(Update) We’ve released a series of Learning Paths to prepare for each certification, including video Courses, Hands-on Labs, and a final preparation exam simulation to test your skills prior to taking the certification. Take a look at all Cloud Academy’s AWS Learning Paths here.
In the previous posts of our AWS Certifications Study Guide we have seen why AWS Certifications matter for your job profile. We have also seen how you can get a certification, that is through the AWS exam, so now we can answer a very important question: how to get ready for AWS Certification exams?
Actually, the answer depends on the specific path that you are tackling. As we have seen already, the AWS Solutions Architect path differs quite a lot from the AWS Developers one, in that they focus on different services, different skills and different point of views in doing things. Nevertheless, many hints equally apply to all of the available paths, are relevant and useful whatever exam you are studying for. Starting from the next part of our guide we will dedicate 4 posts to each of the currently available AWS Certification paths, with specific suggestions on how to get ready for them. In the meantime, let’s see some general advice that applies in general and can be very useful to you.
The first and foremost thing you should do is to delve deeper into the AWS website to gather whatever information you may get about the AWS Certifications. This is your best and most important source of information, and you should be aware of every single detail that you might find there. The website is not that verbose, actually, and gives you just the very fundamental information that you need, still, it is crucial to have a deep knowledge of everything you find there. In particular, read the blueprints for the Certification you are planning to achieve: that’s the manifest for your exam, the best overview of what they are going to ask you, and you don’t want to miss anything written there.
Also, a very good idea that many found useful is to read the FAQ‘s of each AWS service a couple of days before the exam. Although not usually very technical, they focus on the most important aspects and will help you refreshing the core topics in your mind.
Whatever the path you are taking, some direct experience with AWS stuff is the best way to achieve the Certification. This is particularly true for advanced certifications like the AWS Solutions Architect Professional Level, where Amazon recommends “two or more years of hands-on experience designing and deploying cloud architecture on AWS“. So, if you already had your chance of working on real AWS resources, and if your experience spanned across many different services at a deep level, you are probably halfway already.
The sad news though is that many of those who are prepping for certifications have small experience, often focused on a minimal subset of AWS services. The AWS Free Trier might come in handy here. For a whole year, you have a chance of working with real AWS resources for free, and you can play around architecting complex infrastructures and having a real experience of how things work. That’s probably the best training that you can do on your own, and if you wish to have some guidance in diving through AWS services, you may want to try the Cloud Academy’s AWS Hands-on Labs. Our exclusive technology will assign you a goal and will drive you through the steps needed to achieve it, even giving you hints if it notices you are stuck at something. There are just two labs available right now, but many more will arrive soon, and they might be a really great resource for your learning process.
One of the best resources you may find on AWS is their whitepapers. Ensure to read them extensively, because they contain a lot of information about things that will be asked to you during the exam. There are many documents available there, and they can be quite long too, so you need to pick the best ones for your path. If you followed the suggestion to read the exam blueprint, you will be able to choose wisely the best ones for your path. Anyway, in the next posts focusing on the specific paths, I’ll share some hints about the best whitepapers for each one.
Online courses are one of the resources most appreciated by learners, especially because they allow you to learn in your spare time and at the pace you wish. There are many resources like that available on the internet, including Cloud Academy’s AWS Learning Paths, that can probably give you a very good overview of the AWS resources and solutions. Also, I really recommend re:Invent. They usually focus on very specific things, but the quality is very high, and can provide some great help if you need to learn more about a very specific issue in a short time.
Due to the AWS policy, it’s usually difficult to know what kind of questions you will be asked during the exam. Anyway, AWS ships a few example questions for each path on its website. They are not very exhaustive and will give you just a general idea of the real questions, but it’s still good to read the sample questions available. If you want to test your knowledge about AWS services at a deeper level, you may want to check out AWS quizzes, which are especially targeted at deeply testing your knowledge about each service. Also, thanks to the Learning that you get after each question, you will improve your skills if you lack some knowledge, performing testing and learning at the same time.
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That’s all for this long yet important post. Starting from the next episode of our AWS Certifications Study Guide we will start to better understand each of the 4 certification paths that are now available, starting from the first and most common one: the AWS Solutions Architect Associate Level Certification.
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