Not too long ago, I was searching for information on the AWS Solutions Architect Professional certification exam. I was trying to find out how I might best prepare myself for the exam.
Of course, there were plenty of paid courses out there and some of the content through Pluralsight was useful, but I quickly realized that I would need to do significant reading into some of my weaker areas to prepare for such a comprehensive exam.
At the very least, I found this Pluralsight course to be valuable, in that it gave me a high-level idea of some areas that I needed to dig deeper into.
I wanted to share some of my tips on how to study for the AWS Solutions Architect Professional exam, and what you can expect (without revealing anything outside of any legal agreements of course).
This was one of the more mentally challenging exams I’ve taken in my career, in that:
I found that going over the limits pages for all sorts of AWS services was incredibly useful. As I ran across limits or fun facts I wasn’t familiar with, I made note of them in OneNote. You can use anything really. See memorization tips below for one of the approaches I took.
Here are some of the key AWS services and concepts I found to be paramount during my studies:
One means of making sure I was able to recall technical facts and service limits was to create a study sheet. If you create this early on and document bits of information you aren’t familiar with, along the way, you’ll be in great shape for studying.
I created a document with two columns, with questions on one side and the answer on the other, like so:
Question | Answer |
---|---|
VPCs per Region | 5 |
Max RDS instance volume size | 16TB |
Maximum number of RDS replicas | 5 |
… | … |
Once you build up a comprehensive list or lists, print it out and fold the page in half or use a piece of paper. You want to avoid seeing the next answer. Jumping around the questions certainly helps. Once you’ve done this for a while and feel pretty good about having memorized them, take a stab at it tomorrow. Honestly, when I arrived at the test center (45 minutes early), I studied some of the notes just to make sure my familiarity with some of my weaker services was sufficient.
You can also create some electronic flash cards or write them down on actual flashcards if you remember things better writing them down physically. You’ll need to use your best tactics if you want to get your AWS Solutions Architect Professional certification!
I can’t stress enough how important it is to take notes along the way. It forces you to think about what you’re reading and to remember it.
Personally, I learn best from hands-on experience. Seeing and clicking around in the console helped me get an idea of what’s involved in configuring some of the services I was unfamiliar with. If you don’t already have a personal AWS account, it would be worth creating one and spending some time in the console. Get a feeling for which services are regional vs global.
If you can, spend some time working with the AWS Python SDK, using the Boto3 library. Here’s a quick Python Boto3 tutorial for uploading objects to S3 that might be perfect.
Write a Lambda function that indexes and retrieves data from a DynamoDB table. Provision an EC2 instance with an IAM role and try running application code on it. Hopefully, by the point of getting past your Solution Architect Associate exam, you’ll have plenty of hands-on experience, but it’s absolutely essential to have enough for the Professional-level exam.
Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty[…].
– Theodore Roosevelt
I sincerely wish you the best of luck in your exam and hope that you found the above tips inspiring and informative.
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