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AWS Solution Architect Certification :: Reflections

AWS Solution Architect Certification

Thoughts and Reflections

Just received a AWS Solution Architect Certificate and want to share some of my observations of the test (in no particular order):


  • If you used AWS for a few projects, passing the test will be easy. Compare to the amount of time and effort that it took me to pass Sun Enterprise Architect, it is probably 1/100 or 1/1000 
  • To my surprise, almost all questions were around S3, IAM, and EC2. It is much more to AWS, and I was thinking that they have more questions around RDS/EMR/Redshift
  • Tricky questions were "select 3 correct answers out of 6" or "2 out of 5" and it feel more like a lottery. It was almost half all questions that are in "multiple correct choice" category. When answering these questions, please read every word of it as they often put "sort-of-right answer" and "right answer" and unless all options are read fully it is easy to choose "sort-of-right" answer.
  • Learn when EBS volumes are deleted
  • No need to remember AWS command line syntax 
  • No need to remember IOPS rates, write capacity limits, and maximum sizes of anything in AWS
  • "Kinesis" was correct answer to 3 questions about the best solution for given scenario
  • "Spot Instance" was correct answer to more then one question that started with "what is the most cost-effective solution..."
  • VPC was the source of the most "tricky" questions for me, may be just because of my limited experience with VPC
  • It is plenty of time to answer questions, and to come back to them later, and to stair at the window, and to think about answers to these important questions (not given on the test): "Why do I want another certification?",  "Would this time be better spent somewhere else?" and "What do I want?"

Good luck on your test!

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