Tips to take AWS Architect- Associate Certification
Updated: Jul 11
If you are preparing to take the Solution Architect - Associate certification keep reading that I have some tips that will help you pass the exam. But first, let's talk a little about why you should take this exam. Amazon Web Services (AWS), is by far the most popular cloud computing service, with more companies and organizations running his infrastructure on AWS the opportunities for cloud professionals are rising. Having the AWS Solution Architect certification, which is the most demanded one, will help you stand out among other applicants.
Also, studying for this exam will give you a big picture view of AWS Cloud services, maybe learn about services that you didn't know existed, and will also help you to gain the skills necessary to design system architectures that follow the five pillars of the AWS well-architected framework; Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Excellence and Cost Optimization.
Well now we are determined to take the exam, where do we start?. Well, the first step should be downloading the Official Study guide for the exam from AWS, which contains the content outline, target audience for the certification exam and brief description of the types of questions and how they are evaluated.
The next step will be to start studying for the exam, for this, I recommend using one of the many digital training platforms available, like a Cloud Guru, Cloud Academy, Udemy. For me studying video tutorials is much more bearable than reading lots of documentation, however, there is a white paper that you should read, and this is “AWS Well-Architected Framework”, I also recommend reading the FAQ section of at least the following AWS services EC2, EBS, VPC, S3, IAM, Route 53, CloudFront, Global Accelerator, SQS, SNS, Auto Scaling.
OK, are you ready to take the exam? Here are some tips to help you approve the exam.
The SAA-CO2 exam has introduced several new AWS services. Be sure the training course that you choose to prepare the exam has been updated with these services. A Cloud Guru covered these new resources.
The questions are all scenario-based, read the whole question, and focus on keywords like, “high available”, “cost-effective”, “least operational overhead”. First, remove the obviously incorrect ones and then focus on the possible answers. Be careful that an answer may seem to comply with the question's instruction but if you read carefully a specific word can invalidate the answer.
Practice, try to make use of the AWS free tier, and try some basic configurations. Also, many training platforms have the possibility of conducting practical laboratories. Hands-on labs will help you to fix knowledge
Give great importance to understanding EC2, VPC, and S3
Know the difference between the different types of load balancers(Application load balancer, Network load balancer, and Classic load balancer). And, also the different routing types for Route 53.
Know the difference between the different types of databases(RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, and Redshift), how to improve performance in each one.
Understand how to make solutions highly available by distributing the instances to multiple AZs and using load balancers to distribute workload to the instances.
You are ready now. Best of luck taking the exam!
