Cross-Cloud Certification: From Non-Cloud to Professional Architect - AWS Edition

This is Part 2 in a series of articles for practicing IT professionals looking to gain broad cross-cloud expertise, with the end goal of earning Professional Architect certification with all three major cloud vendors. Understanding multiple cloud platforms can significantly enhance your career prospects and equip you to at least participate in the conversation on the design and implementation of robust, scalable, cloud solutions.

This guide specific to Amazon Web Services will cover the three exams that are in your path to achieving AWS Architect Professional certification, and how I personally prepared for them.

As I stated in Part 1, solely taking these exams is not, despite their lofty titles, going to fully prepare you, Day 1, to actually practice as a Professional Architect. It no more qualifies you for such a senior position than getting a Computer Science degree equips you to single-handedly create large and complicated software the week after graduation. After taking these tests, you'll have a solid foundation to build from, but I can say from personal experience that there is so much more to learn!

Part 1 of this series covers my professional background, motivation for undertaking this process, and offers general study tips that apply to any cloud certification exam.

Part 3 contains the path for Microsoft Azure Architect Expert

Part 4 has all you need for Google Cloud Platform Professional Cloud Architect

(Note: I do not work for any of the cloud vendors, nor am I being compensated for any recommendations or links in this series of articles.)

Getting to AWS Professional Architect is a process that took me about 130 hours of study. There are two to three exams you'll be looking at (I've achieved all three):

(Optional) Certified Cloud Practitioner

Of the broad "Foundational Level" exams offered by the three major providers, I found AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner to be the most useful. It provides a decent introduction to general cloud concepts, in addition to educating you on the basics of AWS offerings. However, don't let the grandiose name fool you! You'll learn enough to get the gist of a basic conversation where simple AWS solutions are being discussed, but you won't be learning enough to actually implement anything but the most-trivial non-production solutions.

You certainly can take your architect exams while skipping this one, as your study materials will include everything CCP tests you on. Unlike taking Architect Professional without having Architect Associate first, you won't be missing much.

That said, it is a useful way to get used to the exam process, it is a gentle introduction to both cloud as an area of expertise, and at least familiarizes you with the names of the most important AWS products.

There is a free class on AWS SkillBuilder that should be adequate preparation for the test. If you want an extra dose of confidence, you can also take the TutorialsDojo practice exam. (As with this entire series of articles, all links are non-affiliate; I receive no compensation for any of this other than your warm feelings.)

If you pass the exam, you'll receive a 50%-off coupon for your next test; if you apply the coupon to your Architect Associate exam, your net cost for CCP will be only $25. ($100 exam fee - $75 off the $150 fee for Architect Associate.)

(Note: If you are currently employed, and an AWS Customer or Partner, before paying with a credit card, ask your employer about the availability of complimentary exam vouchers. AWS account teams often hand out complimentary test vouchers to partners in order to encourage adoption of their products. And of course, even if complimentary vouchers are not available, forward-thinking employers should offer to pay your exam fees.)

This Reddit post is (as of July 2024) periodically updated with any available exam discount programs.

AWS Architect Associate (SAA)

AWS Architect Associate is the most-popular AWS Certification; despite the name suggesting it is designed specifically for architects, it's really the broadest Associate-level exam, and the one that you'll certainly want to take as the first major test of your AWS skills.

Courses

To prepare for the exam, there are two courses I have experience with:

Stéphane Maarek 's course on Udemy. This is a very fast-paced, exam-focused course. It will cover everything you need to know to pass the exam, and thousands of people have used it successfully. The first time I passed SAA (several years before I made my cross-cloud push) it is the one I used.

That said, the fast pace (it took me only 40 hours or so to complete), and with the course hewing strictly to what is necessary to pass the test, makes for issues retaining what you have learned after the exam is over.

(Note: Udemy runs sales very-frequently; if you see this course listed for $150, look around for a coupon or wait for a sale. (Or if your employer provides a Udemy Business subscription, it's available there.) Definitely don't consider paying $150 for it.)

Adrian Cantrill's course. Adrian Cantrill is my preferred source for AWS exam prep. His pace is a lot slower, but he goes into much more depth, and includes a lot of information that, while not strictly needed to pass the exam, is really helpful when it comes to actually using AWS.

It takes about 70-80 hours in total to complete his class. (The lectures alone are 62 hours of video content, although I was able to consistently play his lectures at 1.25x speed. The rest of the time will be spent in the hands-on labs, which are extensive and interesting.)

Also available is his free Tech Fundamentals course. While an experienced professional can likely skip much of it (or blast through it on 2x), there's likely to be some nuggets in there that can be useful to almost anyone. (I learned a lot about secured DNS by reviewing this course, along with some of the subtleties of modern networking that have changed since the last time I needed to dive that deep.)

Hands-on Practice

Of the three vendors, AWS is perhaps the friendliest to students, when it comes to free resources. Most of your hands-on work will be done with resources that come under the AWS Free Tier. And, unlike Azure or GCP, you can have as many free accounts (within reason) as you need. (I think over the last two years, I've created over a dozen AWS accounts for various purposes, and it hasn't been an issue.)

You should expect to spend under $15 in AWS costs for a complete course of study, as long as you are careful about removing resources after you are done with them.

Practice Tests

Without question, the best practice test available for SAA is the one offered by TutorialsDojo. Not only is the exam a good simulation of the real test (without resorting to being an exam dump), but the explanations for the right and wrong answers are excellent. And at $15 (or less when it is on sale, which is often), it is an excellent value.

If you consistently score about 70% or so on your first pass through a particular TutorialsDojo question bank, you will probably pass the real exam.

The official AWS practice exam (available for a cost when booking the exam, or with a paid Skillbuilder subscription) isn't bad, but it is not quite as difficult as the real thing. If you can get it as part of a Skillbuilder subscription or other corporate learning subscription (Percipio also offers it), go ahead and take it, but otherwise it can be safely skipped.

There are other practice exams available, though I do not have any personal experience with them. I have heard that the ones produced by Stephane Maarek on Udemy are fairly decent, though the accompanying explanations are not as thorough as TutorialsDojo. I do not recommend the practice exams from Whizlabs; my experience with the quality of their questions and answers for other exams has not been positive.

As mentioned in my introductory article, do not, under any circumstances, use any practice test advertised as a "dump", or that advertises "real exam questions".

AWS Architect Professional (SAP)

AWS Architect Professional is a thorough and rigorous exam. If you actually want to practice as an AWS architect in an Enterprise environment, you should regard the material covered in this credential as absolutely necessary, as many of the topics included in this exam are of vital importance to AWS installations of any significant size.

Of particular note in the curriculum is heavy emphasis on AWS Organizations and other cross-account concepts and architectures that are absolutely a best practice to keep your solutions appropriately modular, secure, and adhering to the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

Speaking for myself, this was a very difficult exam; difficult, but fair. Traditionally, I have always finished exams and tests with plenty of time to spare; I read very quickly and understand the testing process very well. (I have co-authored multiple certification exams over the course of my career.) With my SAP exam, out of the three hours, I believe I had approximately seven minutes left when I submitted my exam for processing.

Of note that of all the certification exams I have taken, this is the first one I took in a test center, instead of at home. AWS does not allow restroom breaks during their exams, and I felt that three hours (plus however long the queue for a proctor takes) in a chair was a bit of a risk.

Courses

The only course I took to prepare for this exam was the one from Adrian Cantrill. If you purchase both the Associate and Professional Architect exams, he offers them in a bundle that saves some money. (You can also upgrade to the bundle after buying only the Associate course and pay only the price difference.)

There is a lot of overlap between his Associate and Professional courses (to account for students who did not take his Associate course.) If you are taking the tests in quick succession, there is a study plan builder available that lets you input one or more of Adrian's courses, and will output the content that is unique to the course you have not yet taken. This reduces the course from 67 hours of video content to roughly 30 hours. (Of course, it will take longer than that to actually complete, but it still represents a significant reduction in time.)

Hands-on Practice

Even more than the Associate exam, you should be spending a lot of time in the console, and in the official AWS documentation, just exploring. You will gain a lot more understanding if you don't just do scripted hands-on labs and move on. AWS also offers a rich set of workshops covering a wide range of AWS features that can provide valuable additional experience actually implementing something.

The Professional Architect exam will quiz you on fewer low-level implementation details than Associate Architect, but that doesn't make casual exploration of the console any less important.

Additional Materials

Unlike the Associate exam, the Professional test requires a lot more fundamental understanding about how the various parts of AWS fit together, vs. memorizing certain facts about particular offerings.

You absolutely should read, and understand, the AWS Well-Architected Framework as part of your studies. And if you have access to a real-live AWS solution, it can be very eye-opening to apply the AWS Well-Architected Tool to the workload and see how it does. The first time I did one (using a pilot project my employer had produced) I learned much more about AWS Architecture than through any formal study materials.

Practice Tests

As before, I heartily recommend the practice test from... you guessed it, TutorialsDojo. It is especially important to practice with this exam, as the questions in this test are very long and detailed. The correct answer to a three-paragraph question might very well come down to a single qualifier in the next-to-the-last sentence of the second paragraph. You will need to practice reading long questions (and answers!) quickly to find the pertinent information, and this isn't something that you can easily pick up without trying it first.

Optional Bonus: Systems Operator Associate (SOA)

If you've taken SAA and SAP, you are already nearly all the way to everything you need to know to pass Systems Operator Associate. Using that study plan builder I mentioned earlier, there's only a mere three hours of additional content to pick up SOA. (Though having just taken this one, I would supplement your course with a bunch of self-study on AWS Config, and try your hand at practicing some additional Cloud Formation, especially cross-account features.)

To me, this exam seemed very similar to SAP, but with shorter questions. Is this exam absolutely necessary if you've already earned SAP? No. But it's not a bad thing to have, especially if your employer is paying for the test.

Personally, I used it as an AWS refresher course a couple years after passing SAP.

Other Study Materials

AWS Skillbuilder

AWS Skillbuilder is the official training materials site for Amazon Web Services. There's a broad mix of free, free-for-partners, and paid offerings available.

Frankly, I wasn't particularly impressed (got a subscription through my employer.) I've heard some people enjoy their free "Cloud Quest" for the Practitioner Exam; this is "gamified" learning. I haven't taken it, but I did try the Quest for the Machine Learning Specialty exam (available via subscription) and I did not like it. I thought it was hard to navigate, and I didn't like the lesson style; I felt it was a very inefficient way to teach... I don't need animations and some made-up narrative to keep me interested in learning.

I have found the other Skillbuilder offerings to not be particularly great for exam preparation. The individual lectures are fine, but they aren't really exam-focused; I have the general impression they just picked every lecture that covered a topic in the exam guide and added it to a playlist. If you rely on it, I have a feeling you'll end up spending a lot of time watching videos, then you'll bomb you're practice exams because the lectures weren't actually written to cover everything you are tested on.

Acloudguru

Several years ago, Acloudguru was a pretty good source of AWS training. (It was actually the first AWS course I took, although I didn't go all the way through to certification at that time.) I have heard that since being bought out by Pluralsight, their courses have fallen woefully out-of-date. If you have a Pluralsight subscription through work, you can give it a whirl, but I would not use them as your sole source of preparation.

Whizlabs

Whizlabs is known for providing a "sandbox" subscription that lets you use limited parts of AWS for a monthly fee, without worrying about running up the bill. I do not believe this is necessary; unless you are very careless when spinning up AWS resources, a complete course of study is no more than a few dollars.

Whizlabs also offers practice exams. I have heard not-good things about them, and after taking one of their practice exams for Google Cloud (where they were the only choice), I believe them. The questions were poorly-written, with vague or incorrect answers, and badly-done explanations (which are the true value of a practice exam.) In a world with TutorialsDojo offering a complete set of excellent AWS practice exams, there's no need to use the ones from WhizLabs.

The Official Study Guides (books)

AWS, in concert with Sybex, publishes an official series of study guides available as books. They are fine, but books do make certain aspects of learning more difficult, especially anything hands-on, and visual aids may be hard to read.

Books also have the weakness that they only get updated every few years, while the exams are updated twice a year or so. This may be as minor as AWS updating product names, but they have also been known to add new offerings to a certification without going through a full exam update.

Do not, under any circumstances, rely on the free "practice exams" included with Sybex books. Their difficulty is on par with the (easy) end-of-chapter quizzes; they are not actually practice exams, despite the name.

If you can get access to the books for free (O'Reilly and Percipio both offer at least some of them), great, but otherwise you should probably save your money.

"Udemy"

I put Udemy in quotes, because there's a ton of stuff available there, so if someone says that they prepared for an AWS with "The Udemy" course or exam, you need to press them for specifics. Udemy carries the well-regarded courses from Stephane Maarek, and the practice exams from TutorialsDojo (Jon Bonso will be listed as the "instructor" for those; he's the owner of TutorialsDojo.) I have also heard okay things about the courses from Neal Davis; you may want to give them a try if Stephane isn't to your taste.

And they also carry a lot of garbage. I don't want to say you should avoid any Udemy resources I haven't specifically mentioned, but it's very easy to waste time and/or money with sub-par preparation materials.

Taking the AWS Exams

Amazon uses the Pearson Vue platform to administer certification exams; you'll have the option of taking the exams in a Pearson Vue exam center, or at home, with the Pearson OnVue software.

I've taken many exams at home with OnVue, and overall, my experience has been positive. There are, however, plenty of reports online of people with software problems, overly-strict proctors, long queues to start the exam, and so on.

To give you the best chance possible of a successful exam with OnVue, I've actually written an entire article on that exact topic.

I'm not guaranteeing you'll have problems if you take the exam at home (I haven't!) but certainly the risk for mishaps and heartache is greater than if you take the exam in an exam center. Exam centers are usually located at trade schools and community colleges. While there is no additional charge to take it in an exam center, it may be harder to get an appointment there than booking an online exam.

Exam Results and Scoring

With Certified Cloud Practitioner, most students will receive their results immediately. For all other AWS exams, results may take up to five days to process, though most students should have their result available the next business day.

If you pass, great! Your exact score doesn't matter too much; a pass is a pass, and the actual numerical score will not be reported anywhere but your exam transcript.

If you did not pass, don't get too discouraged, your numerical score should give you a decent idea of how close you were, and therefore roughly how much further effort you need to put into study.

I see a lot of questions online asking things like: "I scored a 690. Does that mean I was X number of questions from passing?" The answer to that question is two-fold:

First, it's impossible to answer; a score of 690 is not "you answered 69% of questions correctly", and likewise a passing score is not a set percentage of correct answers. Each exam has unscored questions in it that do not count in your final results (though you are not informed which questions those are.) In addition, your score is adjusted based on the difficulty of the particular questions you were asked in your copy of the exam. (Oh, and the exams are graded on a scale of 100-1000.)

Second, it doesn't really matter. It is not as if you are going to be asked the same questions on a subsequent attempt, or not do the very best you can the next time you take it.

Again, use your score as a rough guide to how close you came, not some absolute number of questions you passed/failed by.

Conclusion

This wraps up my thoughts on attaining AWS Architect Professional certification as an experienced IT pro. If you feel that this article helped you on your journey, I'd love to hear it, and feel free to leave a comment below.

Good Luck! And be sure to read the next article in this series, on how to obtain Azure Architect Expert certification.

P.S. If, when you read this, my profile picture still has the accursed little green #OPENTOWORK banner on it, and you think I sound like a Cloud Architect you think might make a good hire, please read my profile, and hit me up on Messaging!