aws solutions architect certification

 

As of 2019, there are 3 paths to AWS certification: Architect, Operations, and Developer, and there are 5 specialized exams: Networking, Big Data, Security, Machine Learning, and Alexa. I think you don't need to pass the associate level to take the professional exam now, but I've heard that the professional level is significantly more difficult, so it might be a good idea to start with the associate level. It also appears that for the 3 associated level exams, SysOps is the most difficult, followed by Solution Architect and Developer being relatively the easiest.

 

Many people recommend starting with the Solution Architect Associate exam as their first certificate because it tests the most important AWS offerings and focuses on "how the services work together to provide the best (and cost-effective) solution for present situations." And that's exactly where I chose to start my AWS journey. Read this post to learn more about which certification exam you should take.

aws solutions architect certification

The previous question was taken from the official AWS sample exam questions. In your actual exam, the question will be "given the requirement and constraint, how will you design or improve this system" or "given a system, explaining why a certain behavior / error / bottleneck is occurring". The most important thing is to understand the requirements and limitations related to performance, scalability, availability, cost and security.

 

There will be 65 questions and you will have 130 minutes. These are all single or multiple choice questions. ~ 65% would generally be a positive vote.

 

My opinion is that if you have some relative experience with AWS and a basic understanding of networking and databases, passing the exam in 1-2 months might be a realistic plan (that's how long it took me). The key is to focus on what's important: understanding the different services, features, and trade-offs. AWS won't check which button to click to set up a Lambda function or how much your EC2 Reserved Instance will cost. But you need to understand which archiving solution would be the best option since you are archiving image data and it won't require frequent retrieval, but when the data is needed, it should be readily available.