Recommended AWS Associate Certification Pathway (Time Saver)
how to save time and knock out the associate exams
hello frens, some quick tips for my subs today about what the best associate exam pathway is.
Required Reading
The Golden Path
The Cloud practitioner dilemma
There are 3 associate level exams and 1 foundational level exam. People like to hate on the foundational exam called the certified cloud practitioner. Its best to view this exam as optional. however for many people i recommend it because it can be a good ‘warmup’ so to say. Generally you would see more high-level managers opt for this exam. I will list the pros/cons and you can decide which path is best for you.
Pros
you get to take a warm up exam
really easy
you get a coupon for 50% off your next exam (read turbo note)
psychological boost from passing an exam, establishes momentum
Cons
certification doesnt carry much weight
opportunity cost of other certifications
Turbo Note: The cloud pract certification costs $100 and the Associate level exams cost $150. So even with the 50% coupon from the first exam that is a total of $175 for both compared to $250.
Additional Turbo Note: You can pass this exam and hold the coupon until you aim for a Professional level or Specialty level exam, where the price jumps to $300, or you can just take it later.
Overall - the cloud pract is more of a psychological boost for establishing momentum and creating a new habit. If this doesnt sound like something you are interested in, skip right to an associate level exam like the Solutions Architect and circle back for the sweet coupon.
Associate level pathing
I recommend you start with the Solutions Architect Associate (SAA) certification. This exam has as very wide breadth of topics, and is a more general exam. You will be exposed to many services and topics that you will revisit later on in the other associate level exams. The SAA is the fundamental AWS certification for technical people.
Note: After the SAA you can go right into the SA Pro if you are very focused on architecture and systems design. Roles that would be looking to do this would be: Cloud Architect, or Principal/Senior Cloud Engineers.
Continuing through the Associate level exams i would next recommend the Developer Associate (DVA) certification. This exam is focused on some of the services and patterns a developer or cloud developer would be exposed to. Things around Code suite of tools like Code Pipeline, or developing with a DynamoDB table. This exam is slightly less broad than the SAA and focuses more on tools or patterns a developer would need. So you may not see a question on resiliency patterns with RDS, but rather about Global Secondary Indexes vs Local Secondary Indexes on DynamoDB. This certification could be targeted for Cloud Support Engineers, (Junior) Cloud Engineers. or software development engineers focused on cloud.
Lastly I recommend going for the SysOps Admin Associate. The SysOps is now undoubtedly the hardest associate exam and should be attempted last. Why? because this exam includes a lab section (as of version SOA-CO2). These lab style questions would involved you actually doing things in an AWS mock environment. This makes the exam harder than the rest of the associates alone. This is another exam that is more broad in topics, and overlaps with the other two exams. This exam does focus on some admin-type services like Trust Advisor or AWS Budgets. Also note that this exam has some light networking topics, if that trips you up.
Turbo Path
if you are a true turbo another popular pathway is to take the SAA and then continue studying for the Solutions Architect Professional (SAP). This route is popular because it builds off the SAA rather than continuing through the associate exams. However, much of the associate level exams are helpful fundamental knowledge to the SAP. The SAP shares the broadness of the SAA but also goes deeper on the question content and complexity. That is why the SAP is widely seen as one of, if not he hardest AWS exam. This pathway is recommended for turbos as the other associate exams are not relevant if you have the SAP.
Conclusion
non-turbos: SAA → DVA → SOA → ? (How to decide on your next exam)
turbos: SAA → SAP (Apply coupon from SAA) → ? (How to decide on your next exam)
-celt