How to prep for AWS Solution Architect - Professional Certification!

Note: I’ve just updated this post (March 2025), which I initially wrote in March 2022. With LinkedIn stats showing a steady flow of viewers to this article each week, I wanted to ensure it reflects the latest information on the SA Pro exam (SAP-C02 2025), so revised the original post instead of writing a new one.

I don't generally do blogs but reading the various posts online while preparing for my most recent AWS Solution Architect Professional (re)-certification 2025, I realised there's very little first hand (free) information on the web which talks about the methodologies that IT professionals can follow, which not only help them crack the AWS SA Pro exam but also help find ways to quickly learn about the various AWS services without spending too much time reading theoretical documentation...

Where do I come from?

I recently did my 3rd, no 4th time AWS Solution Architect Professional (re) Certification. I started my career back in 2003, writing voice applications using speech recognition technology, built on a custom voice recognition engine based on Nuance platform. Working over various positions (developer, team lead, solution architect and eventually CTO role), I got an opportunity in 2011-12 to drive the technical decisions for an IT startup as a CTO and I decided to trial migrate part of our company software components to AWS Cloud. That was my first use of AWS Services and since then I have been using AWS services for various workload migrations. Under Hybrid architecture, it was really exciting to see partly hosted the JBoss cluster with Redis cache cluster in AWS cloud working with heavy Database hosted in datacenter connected over the VPN tunnels, back in those days.

After working for about year and half on AWS, in Nov 2013 I cleared my first ever AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Level exam, which was 80 minutes exam back then. I remember the first exam I took had lots of spelling mistakes in the exam questions, with some questions which didn't make much senses when read (I must admit I am not perfect writer) but surely there was a lot of scope to improve the questions quality in the initial AWS exams. I did my first professional level (beta) free exam attempt in 2014. This beta exam was to evaluate questions for the final version of AWS SA pro exam. I cleared my Certified Solutions Architect - Professional Exam in 2016, then SA Professional Re-Certification Exam in 2018, Security - Specialty exam in 2020 (then in 2023) and again re-certified Solutions Architect - Professional Exam in Dec 2021 and now another Professional Exam in Feb 2025.

Few years ago, I have earned AWS SA-PRO SME badge from AWS, and have been participating in AWS SME workshops to create/review exam items for official AWS SA-PRO exam.

I know it's a pain to go through these exams preparation every 2-3 years to keep hold of your certification badges, but I personally thoroughly enjoy taking these exams as 1) it tests your knowledge and the concepts you had learned (or are applying in your professional life) are still up-to-date with "latest" AWS best practices and 2) there's literally so much new in AWS space, launched every quarter that the concepts/services that you had learnt an year ago are exploded with new features, and you only bother to learn in depth when you prepare for your next exam (unless you work in those AWS service in you day to day professional life).

Lets come to the point - SA Professional Exam 2025 Preparation!

I know everyone is interested to find a quick AWS exam guide, do a quick AWS crash course on acloudguru or udemy.com or other platform, read some AWS white-papers and pass the exam to stick on the CV or LinkedIn profile. I think for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - "Associate" exam, this strategy may well work, as the questions are slightly less complex and knowing what AWS service you should use in what scenario should do the trick. However, the methodology to crack the "Professional Exam" has to be different as quick crash courses are simply not enough. You do need to know the AWS service details 'in depth' in order to answer the lengthy questions asked in the professional exam. Time pressure is another thing to manage at the same time, as you have to answer 75 questions in 180 mins, thats roughly 2.4 minutes per question. Questions are complex and really long, which put the participant under extra time pressure. I see in the recent exam styles, the question length (called stem) is reduced significantly, so questions are not as lengthy as it used to be in earlier exams format.

Tip No 1:

Let's ease off the the time pressure a little bit. How?

Unfortunately this is not for all exam attendees but will still work for a lot. I only came to know about this trick in my most recent exam, I wish I knew this in the previous exams!

AWS site says

A 30-minute exam extension is available upon request to non-native English speakers when taking an exam in English. The accommodation, “ESL +30,” only needs to be requested once, prior to registering for an exam. It will apply to all future exam registrations with all test delivery providers.

See details at AWS Requesting Accommodations section for details how to apply.

An extra 30 minutes in a high pressure 3 hours long exam is such a pressure releaser, but only applicable if you are non-native English speaker. Who is considered as non-native English speaker is debatable (see here) but in my case I just applied and I was considered, so worth a try.

Learning AWS Services "in depth", how deep?

There is no escape here. You have to learn AWS services in depth to crack SA Professional exam, but can do with 'a strategy' rather than going through all AWS service documentation or spending hours on watching Service Deep Dive AWS youtube videos.

Tip No 2:

Make a list of all AWS services you should target for your exam preparation

I can help a little bit here.. AWS official exam guide says the exam will cover the following. It also lists down some broad AWS services that you expect in the exam.

I must say, the services list included in the exam guide is really lengthy. It's good that you get good indication on what services to prepare but it's quite broad and you don't know how much in depth you should understand each service for the exam prep.

Here's the list I had prepared and targeted for my SA Pro exam 2025 preparation...

It's a good idea to made a list in excel, pick a service, learn it and mark that green when you are done with it. This way you know what you have already covered, how long it took and shows you how far you are from being fully prepared. The colour coding in the list I have explained below.

• Service in RED (Fundamental services) and bold Green - the categories you must do in depth
• Service in Green but not bold - Should know what they are used for with use cases + light FAQ reading
• Services in black - Should know in general with use cases

Tip 3:

So how deep you need to learn a Service?

I would say it depends on the AWS service..If the AWS service is the fundamental service (marked in red) like AWS VPC, Route53, S3, CloudFront, IAM this has to be in your blood. You do need to know the services inside out. Knowing these services will not only help you crack the Pro exam but would also sail you through most AWS assignment you get in your professional life.

Strategy to learn about an AWS service!

Lets cover the strategy to cover the non-fundamental AWS services first... These are marked in bold green, but are fairly important to know but may be not in that depth as compared to fundamental (red) services.

To learn about an AWS services, you need to know how to use that first, so yes you must get your hands dirty with AWS Services to crack the exam.. Example, if its a Database Migration Service (AWS DMS)

1. Start with a basic Youtube video which shows how to use the service on AWS console..Example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx2Ij_Bhj4Q . I usually play the videos on 1.5x or 2x speed to save time, but slowdown when required.
2. If you can play around with the service on the AWS console on your own account, do that. Make yourself familiarised with the service options available on a AWS service page on AWS console. This will help you understand service better and help mapping the service to it's use-cases in your head when you go through the theory/deep dive topics related to the service.
3. If you have subscribed to an AWS pro exam course, go to that course topic you are working on, and go through the details explained for that topic. Example, I purchased only one course for my AWS SA pro exam preparation on Udemy, by Stephane Maarek for ￡15.99 (was on offer that time) and I think it was pretty good. Top tip here is just don't go through the whole course in one go, instead pick a service in a category in the list, understand basics for that service (step 1 & 2) , deep dive that service in the chosen course (with step 3) and finish everything with that service (step 4, 5 and more section below) before moving to next one.
4. Go through the AWS FAQs (say for DMS, this link) and go through all the questions and answers related to chosen service. You don't need to remember all FAQs but it's good to understand what feature the service supports and what doesn't and know the limits and limitations.
5. I see there are some free sites explaining the core concepts on the AWS service and showing some sample questions related to that. Do go to those pages and spend good amount of time understand the various features. I found these sites https://tutorialsdojo.com/aws-database-migration-service/ and https://jayendrapatil.com/aws-cloud-migration-services/ (some content in this site is now outdated though) has got wealth of details on the specific AWS topic, so would highly recommend to visit these for each service you are preparing.
6. For fundamental topics (marked in red), I would suggest to go through the AWS deep dive videos on youtube, example this for AWS Direct connect, and where possible go through the AWS white papers like this. To understand the service better, there's no better place other than AWS documentation, but I understand you need to be passionate about working with AWS services to read these (I did go through the documentation for most of the core services though as my professional job demanded that).

More to consider....

Right, if you do above for a chosen AWS service, by now you would have covered the service in details. But don't forget to question yourself about the learnt AWS service with regards to following

• Cross-Account capability: If you have a scenario where company having another AWS account wants to use your account owned DynamoDB table (or the service your are currently studying), how would you share this with other account? Does it allow Resource based policies (remember only limited AWS services offer resource based policies, do you know which ones?) What if the other account is in AWS Organisation? can you use RAM instead to share with other account within the AWS Organisation?
• Cross Region accessibility and data-replication/ service migration: Is this service regional or global? if the data belonging to the service is encrypted with AWS encryption (either with SSE-KMS, or HSM or CMK), how would you replicate the service data in another region? (remember KMS now supports multi-region but not for SSE) Does AWS migration service (SMS, DMS, SCT) (check in the excel sheet under migration services) support this service for cross-region data migration/replication? Remember some service like DynamoDB offer Global tables which offer AWS managed cross-region replication, does your chosen service offers something AWS managed replicas or need a custom solution?
• Know the Service limits and hence service usability: Know the service limits at high level. You don't need to remember by heart but need to know so that you can use the right AWS Service for the right scenario. Example, you can not use API gateway + lambda as a solution if the question ask to host a low cost/low maintenance web API whose expected response time is 35 seconds (API gateway timeout is 29 sec max). You cannot use AWS lambda as a solution if you are running a task in a workflow which takes more than 15 mins to run. (Lambda's allows execution time 15 min max). You will have some questions like this which gives you the requirement say the IOT device sends data payload of 500KB and you got to persist it as hot data, whats the best service? Don't just go with the flow that "hot" data means dynamoDB, look at the size requirement as well! (You can not use DynamoDB table if the data record size is more than 400KB.) Here are some of the services limits I have captured as my notes which will be useful in the exam for these tricky questions

• How to optimise service for cost/performance? Are you better off saving data to RDS+redis cache if there are thousands of concurrent requests of read request but you need unlimited data store or save data in DynamoDB or stick in S3 (remember there's a limit of 5,500 GET/HEAD requests per second per prefix)? Should you move data to other datastore to reduce cost if its hot data, or cold data (S3?) or huge amount of data (datawarehouse)? and how to optimise the cost for this service?

How to test yourself if you are ready?

They say, it's always good to test the waters before jumping in.. You need to know when you are ready for taking the exam..

Tip 4:

Take "A" mock or practise test when you are 50-70% thought the exam topics

Once you have gone through the 50-70% of the list topics, its time to test the waters. It will check the method you are using to learn a topic covers the depth you required the exam, or you need to get in more details? One very good free resource to test yourself at this stage is AWS SkillBuilder "Official Practice Question Set". This gives you a set of 20 questions to test yourself and you can see the detailed answers for each question after your attempt. To be honest, these question sets tests your knowledge on quite latest AWS services features, which I did not see in real exam. But it challenges your knowledges on latest features, so good to go through these questions and their answers in details. I had also purchased the AWS mock exams by Jon Bonso (4 mock exams) for ￡13.99 and I find these mock exams quite competitive. For 2025 exam these questions may be little outdated but they still cover a lot. At this time, as you would have covered only part of the services, just take one exam. This will familiarise yourself with the format and complexity of the exam questions which simulates the real exam. I would suggest to take the first mock exam under real exam conditions, follow the time limits religiously. But at the same time, don't get stressed out that you didn't get expected results. You wont at this stage, as you haven't covered everything yet!

Once all topic covered, go through the tests without time limit. Taking time to understand the question fully and learning how to use elimination method to eliminate wrong answers to save time. Remember mock exams is not always about testing yourself, take it as a study material as well. You will learn about the scenarios which you had not covered in your study material with these.

Tip 5:

Take AWS practice exam once you have covered all topics

You should take AWS SA Pro "Official Practice Exam" on AWS Skill Builder once you think you are ready. I would highly recommend the AWS Practice exam. AWS Skill builder will cost $29/month subscription, which will allow you to take "Official Practice Exam" along with few other training courses. The exam tests you on 75 exam style questions which AWS claims are close to real exam questions. You can go through the exam questions multiple times. I still feel real exam does not fully test the latest AWS services which are featured in these Official Practice Exam, but I think it'll be updated over time. The AWS Skill builder subscription also includes 10 hours "AWS SA-PRO Exam Prep Enhanced Course", but I did not go through it as it felt its not that useful personally, however I did go through their question sets asked in the end of each section. Again these question will guide you how to answer the exam style questions.

Schedule the exam remote/online or in Test Centre?

AWS allows you to schedule the exam online, remotely where you can take the exam from your home. They call it "Remote Online Proctored Exam". It's really convenient to take the exam from home, but don't take it very lightly. You need to strictly follow the rules they have set, example, you can't touch your face during exam as AI in the camera is noticing that at all times, you can't read the exam questions loud (not even whisper) or do lip movement during exam, you cann't move your head a lot otherwise you get a warning from the Proctor. It's something I was not used to as all my previous exams I scheduled in test centre where you can do all these. But just keep these things in mind and go through all instructions if you are taking exam online. BTY you are allowed to have a drink/water during exam, but you are not allowed for a comfort break, so its a good idea to use the restroom before you are stuck in the exam for 3+ hours.

If you have cracked some previous AWS certifications, you will get your 50% discount while booking the test, so best to redeem those when you book your exam. I have got few spare practice exam vouchers and 50% discount voucher on AWS certification exams, which I had earned due to my previous AWS Certifications, drop me a comment if you would like one ;-)

Tip 6:

Make sure you have good night sleep before the exam day!

I always boosted myself with a bit of caffeine (a red-bull energy drink worked for me well) before the exam. Remember the exam is for 3 hours, and if you get 30 min extended, then 3.5 hours. During these 3.5 hours you have to stare at the screen under strictly proctored conditions. You do need a relaxed focussed mind to calmly answer all questions.

Tip 7:

Do anything but DO NOT take picture of your exam (results) even if you have PASS the exam!

Note: This section of the post is from my previous exam in 2022, when the exam result (PASS) was shown right after you finish the exam. In 2025 exam, you are not shown the results after exam, instead they say you'll get results in next 5 working days. But the moral of the story is, DO NOT use phone or take picture while you are on camera, even if your exam is over.

As I took the online exam for the first time (in 2023), and from my past experiences I remembered that the exam PASS result screen stays only for 5 seconds after exam, you are too tired to read the test results with follow-on instructions. So I took a picture of my exam PASS result screen to read the detailed text later.

and then this happened....

This was soo annoying that taking picture of my exam result, even after the exam had ended, submitted and result shown, if I take a picture of the result the exam is terminated. This was because the my mobile was auto-detected by the AI even after the exam ended. I spend 3 hours talking to the PSI US call centre (PSI is outsourced company who conducts the exams) explaining the situation but they were not ready to listen. Finally I raised an AWS ticket, who then reviewed the situation and confirmed in next 2 days that my exam result are valid and sent me this....sigh!!

For the exam in 2025, once your exam is over, they make you fill the feedback questionnaire as well. It was annoying to fill the 2 mins questionnaire after this long exam, but I was hoping they'll show the result, but I got a message in the end saying you'll get results in 5 working days. So after the exam, you can only relax and wait for your results...

After 6 hours I got the congratulations email and got this....

Tip 8:

Once you pass the AWS SA pro exam, make use of the AWS knowledge and keep up with the new AWS Service updates. Apply for AWS SA PRO SME and attempt the AWS Security Specialist Exam

My advice is don't just keep your certificate showcased on the linkedin profile, try to keep your technical/AWS knowledge up-to-date. It'll help you boost your self confidence and pay off somewhere sometime achieving your professional or personal (entrepreneurial) dreams..

A good way to keep yourself up-to-date after passing certification is to subscribe to AWS RSS feeds

• https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/
• https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/

I would recommend to apply for AWS SA PRO SME program. Generally you get an email offering you to enrol into the SME program. If not, you can apply yourself and if you are selected for it, you can participate in AWS SA Pro content writing workshops.

I’d also suggest that after completing your AWS SA Pro exam, you a bit more preperation on AWS Security services and aim to take the AWS Security Specialist exam while the service knowledge is still fresh in your mind. Don’t forget, you’ll have a 50% discount voucher by now (if you pass the SA PRO exam), so make the most of it by knocking out another exam!

I know it was a bit long post but hopefully would be useful for the chaps preparing for SA Pro exam..

I wish you very good luck with your 2025 exam preparation!!