How I prepared for passing 6 AWS Certifications

Over the last 8 months I've managed to pass 6 AWS certifications, not a remarkable achievement based on others I've seen who've managed to get all 11 in that time, but I'm happy with how many I've got so far.

I've posted onto LinkedIn after I've passed each Certification and number of people have messaged me or replied to my posts asking how I've achieved this and what resources I used to do so. So, I thought I'd write this article to describe the way I've tackled them, the resources I've used and the time (in rough number of hours) I've spent training for each certification.

First a bit of background on me to set the context of where I was when I first started out. I work as a Lead/Principal Solution or Enterprise Architect mainly in the Telecommunications market defining and managing the architectural elements of large scale transformations programmes across the European market space. I've worked for nearly all the big players during the last 20 years. My background prior to becoming an architect is nearly 20 years of programming and database solutions( starting with ZX81 Z80a assembly language in 1981) . So I've fairly well versed in most aspects of IT solutions.

My background in Cloud technologies though was limited, while I knew the basic premise that the cloud provided infrastructure and software, I had not delved into the cloud area in anger prior to July 2019. Having seen more and more transformation programmes starting to talk Cloud services I thought it was wise to start to learn more about this area to ensure I kept my skills relevant. So in July 2019 I decided to start to learn more about the Cloud with the initial view to get some knowledge and not do any certifications.

Before I started I did some research on the main Cloud providers and narrowed the ones to further investigate to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, and decided (as it seemed to have the most market share) to start my initial learning on AWS, with the plan to do some work on the other providers a little later. While that was my initial intention (and I may still go and look at those in the future) once I'd started on the AWS certification path it became a little bit of an addiction to carry on getting more and more AWS certifications.

So, where did I start? Having decided on AWS as the platform to learn I then looked for a training solution for the first course "AWS Cloud Practitioner". Having looked through friends posts on LinkedIn I found that a number of them were using ACloudGuru (other companies are available and I've used others, see below) to start my journey.

In the next sections I will describe each of the certifications I took, the course providers I used and the approximate time I spent learning before each exam. The list is also in the order I took the exams.

AWS Cloud Practitioner

• 30 hours
• ACloudGuru Cloud Practitioner Course
• ACloudGuru Solution Architect Associate Course

AWS Solution Architect Associate

• 50 hours
• ACloudGuru Solution Architect Associate Course (2nd time)
• ACloudGuru Solution Architect Professional Course

AWS Developer Associate

• 50 hours
• ACloudGuru Developer Course

AWS SysOps Associate

• 50 hours
• ACloudGuru SysOps Course

AWS DevOps Professional

• 200 hours
• Linux Academy DevOps Pro Course
• Stephane Maarek DevOps Pro Course (via Udemy)
• Linux Academy Solution Architect Professional Course (to learn some cross over topics)

AWS Solution Architect Professional

• 100 hours
• Linux Academy Solution Architect Professional Course
• Stephane Maarek Solution Architect Professional Course (via Udemy)
• ACloudGuru Solution Architect Professional Course

The way I studied was when I decided to do an exam, I studied consistently, with at least an hour a day(normally many more) and between 5 - 7 hours on Saturday and Sunday. I do have a day job so all of this was either in the morning after waking up before I started work or after I'd finished work in the evening. Luckily for me I work mainly from home so I don't have to waste time travelling and if I am working on-site I'm normally staying in hotels so used that time as well to study.

As well as the courses, I read nearly all of the white papers that were referenced in the each course, this is very important as there are many things that will either be re-enforced by the whitepapers or will contain useful information that you don't get from the courses. Some of the sections if they were familiar too me, I would listen to them at high speed (2 * normal) and dependent on the lecturer I might also speed up the audio elements (1.25 or 1.5 * normal)

The other aspect that is very important is to do practical work on AWS. Just watching the course is unlikely to get you enough knowledge to pass the exam unless you are using AWS as part of your day job. Building infrastructure, writing CloudFormation, setting up CloudWatch Events etc. will give you the knowledge first hand and also re-enforce what has been taught to you in the course.

A number of people have also questioned me about what practice exams I used. I didn't use any. For me, I find practice exams not helpful, the reason for this is I don't feel I concentrate on the practice exams enough and rush through them giving me a score that isn't real. Also I know there are people out there who say do the practice exams until you get 100% and know each answer. Again I think this can be unhelpful as if you get a similar question in the real exam to one of the practice ones it may direct you to a certain answer and you may miss a nuance in the actual exam question. This, of course is just my personal view of practice exams, I know others find them really useful, so you should decide what is best for you.

Apart from the move from DevOps Pro to SA Pro, I took a break of at least a week between courses without any studying to let my brain rest and recover. With the DevOps to SA Pro, because there is an overlap of knowledge (and there's a huge amount to know) I decided to keep studying and therefore managed to complete the SA Pro exam only three weeks after the DevOps Pro. That was a huge commitment of time to get that done so quickly.

So where now for me? I'm a bit addicted to AWS and loving the capabilities that it has, so for the moment I'm sticking with the AWS certification path and early this week (end March 2020) I started my learning for the AWS Big Data certification that I hope to take in the next week or so.

I still don't use AWS for work purposes, but hopefully that will change in the future and it will keep this work I've put in fresh in my mind and allow me to use the knowledge I've gained in the real world.

If anyone needs any help or advice, please send me a private message and I will do my best to respond.

All the best with your learning.

Mark Thomas

[email protected]