Alfonso Graziano

Who should take an AWS certification How to study for an AWS cert Introduction The right tools Make a plan Time to study!It’s time to schedule the exam Do you want to become a Solutions Architect?

Who should take an AWS certification

If you’re reading this page, probably you’re interested in AWS and you want to get an AWS certification.

There are a lot of certifications available currently.

If you’re starting right now, my advice is to take the Cloud Practitioner exam.

I’ll not enter in details how the exam works. You can find all the necessary information in the exam page and, as we will see later, in the courses.

Personally I took the Cloud Practitioner exam because I was interested in AWS and the cloud. Then I took the Developer Associate because I was interested in how a developer like me can use the cloud to build solutions.

After a 6 months break (I did a lot of stuff in the meantime :D) I wanted to understand what a Solution Architect do. For this reason I bought the Solutions Architect’s Handbook. This book was really interesting for me and I decided to start studying for the certification.

How to study for an AWS cert

Introduction

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I’m going to explain how I passed the AWS exams. Since we learn in a lot of different ways, is possible that you could learn in a different way. Please keep this page just as reference.

The first thing that you need to do is creating an AWS account! Done? Good, now we’re ready to go :)

I think is really important having an AWS account because we need to make a lot of practice. Exam questions are based on real-case scenarios so if you made a lot of practice this will help you a lot.

If you are a software engineer and you work in a company that is already using AWS my advice is to contact your manager and tell her that you’re going to study for the AWS cert. Companies usually likes this and you can ask to work for a couple of months (maybe 1/2 hours per day) with the Infrastructure team to learn how your current infrastructure works.

If you just want to pass the exam, you can probably pass it without having practice experience but in my opinion this is not the best approach.

The right tools

Now is time to get the study resources. Personally to study I have used two main sources:

The AWS documentation for the details

Udemy courses to have a complete overview from

Udemy courses are really cheap (usually 12/14$) and they are really worth.

You also need to buy mock exams. Personally I bought mock exams on Udemy from Stephane and Neal.

You also need something to keep notes. I use Notion but you can use your preferred tool.

Make a plan

Personally, I take planning very seriously and I create goals for each quarter. You can learn more about that here:

I suggest to create an hypotetical timeline. You need to study the material, make practice, take a lot of mock exams (more about this later) and finally, take the exam!

I also suggest to schedule the study time on your calendar. Personally I studied an average of 2 hours per day (1 hour in the morning, 1 hour in the evening) and I made some deep dive in the weekend. You need to find a good balance between your study time and other commitments.

Time to study!

In this phase, you need to study from the selected resources, take notes and make practice. There are no shortcuts, and it will require you time and effort.

I followed the course and, once finished, I took the first mock exam. If you followed the course and you made some practice you should be able to pass the first mock exam at the first try.

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Bonus ⇒ Since you have to take a lot of mock exams, I suggest to create a Google Spreadsheet with two columns: the date of the mock exam and the score. This will help you to understand how your score varies during your study.

Now it’s time to understand the pain points and to improve incrementally. My personal approach is having an iteration cycle.

Take a mock exam in the same environment of the real exam and within the real time-box

When I’m not sure about an answer, I take a note about that and I check it later

After the test is finished, I write the result on Excel and I analyze each wrong answer

For each answer, I update my notes including the correct answer and the reason for the correctness.

You can repeat this cycle until you feel confident that you’re going to pass the exam.

It’s time to schedule the exam

The last step is scheduling the exam. If you bought the course from Stephane Maarek you will find a section about that. He will guide you in the entire process.

You can find all the info you need in the official page.

If you need some help in this phase, feel free to contact me

Do you want to become a Solutions Architect?

You can look at “Solutions Architect’s Handbook” in

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My favourite resources to get an overview. If you want more information, feel free to contact me

A bulletproof guide to AWS Certifications