Your AWS Certification Playbook
the tools of the trade for passing ANY AWS exam and becoming a cloud savant
hello anons, Celt here to talk about your playbook for getting ANY AWS certification.
There are some common paths, depending on your specific situation one might be better than the other. Generally, feel free to skip the cloud practitioner. Generally, I would say you almost always want to start with an Associate exam before jumping to Specialty or Pro. I have benefitted from taking a couple exams before moving to specialty, as you will get used to how AWS writes the questions, the test environment, and the repetition on services.
Step 1: Decide
Decide which AWS exam you are going to take and why. If you need help with why reference my earlier post on what your why should be. If you are unsure what certification lines up with what you are looking for reference this blog post, provides a decent overview. Otherwise, feel free to comment or DM. Doing these just to do them is a waste of time, that would have been invested better on WiFi money.
Step 2: Time
I am going to lay out how much time you should spend prepping, normally you would then either take the exam that week or the week after. I expect at least 1 hour of study daily. Note: You may need more or less depending on turbo levels.
For Cloud Practitioner: turbos 2 week, normies 4 weeks
For associate level exams: i want turbos to prep for 6 weeks, normies 8-10 weeks
For Specialty level exams: turbos 6-8 weeks, normies 8-12
At this point i assume you have some exams under you belt
for Pro level exams: turbos 8+ weeks, normies 12+ weeks.
At this point i assume you have some exams under you belt
hard to time box pro exams, they are very difficult.
If you complete in <8 weeks i would be impressed
Once you timebox your prep, schedule your exam. You can move it later if you need to, but you need to deadline yourself. None of this no pressure, ‘ill take it when im ready’ BS. Move it out when you get closer if you really are positive you are going to fail.
Turbo Tip: At this time exams are still being offered either remote online or at a testing location. I personally use Pearson VUE and take the exams online. There is a tradeoff however. Online exams you must keep your eyes on the computer screen, and you will be flagged by the AI software if you make any noise or if significant noise is picked up. You also cannot go to the bathroom. If you go in person, depending on the location, you can have water with you, go to the bathroom, and enjoy more freedom while taking the exam, like moving your eyes off the computer screen.
Turbo Tip: If English is your second language you can request for an extra 30 minutes on exams (requested once and applied to all). This can be super helpful for Specialty and Professional level as the questions are LONG.
Step 3: Studying
The first thing you want to do is checkout the exam page on AWS - example for Developer Exam. Many things to note on this page. Read the landing page and then move onto the Exam Guide. This document is the holy bible for each exam, seriously read this thing twice. Make note of the exam domain breakdowns, this is important because you want to know where to spend most of your time. For example, notice for this exam, Security is 26% and Refactoring is 10%, obviously spend more time on security. Overall point here is do not major in the minors. In the domain breakdowns, you need to be able to speak off each bullet point, and generally know what each is. Lastly in the appendix note out of scope services for the exam. Not sure how people mess this up, but do not spend time studying out of scope services. Seriously pay attention to the exam guides.
The easiest thing to do is to purchase a high quality course from a reputable creator and go through the course. My personal favorite is Adrian Cantrill, second would be Stephane Maarek. Both of those are very high quality, I just like Adrian better. If you are strapped for cash, its not required but it will make your life easier.
These courses will have ‘hands on’ or ‘labs’ sections. This is up to you and your time constraints. If you need to pass ASAP, try to at least watch the demos on 2x speed. Otherwise it is generally helpful to at least watch the demos and get a memory of the configuration options for services. Some people like to follow along, which is also fine. Do whatever works for you. Me personally i just watch the demos and make notes. Remember to clean up after any labs/hands on and set a billing alarm in case.
AWS recently launched a skills platform, Skill Builder. So far my cloud dojo has given positive feedback. There are many free trainings and a couple are called out on the exam info page from AWS. Do these as you see fit, i recommend people use Skill Builder to take another pass on topics they don’t feel confident about. If you opt not to purchase a course, this is some of the best free material you can get. The quality on these has been solid so far.
Step 4: Validation and Practice Tests
After you complete the course, or whatever you study curriculum is you must test your knowledge. AWS has sample questions, as well as sample question sets through Skill Builder. Both can be accessed from the respective exam guide page.
Additionally, the best practice tests are made by John Bonso. These are unquestionably the best practice tests you can buy. I have seen the exact question from a practice test on an exam multiple times. I recommend to buy them if you can afford them. Bonso exams typically are harder than the real thing. For Bonso I recommend starting in Review mode just because the instant feedback is better. Once you go through the review sets, i would then go for the section based review. After that I would take the timed question sets start to finish in one sitting. You need to build stamina up for taking these exams. If you are scoring at least 65% you are probably ready. If you are just memorizing the answers you are not doing yourself any good. Just like Leetcodes, aim to understand not memorize. Take notes on questions you missed and keep reviewing.
Turbo Strategy: After the practice tests are over and i am scoring well enough to move on, i return back to the exam guide. I go down the list of domains and write out everything i remember about each. Reference notes after you try to recall. Then do the same things with the services in the appendix. For example from the developer guide:
2.2 Implement encryption using AWS services.
Encrypt data at rest (client side; server side; envelope encryption) using AWS services
Encrypt data in transit
My notes would look something like this:
Main encryption related services:
KMS - Encryption Key management
Cloud HSM - a hardware security module in vpc used for key material
Secrets Manager - used to manage secrets with KMS keys.
SSM Parameter Store - secure string data type
S3 encryption at rest
SSE-C - customer managed keys
SSE-KMS - kms managed keys
SSE-S3 - s3 managed keys… and so on
you get a point. Something helpful i do for myself. Then i reference this as a study guide until i sit for the exam
Step 5: The Exam
Take it and pass fren. If you fail (NGMI) you can try again in 2 weeks.
Turbo Tips: Read the question twice. Pick up on any key words. Eliminate answer choices. Classic test taking strategies here. If you are not sure on a question mark it for review and circle back.
Step 6: Post Exam
subscribe to my SubStack and let me know you passed.
-Celt