AWS Data Analytics - Specialty exam preparation tips

Last week I passed the AWS Data Analytics - Specialty exam and thought of sharing some of the tips that can be very useful for the people preparing for this exam. These article is purely based on my own experience. Let's get started with some background about this exam.

Focus Area: This certification exam is deeply focused on data analytics and questions are mainly asked from the AWS services such as Kinesis, EMR, Redshift, Glue, Quicksight, S3, Elasticsearch and Athena. You can find lot of reference on internet about those therefore I will not talk about those services. Mainly, scenario based questions are asked. There will be problem statement and you will have to choose a option or the options which is/are most appropriate.

What is Tested: In my view AWS mainly checks your ability to design and develop a high volume, efficient, cost effective, secure, highly scalable and performing data analytics solutions using their services/products.

In my opinion below are the key things which can help you to pass this exam in first attempt.

1. AWS experience: This is most important factor to ace this exam. If you have experience (2+ years) in developing data analytics solution using AWS Services, definitely you should try out this certification. If you are not working on data analytics and not using AWS services, preparation curve may be very very huge. My view is that you should appear in this exam only if you have been working with AWS services or already worked on it. Again, this is my personal view.
2. Dedicate plan: This exam is 1/2 mile wide and 1 mile deep so you should have a dedicated preparation plan. Your plan will depend on the years of work experience you have and how good you are with the AWS services (related to Data Analytics). For example, If you have AWS services experience over 2-3 years , you should have at least 60-80 hours study plan (It can be more also as it purely depends on how good you are with the AWS Data Analytics services) . In that, focus 70% time on studying, researching on AWS services and 30% time on practice exam. Once you have plan , make sure you are committed to it. Planning is very easy but keeping with it is very challenging :-). Your success will depend a lot on how you are keeping up with the plan. Once decided, make the plan and go for it.
3. Study Materials: . I will recommend below study material: a. Go through AWS re invent videos on YouTube. Generally they have 40-60 mins video focused on a specific services best practices and recommendations. These videos can give you lot of insights about the AWS services use cases ,features, best practices and limitations. b. Online AWS whitepaper and best practices - They very useful to know how to use services effectively ,how to handle various scenarios and what are the recommendations from AWS. c. Documentation - AWS has good online documentations. You can refer to them to get the deep insights and learn a lot. In last ,if you want, there are many online courses also available, you can buy one.
4. Practice exam: Make sure to take some practice exam. This can help you to identify weak areas so you can focus on them. There are many practice test available on the internet. AWS also offers sample questions and 3 hours study materials. This 3 hours study material is also very useful. Take practice exam 2-3 times.

Some of the quick tips to answer the questions:

1.Elimination Method: For some of the questions, you may not know the exact answer. In such cases, elimination is one of the best approach. Generally, two options will not be related to answer and you can eliminate them. Remaining two answer will look correct and similar but you have to choose the best one. This can help you to ace answers for many questions.

2. Look for the main keywords in the questions. Many questions will have the keywords such as near real time, real time, immediate, cost effective, in-frequent access, less effort, complex analysis, complex queries, secure, joins, real time dashboard etc. For example, if question is asking: a. perform analysis using complex queries then answer maybe Redshift. b. Near real time analysis then answer may be Kinesis Firehose. c. Immediate/real time analysis then answer may be Kinesis data streams and Kinesis Data Analytics d. Query data once a month along with data warehouse data in cost effective way then answer may be store data in S3 and query using Redshift Spectrum. e. data security in Quicksight then answer may be implementing row level security on the dataset. f. Create the catalog then answer may be Glue data catalog. Point here is look for the main keywords and based on that find the most appropriate answer.

3. During practice test, develop mastery on tips 1 and 2. This is very important so you can apply same during actual exam :-)

If you have any question, please feel free to PM me. Good luck and all the best for your certifications!