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How To Get Started With AWS Certification

Why get certified in the first place?

Certifications are a great way to demonstrate your skills to potential employees or to get a promotion into your target job role. With AWS dominating the world of cloud computing and many companies moving services into the cloud, AWS certifications are some of the most sought-after certifications in 2019.

Training for certifications also provides knowledge that you can practically use in your current role. Most IT roles today involve some level of exposure to cloud computing (and very likely AWS). If your role doesn’t, it probably will very soon. Therefore, it’s wise to get ahead of the curve and make sure your skills are relevant in today’s market.

Which certification is right for me?

As an instructor and author of AWS certification resources for Digital Cloud Training, many people ask me what the best way is to get started with learning AWS. The certification tracks include the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification and the Associate and Professional certification levels as well as the specialty track.

There are no longer any prerequisites and you can get started with any certification you choose. However, the path you should take really depends on your background, goals, and the type of role you perform.

The image below shows the role-based certifications at the foundational, associate and professional levels:

Foundational Level

The foundational level includes a single certification: AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Practice-Tests . This certification is focussed on basic cloud concepts including a high-level understanding of AWS cloud services and their typical use cases, support, pricing, architectural best practices and the AWS global infrastructure.

Those who are new to cloud computing or whose job roles does not require a deeper level of knowledge may choose to get started with the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification. This might include sales, pre-sales, 1st line support staff and managers.

The Cloud Practitioner exam is composed of 65 questions and you have 90 minutes to complete it with a passing score of 700 points out of 1000. The questions that are asked are straightforward; these are not the scenario-based questions you will find in other certification tracks.

Associate Level

If your job role requires a deeper level of knowledge there are then three associate level tracks. These are the Solutions Architect, SysOps Administrator and Developer Associate. You should choose which track to follow based on your job role.

For example, if you work in the systems operations space you might choose the SysOps Administrator – Associate and if you are a Solutions Architect you would choose the Solutions Architect – Associate.

The associate level exams are a big step up in difficulty from the Cloud Practitioner but nowhere near as difficult as the professional level. The scope of the associate level certifications is broad, but the depth of knowledge required is relatively shallow.

Though the Cloud Practitioner is suitable for those with no AWS experience, it is recommended that you have at least one year of hands-on experience with AWS before you take the associate level exams.

The exams are composed of 65 questions in 130 minutes, and all questions are scenario-based. You must score at least 720 points out of 1000. The scenarios are usually just one or two paragraphs long.

As with the Cloud Practitioner exam, the format for the questions is one of the following:

• Multiple-choice: Has one correct answer and three incorrect answers (distractors)

• Multiple-response: Has two correct responses out of five option

The difference with associate (and higher) level questions is that the distractors (incorrect answers) are options that may be correct but are not the architecturally best options.

This makes the associate level questions harder as you need to understand the performance, design, security, availability and operational implications of each answer and select the best solution available.

Professional Level

The next level is the professional level which is the highest level of certification on AWS technology (the specialty certifications sit alongside professional level).

The professional level certifications cover a broad scope but at a much deeper level than the Associate certifications.

It is recommended that you have at least 2 years of hands-on experience designing and deploying cloud architectures on AWS before taking this exam.

The same three tracks are available as with the associate level: Solutions Architect – Professional, SysOps Administrator – Professional and Developer Professional. You should choose the track that most closely matches your job role and experience.

The professional level is another big step up in difficulty. The exam is also scenario-based with the scenarios being lengthier and more complex.

You get 55 questions and 170 minutes to complete the exam with a passing score of 750 points out of 1000.

Many examinees struggle with time management in this exam due to the difficulty of the questions. The distractors are often difficult to eliminate as they provide viable solutions, and you need a solid understanding of the service’s limitations, use cases and best practices.

Until recently you needed to pass the associate level certification from the relevant track (Solutions Architect, SysOps Administrator, Developer Associate) before you could take the professional level exam. This prerequisite was recently removed so if you have the knowledge and experience you can get straight into the professional level.

Specialty Certifications

These certifications sit alongside professional level in terms of overall difficulty but focus on much narrower topics with a deeper level of knowledge required. Make sure you know everything there is to know about your subject before taking one of these exams!

The three specialty certifications are: Advanced Networking, Big Data, and Security. The image below shows the three specialty certifications that are currently available.

The prerequisites can be quite high for these certifications. For example, with the security specialty AWS recommend a minimum of 5 years of IT security experience with at least 2 years of hands-on experience securing AWS workloads.

The exams include 65 questions and you get 170 minutes for completion with a passing score of 750 points out of 1000.

What training resources are available?

A good start for finding resources is to head over to the AWS website and read the exam blueprint for the certification you’re planning to take. The exam blueprints provide links to recommended training courses and reading materials such as whitepapers.

There are also a number of video-based instructor-led courses available from various providers that provide a good combination of theory and guided practice labs.

At Digital Cloud Training we provide exam-specific training notes and practice questions for multiple AWS certifications. These include AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate and AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam.

#AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam #AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam

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digitalcloudtraining-blog · 6 years ago

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AWS Cloud Practitioner Training - What to Expect in the Exam

Last year Amazon Web Services exceeded $7 billion in fourth-quarter revenue, a jump of over 45% from the year before. With growth as exceptional as this, demand for cloud engineers is understandably increasing at a rapid rate.

Training and certification are a great way to get started in the cloud world and with typical salaries exceeding $100k p/a there has been a huge uptake in training in recent years. To get a job in a competitive market you need to be able to differentiate yourself and gaining several AWS certifications is a sensible way to get started.

Many aspiring cloud engineers will start their learning path by taking the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam. This exam is the foundational level in the AWS training program and is a good first step on your path to cloud mastery.

In this article, I want to explore the AWS Cloud Practitioner Training path in more detail so you can get an idea of what to expect in the exam. I will discuss the recommended training, experience and practice that you should undertake before sitting the exam.

The AWS Exam Blueprint

As a foundational level exam, the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner is intended for individuals who have the ability to, in Amazon’s words, "effectively demonstrate an overall understanding of the AWS Cloud". This certification is fairly generic and does not assess the skills required for specific job roles such as Developers, Sysops Administrators, and Solutions Architects.

AWS recommend you have a minimum of 6 months experience with the AWS Cloud. However, this does not need to be experience in a technical job role. Exposure to the AWS Cloud in a managerial, sales, purchasing or financial position is also acceptable.

The exam includes 65 questions and has a time limit of 90 minutes. You need to score a minimum of 700 out of 1000 points to pass the exam.

The question format of the exam is multiple-choice (one correct response from four options) and multiple-response (two correct responses from five options).

As you’ll see from the example questions later in this article, the questions are fairly straightforward and not scenario based like in other exams such as the Associate and Professional level certifications.

In the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam blueprint, it is stated that the exam validates an examinee's ability to:

Define what the AWS Cloud is and the basic global infrastructure

Describe basic AWS Cloud architectural principles

Describe the AWS Cloud value proposition

Describe key services on the AWS platform and their common use cases(for example, compute and analytics)

Describe the basic security and compliance aspects of the AWS platform and the shared security model

Define the billing, account management, and pricing models

Identify sources of documentation or technical assistance (for example, whitepapers or support tickets)

Describe basic/core characteristics of deploying and operating in the AWS Cloud

Throughout the rest of this article, we’ll explore these knowledge requirements in more detail, and I’ll try to give you a clear idea of what to expect in the exam.

Domains, objectives and examples

The knowledge required is organized into four test "domains". Within each test domain there are several objectives that broadly describe the knowledge and experience expected to pass the exam.

Test Domain 1: Cloud Concepts

This domain makes up 28% of the exam and includes the following three objectives:

1.1 Define the AWS Cloud and its value proposition

1.2 Identify aspects of AWS Cloud economics

1.3 List the different cloud architecture design principles

What you need to know

You should be able to describe the benefits of public cloud services and be able to define what types of services are available on AWS (think IaaS, PaaS, SaaS). Make sure you understand the 6 advantages of cloud:

Trade capital expense for variable expense

Benefit from massive economies of scale

Stop guessing about capacity

Increase speed and agility

Stop spending money running and maintaining data centers

Go global in minutes

You need to know how cloud is beneficial from a financial perspective and should understand the difference between CAPEX and OPEX - this relates to item 1 in the list above.

You should understand the design principles of creating cloud architectures, this includes loose coupling, scaling (vertically and horizontally), bootstrapping and automation, to name just a few.

The AWS blog article "The 5 Pillars of the Well-Architected Framework" is essential reading, as is the whitepaper "Architecting for the Cloud: Best Practices".

Example questions

Question: Which feature of AWS allows you to deploy a new application for which the requirements may change over time?

Elasticity

Fault tolerance

Disposable resources

High availability

Answer: 1, elasticity allows you to deploy your application without worrying about whether it will need more or less resources in the future. With elasticity, the infrastructure can scale on-demand

Question: What advantages do you get from using the AWS cloud? (choose 2)

Trade capital expense for variable expense

Stop guessing about capacity

Increased capital expenditure

Gain greater control of the infrastructure layer

Comply with all local security compliance programs

Answer: 1+2, with public cloud services such as AWS you can pay on a variable (OPEX) basis for the resources you use and scale on-demand, so you never need to guess how much resources you need to deploy.

Resources

Architecting for the cloud best practices whitepaper

The 5 Pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework

Cloud Computing Concepts

Architecting for the Cloud

Test Domain 2: Security

This domain makes up 24% of the exam and includes the following four objectives:

2.1 Define the AWS Shared Responsibility mode

2.2 Define AWS Cloud security and compliance concepts

2.3 Identify AWS access management capabilities

2.4 Identify resources for security support

What you need to know

You should understand the AWS shared responsibility model which defines who is responsible for different aspects of the technology stack from the data centre through to servers, firewall rules and data encryption.

AWS provide tools and services for implementing security, assessing your security position, and generating alerts and compliance reports. You need to understand these services and tools well enough to describe their usage and benefits. This includes services such as KMS, CloudTrail and AWS Artifact.

You also need to understand the services that are used for authentication, authorization and access management. This includes services such as AWS IAM, and Amazon Cognito, and the usage of access keys, key pairs and signed URLs.

Support services include real-time insights through AWS Trusted Advisor and proactive support and advocacy with a Technical Account Manager (TAM). Make sure you know which support packages include a TAM.

Example questions

Question: Under the AWS shared responsibility model what is the customer responsible for?(choose 2)

Physical security of the data center

Replacement and disposal of disk drives

Configuration of security groups

Patch management of infrastructure

Encryption of customer data

Answer: 3+5, AWS are responsible for items such as the physical security of the DC, replacement of old disk drives, and patch management of the infrastructure whereas customers are responsible for items such as configuring security groups, network ACLs, patching their operating systems and encrypting their data.

Question: Which AWS service is used to enable multi-factor authentication?

Amazon STS

AWS IAM

Amazon EC2

AWS KMS

Answer: 2, IAM is used to securely control individual and group access to AWS resources and can be used to manage multi-factor authentication.

Resources

AWS Shared Responsibility Model

AWS Cloud Security

Identity and Access Management

AWS Billing and Pricing

Test Domain 3: Technology

This domain makes up 36% of the exam and includes the following four objectives:

3.1 Define methods of deploying and operating in the AWS Cloud

3.2 Define the AWS global infrastructure

3.3 Identify the core AWS services

3.4 Identify resources for technology support

What you need to know

You need to understand the core AWS services and what they are used for. You typically don't need a deep level of knowledge of the specifics of a service but do need to understand its purpose, benefits and use cases.

Core services include EC2, ECS, Lambda, LightSail, EBS, EFS, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, RedShift, ElastiCache, Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, CloudFront, Route 53, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, and SNS.

You should understand the underlying global infrastructure that makes up the AWS Cloud. This includes regions, availability zones, and edge locations. Make sure you understand which services are globally or regionally defined.

You should also know the customer configurable building blocks of cloud services including VPCs, and subnets, and connectivity options such as Internet Gateways, VPN and Direct Connect. Also, ensure you know the difference between NAT Instances and NAT Gateways and the relative benefits of each service.

Example questions

Question: What are the advantages of Availability Zones? (choose 2)

They allow regional disaster recovery

They provide fault isolation

They enable the caching of data for faster delivery to end users

They are connected by low-latency network connections

They enable you to connect your on-premises networks to AWS to form a hybrid cloud

Answer: 3+4, both Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 are managed at a regional level. Note: Amazon S3 is a global namespace but you still create your buckets within a region.

Question: Which AWS support plans provide support via email, chat and phone? (choose 2)

Basic

Business

Developer

Global

Enterprise

Answer: 2+5, only the business and enterprise plans provide support via email, chat and phone.

Resources

AWS Global Infrastructure

Identity and Access Management

AWS Services: AWS Compute, AWS Storage, AWS Networking, AWS Databases, Elastic Load Balancing and Auto Scaling, Content Delivery and DNS, Monitoring and Logging, Notification Services, Additional AWS Services

Test Domain 4: Billing and Pricing

This domain makes up 12% of the exam and includes the following three objectives:

4.1 Compare and contrast the various pricing models for AWS

4.2 Recognize the various account structures in relation to AWS billing and pricing

4.3 Identify resources available for billing support

What you need to know

Most services on AWS are offered on a pay per use basis, but there are also options to reduce price by locking in to 1- or 3-year contracts with various options for payment. You need to understand these models and which services they apply to.

Make sure you understand what AWS charges you for and what is free of charge. For instance, inbound data transfer is free whereas outbound data transfer typically incurs costs.

Some services such as VPC, CloudFormation, and IAM are free but the resources you create with them may not be. You need to understand where costs may be incurred.

AWS accounts can be organized into Organizations for centralized management of policies and consolidated billing. You need to understand the various accounts structures and the benefits and use cases for implementing them.

For instance, you might want separate account structures to manage different policies for production and non-production resources, or you might implement consolidated billing to take advantage of volume discounts.

For billing support, you need to know the services and tools available to you and what levels of support you can get from AWS support plans.

Tools include AWS Cost Explorer, AWS Simple Monthly Calculator, and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculator.

Example questions

Question: What are two ways an AWS customer can reduce their monthly spend? (choose 2)

Turn off resources that are not being used

Use more power efficient instance types

Reserve capacity where suitable

Be efficient with usage of Security Groups

Reduce the amount of data ingress charges

Answer: 1+3, turning off resources that are not used can reduce spend. You can also use reserved instances to reduce the monthly spend at the expense of having to lock into a 1 or 3-year contract - good for stable workloads.

Question: A company would like to maximize their potential volume and RI discounts across multiple accounts and also apply service control policies on member accounts. What can they use gain these benefits?

AWS Budgets

AWS Cost Explorer

AWS IAM

AWS Organizations

Answer: 4, AWS Organizations enables you to create groups of AWS accounts and then centrally manage policies across those accounts. AWS Organizations provides consolidated billing in both feature sets, which allows you set up a single payment method in the organization’s master account and still receive an invoice for individual activity in each member account. Volume pricing discounts can be applied to resources.

Resources

Check out the AWS FAQs for each service on the AWS website

AWS Billing and Pricing

AWS Cloud Practitioner Training

If you’re new to AWS, or cloud computing in general, and this is a bit overwhelming, fear not as there are some excellent and economical options for training.

The best way to get started is to head over to the aws.training website. AWS provide a number of free online courses including the “AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials” course that are a great way to learn the fundamentals of the AWS Cloud.

However, I would like to note that many of our students have reported that the training on the aws.training website is not enough to pass the exam so you will need to find additional training resources.

Another learning tool is our Training Noteson the Digital Cloud Training website which provide a deeper level of detail for all test domains of the Cloud Practitioner exam. Get access here.

At Digital Cloud Training we also offer AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Practice Exams which are designed to be representative of the question format and difficulty of the actual AWS exam. These are a great way not just of assessing your readiness, but also for learning the concepts as we provide detailed explanations and reference links for every question. But don’t leave it until the last minutes, get started with AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Practice Exams early so you can ensure you’re on track.

Last but not least, make sure you get access to the AWS Cloud platform and start learning through practice. AWS provide a free-tier that you can use to spin up many services without incurring any costs. Get yourself signed up and start learning the fun way!

#AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam #AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Practice Exams

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digitalcloudtraining-blog · 6 years ago

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#cloud training #AWS Architect Certification Training

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digitalcloudtraining-blog · 6 years ago

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#AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Training

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digitalcloudtraining-blog · 6 years ago

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AWS Cloud Practitioner Training - What to Expect in the Exam

In this article I want to explore the AWS Cloud Practitioner Training path in more detail so you can get an idea of what to expect in the exam. I will discuss the recommended training, experience and practice that you should undertake before sitting the exam.

The AWS Exam Blueprint

The exam includes 65 questions and has a time limit of 90 minutes. You need to score a minimum of 700 out of 1000 points to pass the exam.

The question format of the exam is multiple-choice (one correct response from four options) and multiple-response (two correct responses from five options).

In the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam blueprint, it is stated that the exam validates an examinee's ability to:

· Define what the AWS Cloud is and the basic global infrastructure

· Describe basic AWS Cloud architectural principles

· Describe the AWS Cloud value proposition

· Describe key services on the AWS platform and their common use cases(for example, compute and analytics)

· Describe basic security and compliance aspects of the AWS platform and the shared security model

· Define the billing, account management, and pricing models

· Identify sources of documentation or technical assistance (for example, whitepapers or support tickets)

· Describe basic/core characteristics of deploying and operating in the AWS Cloud

Throughout the rest of this article, we’ll explore these knowledge requirements in more detail, and I’ll try to give you a clear idea of what to expect in the exam.

Domains, objectives and examples

The knowledge required is organized into four test "domains". Within each test domain there are several objectives that broadly describe the knowledge and experience expected to pass the exam.

Test Domain 1: Cloud Concepts

This domain makes up 28% of the exam and includes the following three objectives:

· 1.1 Define the AWS Cloud and its value proposition

· 1.2 Identify aspects of AWS Cloud economics

· 1.3 List the different cloud architecture design principles

What you need to know

1. Trade capital expense for variable expense

2. Benefit from massive economies of scale

3. Stop guessing about capacity

4. Increase speed and agility

5. Stop spending money running and maintaining data centers

6. Go global in minutes

You need to know how cloud is beneficial from a financial perspective and should understand the difference between CAPEX and OPEX - this relates to item 1 in the list above.

You should understand the design principles of creating cloud architectures, this includes loose coupling, scaling (vertically and horizontally), bootstrapping and automation, to name just a few.

The AWS blog article "The 5 Pillars of the Well-Architected Framework" is essential reading, as is the whitepaper "Architecting for the Cloud: Best Practices".

Example questions

Question: Which feature of AWS allows you to deploy a new application for which the requirements may change over time?

1. Elasticity

2. Fault tolerance

3. Disposable resources

4. High availability

Answer: 1, elasticity allows you to deploy your application without worrying about whether it will need more or less resources in the future. With elasticity, the infrastructure can scale on-demand

Question: What advantages do you get from using the AWS cloud? (choose 2)

1. Trade capital expense for variable expense

2. Stop guessing about capacity

3. Increased capital expenditure

4. Gain greater control of the infrastructure layer

5. Comply with all local security compliance programs

Resources

· Architecting for the cloud best practices whitepaper

· The 5 Pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework

· Cloud Computing Concepts

· Architecting for the Cloud

Test Domain 2: Security

This domain makes up 24% of the exam and includes the following four objectives:

· 2.1 Define the AWS Shared Responsibility mode

· 2.2 Define AWS Cloud security and compliance concepts

· 2.3 Identify AWS access management capabilities

· 2.4 Identify resources for security support

What you need to know

Example questions

Question: Under the AWS shared responsibility model what is the customer responsible for? (choose 2)

1. Physical security of the data center

2. Replacement and disposal of disk drives

3. Configuration of security groups

4. Patch management of infrastructure

5. Encryption of customer data

Question: Which AWS service is used to enable multi-factor authentication?

1. Amazon STS

2. AWS IAM

3. Amazon EC2

4. AWS KMS

Answer: 2, IAM is used to securely control individual and group access to AWS resources and can be used to manage multi-factor authentication.

Resources

· AWS Shared Responsibility Model

· AWS Cloud Security

· Identity and Access Management

· AWS Billing and Pricing

Test Domain 3: Technology

This domain makes up 36% of the exam and includes the following four objectives:

· 3.1 Define methods of deploying and operating in the AWS Cloud

· 3.2 Define the AWS global infrastructure

· 3.3 Identify the core AWS services

· 3.4 Identify resources for technology support

What you need to know

Core services include EC2, ECS, Lambda, LightSail, EBS, EFS, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, RedShift, ElastiCache, Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, CloudFront, Route 53, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, and SNS.

Example questions

Question: What are the advantages of Availability Zones? (choose 2)

1. They allow regional disaster recovery

2. They provide fault isolation

3. They enable the caching of data for faster delivery to end users

4. They are connected by low-latency network connections

5. They enable you to connect your on-premises networks to AWS to form a hybrid cloud

Answer: 3+4, both Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 are managed at a regional level. Note: Amazon S3 is a global namespace but you still create your buckets within a region.

Question: Which AWS support plans provide support via email, chat and phone? (choose 2)

1. Basic

2. Business

3. Developer

4. Global

5. Enterprise

Answer: 2+5, only the business and enterprise plans provide support via email, chat and phone.

Resources

· AWS Global Infrastructure

· Identity and Access Management

· AWS Services: AWS Compute, AWS Storage, AWS Networking, AWS Databases, Elastic Load Balancing and Auto Scaling, Content Delivery and DNS, Monitoring and Logging, Notification Services, Additional AWS Services

Test Domain 4: Billing and Pricing

This domain makes up 12% of the exam and includes the following three objectives:

· 4.1 Compare and contrast the various pricing models for AWS

· 4.2 Recognize the various account structures in relation to AWS billing and pricing

· 4.3 Identify resources available for billing support

What you need to know

Make sure you understand what AWS charges you for and what is free of charge. For instance, inbound data transfer is free whereas outbound data transfer typically incurs costs.

Some services such as VPC, CloudFormation, and IAM are free but the resources you create with them may not be. You need to understand where costs may be incurred.

For billing support, you need to know the services and tools available to you and what levels of support you can get from AWS support plans.

Tools include AWS Cost Explorer, AWS Simple Monthly Calculator, and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculator.

Example questions

Question: What are two ways an AWS customer can reduce their monthly spend? (choose 2)

1. Turn off resources that are not being used

2. Use more power efficient instance types

3. Reserve capacity where suitable

4. Be efficient with usage of Security Groups

5. Reduce the amount of data ingress charges

1. AWS Budgets

2. AWS Cost Explorer

3. AWS IAM

4. AWS Organizations

Resources

· Check out the AWS FAQs for each service on the AWS website

· AWS Billing and Pricing

AWS Cloud Practitioner Training

If you’re new to AWS, or cloud computing in general, and this is a bit overwhelming, fear not as there are some excellent and economical options for training.

Another learning tool is our Training Notes on the Digital Cloud Training website which provide a deeper level of detail for all test domains of the Cloud Practitioner exam. Get access here.

#AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Practice Exams

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digitalcloudtraining-blog · 6 years ago

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AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Training - The Best Courses

Are you looking for AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Training and struggling to find the best courses?

As an Enterprise Architect working with cloud computing, I often get asked for recommendations on the best instructor-led online training and practice exams. This article provides some recommendations for how to get started. Read on for tips on making sure you select the best courses to ensure exam success.

My standard approach to training on a technology that is new to me is to start by getting some hands-on practice. With cloud computing this is generally very easy as you can simply sign up for an account and start playing with the services available.

Most public cloud providers offer some kind of program where you can get some bonus credits or free-tier services too, so you don't even need to pay. You can sign up for AWS free tier here.

As an example the resources available in free tier the following images show what is provided just in the compute category:

When training for certifications, you also need to ensure that you follow the exam blueprint and learn exactly what you need to pass the exam. With AWS there are so many services available you can’t study them all and need to know which ones will be covered on the exam.

You must also ensure you focus on the right concepts. You may be interested in learning concepts relevant to operations or development, but if you're taking the Solutions Architect exam you need to know how to choose the best solutions for a particular scenario.

I have often found that after getting some hands-on experience, the best methods of ensuring you study the right concepts for your exam blueprint are to use online instructor-led training videos and high-quality practice questions.

The key, then, is to ensure you select the right courses that cover the syllabus fully and adequately prepare you for the exam experience. If you don’t get this right you could end up wasting a lot of study time, or even worse, end up unprepared for the questions in the exam

In this article, I'd like to offer some recommendations for AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Training and AWS Solutions Architect Associate Practice Questions that will hopefully ensure that you don’t end up in this position, and instead turn up to your exam with the knowledge and confidence to ace your certification first time.

Exam Overview

Before we get into the course recommendations, I just want to provide an overview of the exam. The following explanation comes from the exam blueprint page on the AWS website:

"The AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate examination is intended for individuals who perform a solutions architect role. This exam validates an examinee's ability to effectively demonstrate knowledge of how to architect and deploy secure and robust applications on AWS technologies."

"It validates an examinee's ability to:

· Define a solution using architectural design principles based on customer requirements.

· Provide implementation guidance based on best practices to the organization throughout the life cycle of the project."

AWS recommend at least one year of hands-on experience and a foundational knowledge of many aspects of the AWS cloud architecture.

The exam is 65 questions in length, and you get 130 minutes. The questions are formatted into one of 2 response types:

· Multiple-choice: Has one correct response and three incorrect responses (distractors)

· Multiple-response: Has two correct responses out of five options

The scope of the exam encompasses the 5 domains listed in the table below:

You need to understand the relative strengths and weaknesses of AWS services in relation to each of these domains. What this means is many questions will have multiple correct answers and you must select the best option when taking into account, resilience, performance, security, cost and operations.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Training Course Recommendations

When studying to re-certify recently, I used multiple training courses on Udemy and Pluralsight. There are many more options in the marketplace that you might also want to consider. I haven’t evaluated these specifically, but you might want to check out the following:

· Linux Academy

· Cloud Academy

I can’t vouch for Cloud Academy, but Linux Academy generally have very good quality content and you can find them both on taheir own website as well as on Udemy.

The following course summaries are from the 3 courses that I took in 2018 when re-certifying for my AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate certification.

A Cloud Guru - AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate 2018

· Length: 20 hours

· Platform: A Cloud Guru / Udemy

· Instructor: Ryan Kroonenburg, Faye Ellis

· Pros: Good quality videos, clear instruction, knowledgeable instructor, great lab exercises

· Cons: Very light in content and not nearly enough to prepare for the exam, very slide oriented

Summary: This is a long-time bestseller and A Cloud Guru have become very well known in the AWS education industry. The quality is high and there are plenty of good lab exercises to walk you through using AWS services. That being said this course only scratches the surface and should not be used in isolation to prepare for the exam.

DolfinED - AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate [New Exam]

· Length: 69 hours

· Platform: Udemy

· Instructor: Eissa A Sherif

· Pros: Good quality videos, clear in-depth instruction, highly experienced instructor, extremely in-depth content

· Cons: Labs could be better as this course is much heavier in theory

Summary: A relative newcomer to the scene, Eissa provides the most in-depth training available for this exam. If you're going to buy one course, this should be it, as it's the only course available that will fully prepare you for the exam. Just be ready for many hours of intense theory as this one dives deep!

Pluralsight - AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate

· Length: 8hrs 21 mins

· Platform: Pluralsight

· Instructor: Elias Khnaser

· Pros: Good mixture of theory and practice labs, well presented

· Cons: Had some content that wasn't in the A Cloud Guru course but still not to the depth required to prepare for the exam

Summary: This was a good course with a good mixture of theory and practical labs. It’s well presented and there was quite a bit I learned on this course that wasn’t covered by A Cloud Guru. That being said A Cloud Guru had more guided labs and neither are in-depth enough to prepare you to pass the exam.

AWS Solutions Architect Associate Practice Questions

Practice questions are an extremely important tool for preparing for the exam experience. Even if you’ve trained and practiced extensively with AWS technology, if you’re not ready for the style and format of the questions in the exam, you may well find yourself struggling.

So where can you find the best practice questions? Well, I'm going to have to admit to a strong bias here :-). As a provider of practice questions for AWS certifications, at Digital Cloud Training we aim to provide the best quality resources available that represent the challenges and difficulty of the real AWS exam.

Our practice questions are written and updated by AWS certified professionals and we use extensive student feedback from the exam to ensure we align our training resources with students' exam experiences.

The result is that we have some of the toughest questions available that mirror the difficulty of the new exam pattern. We also provide comprehensive explanations with each question and these are a great way to learn as we describe in detail why each answer is correct or incorrect.

In addition to all this, we provide extensive exam-specific training notes with all of our practice tests and responsive instructor support. If you're ready to take your career to the next level and become an AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate, head over to Digital Cloud Training and check out the resources we have available.

We're also available on Udemy!

If you prefer to use the Udemy platform, you can also find our practice questions on Udemy, here. Check out the thousands of enrolments and hundreds of great student reviews.

Looking for more articles like this?

If you're looking for more tips on studying for AWS certifications, you may want to check out the article "How to Pass AWS Certification Exams First Time in 5 steps"

#Digital Cloud Training #AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate #AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate certification.#AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Training

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digitalcloudtraining-blog · 6 years ago

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Smash Your AWS Certification Exams in 5 Steps

I'm a certified certification junkie! I’ve been earning IT certifications for over 18 years now, have taken over 35 exams in that time, and I’ve only ever failed an exam twice. The key to successfully passing AWS Certification Exams is simply ensuring you prepare adequately.

Preparation consists of the following 5 steps which I'll be walking you through in this post:

1. Practice (hands-on)

2. Training (mainly online videos)

3. Theory (reading)

4. Practice questions

5. Taking the exam

The tools have changed a bit over the years and video based training is now very useful but cannot be used in isolation. There’s also a lot of companies selling various resources to help you prepare for your exams but the quality of the materials can vary significantly so it's worth being cautious about what you use.

Two years ago, I passed all three of the AWS associate level certifications and I’m now studying again to re-certify. I have created this blog to share some of the tools and methods I use to optimize the time I spend and ensure I pass the exam first time, every time.

I'm going to focus on the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate exam in this blog post, but this advice can apply to almost any of the AWS certification exams.

Background on the Exam

Before we get stuck into the 5 step process, a little background on the exam.

Most people who take these exams will have some basic level of understanding of IT. If you're a complete new by and can't tell a block from an object store, or a VM from a container, you might find it a lot more challenging.

That being said, you don't need to have deep expertise in the underlying technologies that support AWS, as cloud computing abstracts a lot of that complexity away from you.

Many developers who are not at all infrastructure savvy get on very well with AWS as it provides them the tools they need to do their jobs without having to care about the workings of the layers underneath.

You can find the blueprint for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate exam here.

In the exam blueprint, AWS make the following recommendations for AWS-specific knowledge and experience:

· One year of hands-on experience designing available, cost-efficient, fault-tolerant, and scalable distributed systems on AWS

· Hands-on experience using compute, networking, storage, and database AWS services

· Hands-on experience with AWS deployment and management services

· Ability to identify and define technical requirements for an AWS-based application

· Ability to identify which AWS services meet a given technical requirement

· Knowledge of recommended best practices for building secure and reliable applications on the AWS platform

· An understanding of the basic architectural principles of building on the AWS Cloud

· An understanding of the AWS global infrastructure

· An understanding of network technologies as they relate to AWS

· An understanding of security features and tools that AWS provides and how they relate to traditional services

The good news is all of this knowledge can be attained through some hands-on experience and reading freely available articles on the AWS website.

The exam has recently changed to a new format this year and the diagram below shows the differences between the new and old format (this applies to all of the associate level AWS certification exams).

The AWS technology moves at an incredible rate of change so I would recommend going with the latest exam format if you are starting your studies now, as it will be more closely aligned with the features available today.

Note that there are 10 more questions in the new exam and an extra 50 minutes to do them!. That's not being generous as much as it is about the increased difficulty of some of the questions on the new exam.

But don't let that put you off, the associate level exams are not too difficult and there a plenty of resources to use to to prepare.

Step 1: It all starts with...Hands-On

One of the keys to learning any technology is to play with it. Not everyone has the chance to work with technologies they’re studying in a professional context and I’ve certainly passed many exams without having actual on-the-job experience. It’s easier now than ever, especially with cloud computing, to get the experience you need at minimal cost (sometimes free).

With AWS you can setup an account for free and the free tier allows you to use specific AWS services at no cost. Just go to: https://aws.amazon.com/free

With the free tier you get plenty for free every month including (but not limited to):

This is a great way to get experience and you can bring stuff up and tear it down again without it costing you a cent. It’s amazing how much you can do in the free tier for a whole year!

Step 2: Online Video-Based Training

Online video-based training is an awesome tool. There are many great online courses for AWS certification that allow you to just sit back and soak it all up. The great thing about video is you have an expert and experienced instructor who can help guide you through the technology and point out useful tips for passing the exam.

Online courses can vary from death-by-powerpoint to heavily lab centric and this is where the problem with using them in isolation lies. The courses that are heavy in content can be very dry and tedious, and the more practical courses will be light on content and won’t get you anywhere near ready to pass the exam.

I recently used these online courses:

A Cloud Guru – this is a great starting point. It’s quite practical with plenty of labs and is well presented. The theory bits can be very slide oriented with little graphical assistance and in terms of the depth of content this course alone won’t teach you more than 40-50% (max) of what you need to pass the exam

Elias Khnaser on Pluralsight – this was a good course with a good mixture of theory and practical labs. It’s well presented and there was quite a bit I learned on this course that wasn’t covered by A Cloud Guru. That being said A Cloud Guru had more guided labs

DolfinED on Udemy – boy is this one is in depth! There’s over 30 hours of theory and another 30 hours of taking you through the practice questions. This course goes into some serious depth on some topics and will probably prepare you some way towards the Pro exam too. Other topics are covered quite low touch and probably won’t suffice for the exam. If there’s one video based course that’s going to get you through the exam this is it, but you need to be prepared for a long and tedious slog as it’s ALL theory with no practical whatsoever!

Step 3: Theory

Some people find this the boring part but there’s no substitute for theory and lots of reading is always necessary. I like to have had plenty of hands-on practice with a technology before I get stuck into the theory part which really helps things to make sense (and keep it interesting). It’s important to keep practicing as well as you gain more knowledge - use it or you lose it!

The AWS website has a great amount of information so you can pretty much just use that if you like. There are some books and eBooks around as well but things move fast in the AWS world and they’re generally out of date by the time they’ve been published.

My strategy when learning theory is to take copious notes. When watching online courses, I also take notes of the key facts. Having concise, summarised training notes becomes really valuable when you’re trying to remember thousands of facts, as you can refer back at any time without having to read lengthy articles. Try using a digital note tool such as Microsoft OneNote or Evernote.

I have documented a comprehensive list of training notes for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam on this website here. This is an up-to-date and free resource, and took a lot of time to put together so it would be great to see people making use of it. I’ll be updating the training notes as the technology and exam evolves. Get in touch or add comments if you'd like to provide feedback.

Step 4: Practice Questions

One of the most important tools to use to both learn and evaluate your readiness for the exam is practice questions. Using high quality practice questions helps you to understand the types of questions you’re likely to encounter in the exam and can help you to identify areas of weakness.

The challenge however is finding good quality practice questions. There have always been tonnes of exam dumps on the Internet and various companies serving up low-quality questions (that they generally copy from each other).

These can be incredibly misleading and the questions are often written in poor English, the answers are incorrect, and the explanations (if there are any) are confusing.

Remember, AWS changes fast so the questions need to be up to date. I would steer well clear of poor quality or out of date questions!

I’d suggest testing yourself repeatedly throughout your journey, don’t wait until you're getting close to exam time. Practice questions should be considered both a learning tool and an evaluation tool and should therefore be used from early on.

I have written my own set of unique practice questions which are published on this website here. The first set of 40 questions are free so have a go and let me know how you get on. I have deliberately made these questions challenging enough that they at least match if not exceed the level of difficulty of the exam.

Step 5: Exam Time

I think another key to my success with taking IT certification exams is to never book the exam until I'm sure I'm ready. You need to be getting 80-90% of the practice questions right before you should even think about booking. The actual pass mark is much lower than this but there will always be surprises on the day with technologies you didn't cover enough in your training.

Once you’ve got some practice, watched a course, done a lap of my training notes, and can ace the practice questions on this site, you'll be ready. I like to schedule my exams in the morning when my brain is at its best, but not too early that I have to stress about getting there on time. If you've prepared adequately you shouldn't need to cram at the last minute so clear your head of any stresses and turn up fresh.

For each question try to skim read it first and look over the answers. You can develop a knack for this and often you'll quickly work out what the answer is likely to be. Then, go back over the question in detail and make sure you haven't missed anything before you make your selection.

Some questions will be single choice, multiple choice with a specified number of answers, or you may need to select "all that apply". Make sure you don't get this wrong as it's an easy mistake to make!

If you get stuck on a question, give it your best answer and mark it for review and come back to it at the end. This is a good way to ensure you don't get too stressed about it and will hopefully have plenty of time at the end to give it some more thought. Only mark answers for review that you really need more time on.

AWS certification exams are quite well written so there aren't usually too many confusing questions. If you've used some high quality practice questions to prepare you should be well equipped to handle whatever they throw at you on the day. Happy studying and good luck with your exams!

#AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate #AWS certification exams #AWS associate level certifications #AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate exam

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digitalcloudtraining-blog · 6 years ago

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AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Practice Exams

Are you planning to attempt AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Practice Exams? If yes, then welcome to Digital Cloud Training. We provide training and practice questions pages regarding the AWS cloud certification exams. Contact us now!

#AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Practice Exams

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digitalcloudtraining-blog · 6 years ago

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AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Practice Exams

Do want to enroll in AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Practice Exams? If yes, then look no other than Digital Cloud Training. We are here to help you in achieving your career goals through high-quality certification training resources. Connect us!

#AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Practice Exams

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digitalcloudtraining-blog · 6 years ago

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AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Practice Exams

#AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Practice Exams

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digitalcloudtraining-blog · 6 years ago

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How to Become a fluent AWS Certified Solutions Architect?

Are you planning to attempt the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam in order to become an effluent AWS Certified Solutions Architect? If so, then this article is perfect for you. Keep on reading in order to explore more about this certification. More importantly, about the domains of this training so that you can stand a mile ahead from others.

As a matter of fact, this architect associate exam is the perfect option for the individuals who are having at least one year of great experience in cost-effective distributed applications and systems and designing scalable on AWS platform.

What are the Domains of AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate?

If you are striving for this exam for the very first time, then you need to understand deeply about the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate so that you can excel in one shoot only. Well, once you attain an AS Certified Solutions Architect-Associate level, it means that you have an excellent ability to demonstrate and identify the requirements for AWS-based applications and have the most secure and reliable applications on the AWS platform.

So, if you are looking for AWS certified solutions architect associate practice exam, then Digital Cloud training practice test would be your best choice. There is no denying the fact that this certification encompasses almost all the services such as VPC, S3, EC2, EBS, RDS, Route 53, IAM, RDS, SQS, DynamoDB, and much more. Here are five domains of this exam that you need to excel before attempting.

Define Operationally Excellent Architectures (6%)

The first and foremost domain of AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate is about defining operationally excellent architectures that comprises weightage of about 6% for this exam. Well, this domain usually deals with the troubleshooting and operations issues with AWS. Developing the core focus on building self-healing applications would be your best bet.

Design Cost-Optimized Architectures (10%)

This domain will validate the ability of test takers to compute, build cost-effective solutions on AWS, and testing the knowledge of pricing of various services.

Define Performant Architectures (24%)

The next domain of AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate, is about defining performant architectures which consist of 24% weightage of the exam. Well, this domain comprises of catching services, auto-scaling, and selecting the best storage as per the requirement of performance.

Specify Secure Applications and Architectures (26%)

If you want to excel in the AWS certified solutions architect associate exam, then you need to work harder for this domain. In fact, you can easily avail AWS certified solutions architect associate practice exam online so that you can prepare questions about various data encryption techniques in S3, various data protection mechanism in EC2 like security groups, network security using VPC, and use of IAM roles and users.

Design Resilient Architectures (34%)

And last but not least, this domain is about assessing the ability of the applicants in order to design highly available and scalable architectures on AWS. And the core focus area of this domain is decoupled and complex multi-tier architectures, developing fault-tolerant, highly available, decoupled.

Conclusion

So, now that you have a better idea about the AWS certified solutions architect associate, more importantly about the domains of this exam. So, if you are willing to attempt this exam, then join for AWS certified solutions architect associate practice exam from Digital Cloud Training.

As a matter of fact, once you used some high-quality practice questions to prepare you, then you will be well equipped to handle whatever they throw at you on the day. Happy studying and good luck with your exams!

#AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate #AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate

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