AWS Solution Architect Professional certification : the hardest one !

 

How I passed the AWS Solution Architect Professional certification while working ? In my previous job, I was responsible of the AWS certification program and we released an AWS Journey to make people being certified in 4 to 6 weeks. Here is my advice to optimize the time spent and maximize your chances of success !

My AWS Journey : Professional process

The main difference I observed in my training for this Professional level is the importance of the 2 first steps and the time spent in practice labs. This certification needs practical experience in addition to a strong knowledge.

Cloud Academy - AWS Solution Architect Professional Learning Path

First, of all you must acquire an important amount of knowledge about the AWS Cloud infrastructure and the many services it is proposing. I wanted to get a solid knowledge that's why i passed throught a lot of videos, even those I already seen in the Solution Architect Associate certification to consolidate. I also needed to have instructors with a good level of english and communication to avoid the "Homer Simpson Monkey" after 3 minutes.

I choose Cloud Academy to prepare myself because even if the price is high (around 40$/month), they offer a strong learning path with comprehensive videos, practice labs, section tests and a final training exam. The learning path estimated time is around 56h but the labs can be quickly completed. I achieved the whole path in 50 hours. So I worked on it 2 hours a day during 4 weeks.

Whizlabs - AWS Practice Exams

Once you got a strong overall knowledge after following the Cloud Academy learning path and labs, you will have to train yourself through practice exams. You'll have to familiarize yourself with the typology of the questions, answers and time management. I recommend Whizlabs because their practice exams are very similar to the real ones. Some of them explore some concepts you may not have seen in the training courses. This is why you should do few practice exams, even if you quickly reach a good score (more than 75%). Personally, I passed through 10 practice exams before registering to the real exam. I succeeded at the first try with 80%.

This certification really needs a very good time management. The questions and answers are long and you will have to apply the keyword strategy (see next section) to go faster whenever you can.

My advices for the exam

Here is a list of advices that can be very useful the D-Day :

• When you're not sure to have the good answer(s), try to eliminate the wrong one(s).
• Try to find the keywords in the question. Ex : questions about Roles or Kinesis are easyly recognizable.
• Try not to spend more than 2min per question.
• Don't overthink : there is no trap.
• Don't stress if you dont have the direct answer to the first questions, the next and last ones will probably be less complicated.
• Don't preempt your result. I passed 7 exams and 6 times I was pretty sure that I will fail in the middle of the exam. It wasn't the case.

Useful information

Here is a recap of useful information about this certification :

• Duration : 180min
• Cost : 300$
• Number of questions : 75
• Average passing score : 75%