{"id":462,"date":"2015-07-07T14:38:07","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T18:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eqsim.com\/blog\/?p=462"},"modified":"2015-07-07T15:40:17","modified_gmt":"2015-07-07T19:40:17","slug":"reflections-on-aws-solutions-architect-exam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.eqsim.com\/blog\/reflections-on-aws-solutions-architect-exam\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on AWS Solutions Architect Exam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m happy to say I just passed the <a href=\"http:\/\/aws.amazon.com\/certification\/certified-solutions-architect-associate\/\" target=\"_blank\">AWS Solutions Architect Certification Exam<\/a>\u00a0with an overall score of 75% (not to say that I&#8217;m thrilled with the 75% score, but I think the exam was fair).\u00a0FWIW, I wanted to share a few reflections on the experience overall.<\/p>\n<p>To begin with, I had a lot of traditional CS background, but very little to no background on cloud services. I had no operational experience with AWS, Azure, etc. I started a little over a month ago looking at online classes, and settled on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.udemy.com\/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-2015\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;AWS Certified Solutions Architect &#8211; Associate 2015&#8221;\u00a0class on Udemy by Ryan Kroonenburg<\/a>. This class was terrific, I would highly recommend anyone considering getting a technical intro or overview of AWS to take this class. Ryan&#8217;s organization and presentations, with a mix of practice opportunities, was exactly what I needed to get me some practical experience to back up the didactic knowledge. Also, I got an odd kick out of Ryan&#8217;s start of each lecture with &#8220;Hello, Cloud Gurus&#8230;&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>I had browsed other online classes, but I figured that the focus on the exam, along with the operational practice part of launching a scalable and fault-tolerant WordPress site on AWS, was a winning combination.<\/p>\n<p>I went through the Udemy class and lectures twice &#8212; first, at regular speed, about 3-4 weeks ago, then at an accelerated pace about 1-1.5 weeks ago. I went through all the quizzes in the class until I got them all 100% &#8212; which is not particularly challenging because neither the questions nor the order change. I was going to do the webassesssor practice exam in the past few days but had some issues and ultimately never got to it.<\/p>\n<p>I read\/skimmed the suggested white papers as well as the FAQ&#8217;s for the AWS services, but at best I don&#8217;t think they helped anymore than just doing the class work.<\/p>\n<p>Regarding the test, I think it was a pretty good assessment of my overall knowledge. Here are some observations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>My overall strategy was to get through all the easy questions with sufficient time to review the ones I had doubts about, or completely didn&#8217;t know. I found that I got through a first pass of questions in about 35-40 minutes. I had marked 20 questions to review later, and of those, 9 I was pretty unsure of the answers. After finishing the first pass, I went through the dubious questions in about 15-20 minutes, then took a 3 minute break from the desk to clear my mind a little bit. I came back to the hardest 5 with about 20 minutes remaining, then finished with about 10 minutes left overall.<\/li>\n<li>I found many more multi-part questions than I expected, I would say about 15 or so of the total. For those questions, I usually knew 1 of the answers immediately, but it was the 2nd or 3rd choices I had questions about. I can sometimes read way too much into questions or answers, and that makes me agonize more than I should, so my advice would be to read the questions or answers as plainly as they appear, without so much subtlety (again, easier to say than do).<\/li>\n<li>Breakdown of <strong>my results<\/strong> (topic level scoring):\n<ul>\n<li>Designing highly available, cost efficient, fault tolerant, scalable systems : 70%<\/li>\n<li>Implementation\/Deployment: 50%<\/li>\n<li>Security: 87%<\/li>\n<li>Troubleshooting: 100%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>My weakest area was\u00a0&#8220;implementation\/deployment&#8221;, but I think that is somewhat reflective of my current lack of real operational experience (which will definitely change moving forward!)<\/li>\n<li>I tend to believe it would have been better if there were parts of the exam in which I demonstrated competency\/proficiency at a task. I would have loved it if there were simulation exercises in which I could demonstrate I knew how to set up and troubleshoot a VPC, for example (one thing Ryan stresses).<\/li>\n<li>I believe I would have done better if I were more familiar with\n<ul>\n<li>The specific behaviors\/consequences after stopping EC2 instances (for example, what happens to the EBS-backed volumes);<\/li>\n<li>Different types of instances. Since we worked mostly with the free tier, I ignored the differences in other tiers. There was 1 or 2 questions about characteristics of those other types, and I just winged it;<\/li>\n<li>VPC peers; and<\/li>\n<li>More use cases for services like Kinesis, RedShift, etc. Things I should have remembered from the FAQ&#8217;s.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>I should have taken the practice exam, that would have helped.<\/li>\n<li>Of course I don&#8217;t know really what I got wrong or right, so it&#8217;s possible the things I thought I got right I got wrong. I would have loved to get any sense of what I got wrong, so I could study those further. I understand why Amazon doesn&#8217;t tell me, but it&#8217;s still something I would have liked for my professional development.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My biggest complaint about the exam is not really about the exam itself, but the lack of direction in the overall process. I see three main parts for this learning:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Training to learn the services and pass the test<\/li>\n<li>Taking the test<\/li>\n<li>Applying the knowledge beyond the test.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I understand that the certification, especially from Amazon&#8217;s perspective, is really about #2. However, to make the certification worth something to employers, I would think an employer would want to know that the person has direct experience with a relevant type of situation. I feel I got a great introduction to the services, but I recognize I need more practical experience. It would be great if there were some kind of structure apprenticeship, say for a month or two, along different real-world tracks, maybe db-management, mobile app development, big data stuff, etc.<\/p>\n<p>I have a few projects I want to pursue with AWS, so I&#8217;m excited to get going with them, and of course I&#8217;m super-relieved to be past the exam.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m happy to say I just passed the AWS Solutions Architect Certification Exam\u00a0with an overall score of 75% (not to say that I&#8217;m thrilled with the 75% score, but I think the exam was fair).\u00a0FWIW, I wanted to share a few reflections on the experience overall. To begin with, I had a lot of traditional\u2026 <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.eqsim.com\/blog\/reflections-on-aws-solutions-architect-exam\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.eqsim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.eqsim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.eqsim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.eqsim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.eqsim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.eqsim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":469,"href":"http:\/\/www.eqsim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions\/469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.eqsim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.eqsim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.eqsim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}