How to pass your AWS Solutions Architect Associate certification? (SAA-C03)
Introduction
A few weeks ago I passed the AWS Solutions Architect Associate certification, I would like to come back with this short article on my journey to prepare it and share with you my feelings, my advice.
Why pass it?
A certification will always be an asset on a CV but apart from this aspect, I find that the training path is very complete because we also study network, security, serverless, BDD… which will give a big advantage in any context and company using AWS. I also think that the training I followed could be very good on-boarding for a person arriving in a 100% cloud context and having little or no experience on these subjects.
Although it bears the name “Architect”, this certification is not dedicated only to current or future architects, it will above all allow you to have a global view of AWS services, which is very important for the future that you be DevOps, SysOps, developer… It has the advantage of not being limited to a specialty, which is a very big plus if you want solid global knowledge.
A few tips
Experience required
It’s a certification so you can very well take the exam with no professional experience on the exam and get it, but you’re setting yourself up for an arduous path. In the details of the training they will advise you to have several years of experience but for my part, 1 year of work with this cloud provider (in a very rich context with the use of +20 services) was enough for me and I helped a lot.
In case of limited experience, you will simply need to do several labs and tests, which will lengthen your preparation time.
Media
For my part, I mainly trained with the training Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C03 which is quite complete with more than 30 hours of videos, but you will sometimes have to supplement it with the AWS documentation because all the information is not present, you will realize this by doing several practice exams. Also very important, it is regularly updated, which makes it still valid even a few years after the publication of this article or even to revise a few subjects some time later.
Each section of the training is made up of a short quiz which will allow you to validate your knowledge throughout your work.
After these long hours of training you will be required to take a mock exam of 65 questions in order to test your knowledge, and above all identify the subjects that you have the least knowledge of.
Dumps
If you wish to take other exams (in addition to the one offered in the training), you can:
- Purchase a blank exam pack of the same training
- Pay dumps of previous questions used in real AWS exams
- Use this set of questions but be careful not all the answers given are consistent. .. which may lead you to have some doubts, but you will find comments from the community for each question; offering their solutions and often supported by AWS documentation.
Preparation time
It took me a little less than 60 hours to master the training and test the knowledge. This may seem like a lot, but it’s a real time saver in your future experiences with AWS, so it’s not wasted time. But as mentioned previously, nothing forces you to go as far as the certification phase, the most important thing is knowledge!
Conclusion
I hope this article is useful to you, and I wish you good luck if you motivate yourself to take it!