few minutes for review will help in the long run.
