AWS Certifications - My real suggestions

I’ve had a few people ask me for advice on passing the AWS certifications.

The below are my suggestions, edit for your needs as you see fit, but I really recommend you don’t skip the first two steps. :-)

1. Each certification has a BluePrint that AWS publishes. Be sure to take a look at this.
2. Definitely make time to read the FAQ for the key services covered by the exam. If you do nothing else, this is the one thing you should do.
3. AWS also provides some sample questions for the certifications I’ve looked at so far. It’s just a few questions, but they’re worth viewing for the type of questions you’ll be asked.
4. I really like A Cloud Guru for the certification courses. The courses are geared to help you pass the exams, so it’s focused study. The courses are reasonably priced, and are offered on other sites such as Udemy, and Udemy has a lot of sales on courses.
5. I also like LinuxAcademy.com courses because they go in deeper and teach you how to actually do the job, and have great labs you can use. For me, this was well worth the cost.
6. I really like Cloud Academy for their quiz questions and quiz explanations and ability to take quizzes on the go. I don’t recommend you take all ~200 questions in one day like I’ve done both times so far, but for me it was better late than never. Again, well worth the cost.
7. Read the WhitePapers referenced in the blueprint.
8. I personally didn’t take the “practice exams” that are offered but I’ve been told some find them useful.
9. If you run into difficulties, look for resources. I’m not ashamed to say that studying for my first certification, the VPC section was confusing to me. I looked at probably 6-8 external resources that didn’t help, but then I found a video on YouTube of VPC being introduced at Re:Invent and it connected all the dots for me.
10. If you don’t pass, it happens, so try again. :-)

That’s the real advice, which I mostly followed for my first certification. My second certification is a different story and you can read about that in a separate note.