Backstory
I cleared the AWS Solution Architect – Associate level certification in 2019. It wasn’t too hard, I could clear it with a couple of years of on-job experience and almost a month of reading. [You can find more details on the associate level certification here]. With the confidence gained from clearing this certification exam, I went ahead and scheduled the professional certification just two months out – 2 weeks rest and 6 weeks prep. Long story short, I did terribly badly in the exam and scored around 35%. I underestimated the exam and went in without sufficient preparation. I am not a quitter – so I decided to try again, you know, ‘soon’.
It’s been almost two years and my associate certification is about to expire in a couple of months. So, if I’m planning to take the professional certification, I should do it asap! [you need to have an unexpired associate certification, to take the professional certification]. This article is on ‘how I plan to prepare for the certification test’ and I’ll also update here the result!
The Plan
There’s so much to learn! And you can’t just read through whitepapers or watch some videos, you actually need to know the stuff! You need hands-on experience. Having gone through the decision-making processes in the cloud on-job, having that real-world experience truly helps!
What if you don’t have it? You can’t get the certification? No, that’s not true. You can augment the knowledge need. It will require time and patience.
So here’s my plan:-
- ACloud.guru video tutorials – Their certificate prep course is pretty good and I love the way they present stuff. The cloud playground/labs are really useful. I went through the videos one time and gave their sample test. It was a good experience. Planning to give the sample test few more tries.
- Pluralsight.com video tutorials – would rate this below acloud.guru, but better than many other portals out there. I plan to watch these videos as well.
- Book – I love reading from textbooks – bought this one. Not really impressed with this book though. It’s more in a white paper format.
- Relevant whitepapers: AWS Key Management Service Best Practices || Web Application Hosting in the AWS Cloud || Migrating AWS Resources to a New Region
- Focus on the following FAQs: Auto Scaling || Elastic Load Balancing || AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Will consider more material, if I’m done with the listed items in 2 months or less.
<This post will be updated, as I explore more resources>
