My 2 cents on AWS SA Professional Certification

92 minutes ago, I successfully completed the 3 hour exhausting AWS SA Pro examination! Yay!!!

While it is still fresh in my memory, I decided to order a chill beer and pour my thoughts. Here it is.

What you can expect to learn from this certification:

• Cloud Use?Cases - Lots and lots of it. Forces you to think through different use cases and propose best solution around real life constraints. It’s quite a learning! Very useful!
• Conceptual understanding - So many ways to skin a cat! When to choose what? Is that the most cost effective? Is it is even possible? Why this and not that?
• 'AWS Well Architected' framework -?Almost every question ties back to one of the pillars(security, reliability, performance, cost or operational excellence) of the Well Architected Framework. This is a great skill to have. Customer always love when you think through various dimensions while proposing a solution.?

What the certification is not:

• Substitute for Real life experience - This certification does not validate hands on skills. Since it is a computer based test, it has its own limitations. While you can talk about when to use Service Control Policy and how to work with IAM, doing it in real world is a totally different ball game.
• Proxy for Expertise - In Amazon, there is a saying "There is no compression algorithm for experience". Passing certification is no indicator of expertise.
• Destination - This is the far from a destination. Maybe this is not a starter's certification, but is certainly not a destination by itself. Be ready for the next phase of your cloud learning. Good luck!

My Preparation

1. 1.5 years of hands on AWS experience. This is what helped me most.
2. I prepared for 45 days at an average of 2 hours per day. It involved deliberate practice of test taking, reading AWS literature and labs.
3. Level setting course on Acloudguru - https://acloudguru.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-professional
4. I used Jon Bonso's Test Prep Material. I completed 3/4 tests and reviewed each and every question. When I make a mistake, I reviewed Jon Bonso's answer, referenced AWS material and if needed validated it on AWS console. https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-solutions-architect-professional-practice-exams-amazon/

Among the above 4 points, i think #1 is the most important. This is a professional level certification. While it maybe possible to learn from a course and be familiarised with core concepts, that approach is difficult and is not my recommendation. I think you need to invest atleast 1 year of hands on experience to enjoy this journey. So when you prepare for exam, you can relate to many things and understand the use case.

Jon Bonso's course is top class and it gives you 4 exam simulations. I believe if you understand each and every scenario he has mentioned, not only that you will be familiar with the examination experience, you will also build solid conceptual understanding. His questions' difficulty level is very close the actual examination level.

3 low hanging fruits - Tips!

These aspects get asked quite a lot in different shapes and form.

AWS Organisations Design

• How to design multi account organisation?
• How do you provide access to auditors? How about developers?
• How best to organise for billing and cost control?

Cost Optimisation

• How to save costs for EC2? Can you use Reserve Instances? Or spot instances or both?
• How can you save egress costs?
• How can you implement AWS budgets and use alerts to ensure users don't use more than what is expected?

Migration

• Planning and orchestration using Application Discovery Service and Migration Hub
• Understand how to move servers and databases with tools like SMS, DMS, SCT
• Understand how to move data - via VPC, storage gateway, Snowball for TB upto PB of data. Order a truck(also known as Snowmobile) for PBs of data transfer from single location

In summary,

• If you decide to take this certification, you are going to spend a long time preparing. So make sure you do it for the right reasons.
• Have a beginner’s mindset and make sure you enjoy the journey!

Good luck!

Disclaimer - My opinions are my own. No way related to my employer Amazon Web Services. Use it at your own risk.