How to prepare for AWS Solution Architect Professional Certification

This year, in the month of August, I have successfully completed AWS Solution Architect Professional certification. With this I got both Associate and Professional certifications :-).

I have been approached by many LinkedIn connections to provide information on the preparation for AWS Solution Architect Professional Certification. So thought of taking some time and sharing my learnings and experiences while preparing for the same certification.

As we all know AWS captures a market share of over 33% in the overall Cloud market. This is as per Gartner’s magic Quadrant 2020. So the certification holds a greater value.

Now coming to AWS certification, the process has been changed in 2020. Till 2019, Solution Architect — Associate used to be a prerequisite for Professional exam. However from 2020, the process has been changed and the have removed the mandatory criteria of completing the Associate exam. That means anyone can give Professional exam.

Giving Associate exam have their own advantages. Associate Exam gives greater understanding on AWS topology and various services, their policies, limitations etc. It’s like a building block while constructing the house. It gives the platform and understanding to take a deep dive for professional exam.

Having said that we can directly give Professional exam too. But it requires a greater focus and commitment during the preparation. Because we would need to understand the basics and also the granular details of each service in ONE GO. The professional exam expects the ability to evaluate cloud application requirements and make architectural recommendations for implementation, deployment, and provisioning applications on AWS

Here are the tips for the certification:

1. We need to create an AWS account. This will help us to make our hands dirty and also help us to understand the granular details of security, policies and limitations.
2. If you want to directly give Professional certification, then you need a minimum of three months of preparation time. You need to allocate daily two hours. If you are busy with work during the week days, you can compensate during the weekends.
3. I went with purchasing uDemy course (DolfinEd training materials by Eissa AbuSherif). In uDemy, there are many such materials. DolfinEd materials are really good and helped me in understanding the topics very well.
4. Download all the AWS white papers like VPC, Security, Well-Architected Framework, Encrypting DARE (Data At Rest), migrating AWS resources to new region. These whitepapers will help you in understanding the concepts in a detailed way.
5. As and when we complete one chapter, make sure we start playing around the topics, involved in that chapter, by logging to AWS console.
6. once we complete going through the materials, we need to to again go through them. This is just to make sure we remember all the concepts.
7. Once we are comfortable and satisfied with the preparation, we need to write practice exams. I have purchased Jon Bonso practice exams. Once we write one practice exam, we can evaluate ourselves as to where we are as far as the preparation is concerned. Don’t directly go to the second practice exam. First identify the gaps and make sure those gaps are addressed. Then go to the second exam. This will ensure we understand the concepts on one exam.
8. If we repeat this cycle for second exam as well, know what our gaps are and address the gaps and we will be much more comfortable.
9. So by the time we complete the third practice exam, we will be close to 90% confident to give the main exam.
10. Now comes booking a slot for the main exam. Before pandemic, we need to go to Prometric center to give the exam. But now AWS has given a provision to give exam from home as well.
11. The duration for the exam is three hours and the number of questions will be 75.
12. There will be MCQs and also MAQs (Multiple Answer questions).
13. This exam tests our analytic thinking and SME thought process while selecting the BEST answer.
14. If we look at the number of questions and the time, each question has a time of two and half minutes. some questions will be very big and the answers are also very big. some questions are very complex. So we shouldn’t think that we are given overtime for the questions.
15. After the exam, we will be immediately notified if we cleared the exam or not.

In the end, my recommendation is to first go for Associate if you are not serious enough or if you don’t have time for three months for the preparation. Associate exam will be slightly easier compared to Professional as it touches the topics at high level. If you have time, passion and commitment, then go for Professional. As i said earlier, Professional certification holds greater value.

Thanks for taking time and reading my article.

If you have any question, feel free to reach out to me @ kiran.mvv@gmail.com