Passed AWS CSA - Professional!!

WHAT. A. TEST. 

I enjoyed preparing for and earning (emphasis on earning) this cert. The CSA-Pro lived up to the hype as one of the hardest certification exams out. I know apart of the certification process involves reading posts like this, so here are a few tips that helped me:

Overall Test Tips

The exam was a marathon, I am a fairly quick reader and generally finish exams under an hour (Security-Specialty and CSA-Associate took me less than 45 min). CSA Pro took me two and a half hours! Each question is long, the answer choices are robust and intentionally deceptive. My final score 819/1000.

This format means you will spend significant time on each question. It is important to focus on keywords in the questions for clues to answer choices (i.e. if you see clickstream, think Kinesis). Also, focus on what the question is asking directly, does the client want to save costs? Improve performance? Maintain availability? You may have answer choices that will improve performance but will end up being expensive and the question is asking for the cost-effective option. Pay attention closely!

On this exam, you can use a technique that is helpful which is grouping similar answer choices together. Often on the exam, two choices are very similar to one another and one subtle change is the difference between the right and wrong choice.

The process of elimination is a great technique on this exam as well. If you see a service included in the answers choices that cannot address the question, eliminate it, and move on. 

Study Resources I Used

Before I dive into the list of resources here, I think it is important to understand that one of these resources is not enough for you to pass the exam. You need the contextual experience from hands-on knowledge and some of these resources may be too advanced or too slow for you depending on your experience. Here is what worked for me:

A Cloud Guru with Scott Pletcher - This course provides a high-level overview of what will be covered on the exam. It is lacking the details but for some services, you may not need the details. I reviewed services I am familiar with within this course (security services mainly) and it was a great way to save time and refresh key concepts. I entered the “valley of despair” several times, but glad Scott warned me and I was able to make it out

Linux Academy with Adrian Cantril- This course was great and provides the necessary depth needed for each key service on the exam. The course is a total of 51 hours and includes labs and video training where Adrian walks you through configurations of each service. His walkthroughs are great because it operationalizes the concepts from the slides (or Orion papers). The LA practice test is challenging and mimics the difficulty of the exam. 

Jon Bonso Practice Tests - These practices tests have become infamous in AWS certification preparation. There are two aspects that I found very useful, after each practice test I did not focus on the answers. I skipped through the results of each question and just read the explanations for all wrong and right answers. This helped me identify key concepts to remember and focus on without memorizing the answers from the practice tests. The linked cheat sheets are must-read as well as they capture the important points for the exam. 

AWS Re:Invent Videos - I had the opportunity to attend re:Invent in December 2019 and saw a few sessions live that helped me with the exam. I recommend watching re:Invent sessions of any services that you are unsure of, they are easy listening and provide real-world use cases. 

Stephane Mareek Udemy 12 Hour Course - I found this course the morning of my exam and listened through at 2x speed. I think this course does a great job of capturing concepts you need to remember for the exam but like the instructor mentioned, this should not be your only resource because it is all slides and does not involve any labs or demonstrations. 

My Background 

I can’t emphasize the importance of real-world hands-on experience for this certification. If I would have attempted this certification after I passed CSA-Associate in Dec 2018, I would have failed, badly. 

In the year and a half since earning my CSA-Associate, I spent countless hours consulting and advising clients on how to secure their AWS infrastructure, interacting with and reviewing production AWS workloads, conducting AWS training for my team at my former employer, developing lab environments for CPEs and hosting virtual training sessions like this one here. This contextual experience is critical for the exam as every question is scenario-based and requires you to have a deep understanding of how services interact and provide value to organizations. 

Any services that I did not have direct experience with, I went through labs on Linux Academy to gain familiarity with them because that contextual knowledge that you gain from setting up and implementing these services is critical. 

Up Next

Today I am continuing my volunteer work with the AWS Subject Matter Expert program, participating in a virtual exam question writing workshop with the AWS certification team. I should have already taken the Developer Associate, so I think I will sit for that exam in the next couple of weeks. I am excited about continuing to write about AWS (some of my past articles here, here, and here) as well as starting bi-weekly YouTube labs with the ISC2 Miami chapter where I will walk through how to automate security best practices on AWS. Good luck to anyone studying, thanks to everyone that contributes to the AWS certification ecosystem and making these exams an enjoyable learning experience.