How to prepare AWS Solution Architect Associate Certification Exam
After spend 1 month prepare for AWS Solution Architect Associate exam, I finally passed my AWS SAA this Tuesday. I would like to share my experience about how to prepare for this certificate and what I have learned from this exam.
WHY AWS Certificate?
As a software engineer, normally I am not a big fun of certificates but AWS certificate is the one that I recommend everyone in IT industry to consider. Since cloud is mature and most of IT companies treat cloud as their first choice to host their service. Many traditional companies are migrating their application to the cloud e.g. GCP, AWS, Azure, Alibaba… AWS is the one which is years ahead of other cloud providers since AWS has been in the market for a while. AWS certificate will add a lot of value to your career.
What do you need to learn:
The SAA exam will be 130 minutes with 65 questions. I finish my exam at the last 20 minutes.
How to prepare
Labs + Courses + Mock practices + AWS Official website
AWS Official website(I can not find a reason to ignore this website):
AWS official website is always your first choice in terms of the learning material. Especially the FAQ part, you can find a lot of useful knowledge and most of the questions will not only help you pass the exam but also help you with your future work.
A Cloud guru(course):
A Cloud guru is the first website I would like to recommend you to begin with but I don’t think finish all the related courses here could make you 100% pass the AWS SAA exam. As I find the only helpful way is to do Labs + Mock exams + courses. Honestly, A cloud guru is not lab oriented courses. If you do not like A Cloud guru you can also use Linuxacademy.com
Quiklabs(lab):
If you would like to do lab, I highly recommend you consider Quiklabs or make use of your AWS 1 year free account. Quicklabs will provide you step by step instruction to do the lab and you do not need to clean the lab environment by yourself.
Whizlabs(mock practices):
A good place to do mock tests.
Udemy(you name it):
Personally I didn’t use udemy this time but I know Udemy is also a good choice to prapare this exam as I know there many AWS SAA related courses there and practice exams as well.
Jayendrapatil Blog(just blog):
This blog has a lot of good articles that could help you pass the AWS exam.
How to register:
Step 1: go to https://www.aws.training/Certification register if you haven’t register before.
Step 2: schedule exam(remember to bring two IDs with you when you to the exam)
Conclusion
In terms of learning cloud knowledge, Amazon is always your first choice. You can start with any certificate you want. SAA is just my personal preference. Hope the picture below could help you to decide which certificate suit your level of knowledge.
Show Off time
At the end is my beautiful badge and certificate. Hope you can get your certificate quickly.
