AWS Solution Architect Certification. Back to University?
I have just received my Associate Solution Architect certification, and I think now is a good time to share some thoughts on the process/motivation behind it.
This post is not about whether or not you should take the certification exam. There are various benefits to taking it, and we all choose to do it for different reasons (but I will state mine).
Why?
I have had only hands-on practical experience with AWS prior to this. I was lucky to work with some basic AWS integrations on my first job. However, being in a small company with an even smaller software department, all of that AWS experience was purely self-taught. Fast-forward some years, and my AWS knowledge has multiplied, but at the core of it is still the same self-taught foundation with self-discovered ways of working. It worked just fine so far, but what if my foundational knowledge was wrong?
What I realized is that I wanted some proof that I know it. Also, it looks nice on the CV (obviously).
(Self-imposed) Constraints
My goal was to pass the exam in the absolutely shortest time possible. At the time of writing this, I was in between projects, so I had time to sink into this, but I didn’t want it to be unreasonable. So, I arbitrarily decided on 2 weeks of prep time (it ended up being 3).
How to prepare?
Given the rather short timeframe that I had chosen, I had to think about the most optimal way of consuming information. Finding the right information takes time, so I had to make sure that I had all of the required knowledge served to me on a silver platter, where my only responsibility would be to focus on learning without any distractions.
There was no need to reinvent the wheel as countless amount of people had done this before me. So, I chose the most vanilla approach — Udemy video courses:
- 1 week for learning and filling in the gaps in my AWS knowledge;
- 1 week for exam prepping. This is the important step.
There are countless other courses that I could have chosen from, but the specifics don’t matter. You should find a way of taking in new information that works for you — for me, it was (sped-up, 1.75x) videos, because that way I couldn’t skip over important parts, which I sometimes do when reading.
Some things that worked well for me for the practice exams:
- For the first one or two practice exams, focus more on the format of the questions and try to learn the way the questions are worded and why. Very often there are a lot of specific keywords in each question that can help you discard unrelated answers. An example: if a question mentions a “hot partition” (!) and asks you how to scale database reads (!), you should automatically assume that an in-memory caching solution will most likely be the answer. Or if another question asks you for a solution with “minimal refactoring”, introducing a new service as part of the solution is most likely wrong. These are fictive examples, but you get the point;
- Familiarize yourself with the 6 pillars of the Well-Architected Framework (for example, the principle of least-privilege IAM permissions);
- There may be more than one valid solution for any given problem in the exam. However, you always have to choose the one that is more fitting the question requirements and takes the least effort/complexity;
- Don’t spend too much time thinking about a question. If you know the answer, you will be able to answer it relatively fast. If you are not sure about it, then you should probably spend some time on understanding that topic better;
- You don’t need to score 100%. Cutting corners is OK. If a question is about some non-essential service, you don’t have to learn it. With this said, make sure you are well prepared for EC2, VPC (especially VPC!), IAM, RDS, CloudFront, and Organisations questions.
The whole process really reminded me of my university days with the occasional exam crunches. The difference now is I could take it at my own pace :)
Disclaimer
This is a good approach only if you work with AWS daily/have solid AWS experience, you know that you have enough AWS knowledge already, and your main goal is to align your way of working with the approach mandated by the AWS themselves. Otherwise, if you are not proficient in AWS or just want to learn their services, take it slow and focus on doing some hands-on deployments to supplement and cement the theoretical knowledge.
At the time of taking the test, I had ~5 years of AWS experience, so for me, the theory course was more of a refresher with occasional learning of some quirky service behavior/limitations.
I scored ~65% on the very first practice test I took after the theory course, and over the course of the next 10 days the scores gradually went up to ~85%. That was good enough to book the exam.
The Exam
Some recommend booking the exam well in advance. I did it only when I felt I was ready (as I said, I wanted to be done in 2 weeks, but I needed 3 instead). If you are working in a short time frame, even a couple of days can make a difference. So, take your time.
I did it in person at a Pearson VUE center. Not much to say here, the results came back in less than a day, and I got a shiny digital badge as a result.
Final Thoughts
I like to think that there is no wrong way to write software — but absolutely there are ways to write expensive software (aka slow & inefficient, both in terms of operational or development effort). This is especially true when it comes to AWS — a 2x performance improvement will result in a 50% reduced bill, given a well-architected system.
Being able to design efficient & optimal (cloud) software is a skill, and being told by AWS that I am capable of doing that in their ecosystem was worth the effort to me. If anything, it showed me that I was advancing my (AWS) cloud knowledge in the right direction.
I hope this post shows that getting ready for a certification exam is not rocket science. Getting certified (in anything!) is just about putting in the time. I had it. Do you?
