A Foolish and Hungry Journey into Cloud

The Pursuit of Happyness(1)

????????????

Introduction

Ever since I joined Fidelity on October 26th, 2015, my manager had been asking us to learn Amazon Web Sevices (AWS) and get the Developer certification. I was writing a book at that time so I really didn't have more time to pursue certifications. A coworker collected some study materials and I estimated it would take one year to complete all the materials. I didn't want to spend one year getting a certification.

In May 2016, half-year passed and there was no sign of me taking it seriously, my manager started asking about progress more frequently during the status meetings. Finally, I completed the draft of the book and had time to prepare for certifications. The book is here, Selenium WebDriver: From Foundations To Framework.

On May 13th, I asked Tieyi Guo whether he had taken AWS Certifications, and he told me that he had gotten AWS Certified Solution Architect - Associate after one month of preparation. It was so inspiring to see people near you achieve something so I thank Tieyi for inspiring me to pursue the AWS Certifications!

I started the AWS certification journey on May 14th, 2016. [Note0]

AWS Certified Developer - Associate

Following Tieyi's advice, I purchased acloud.guru course developed by Ryan Kroonenburg from udemy.com and started watching it in my spare time. I was pretty busy with my day job since I was a DevOps architect. Not only do need I to construct pipelines for multiple functional teams at the same time but also need to answer people's inquiries about the pipelines and sometimes support calls from the teams. So the only available time was nights and weekends. I do one hour in the morning, two hours at night every day during workdays, and 4 hours every day on weekends.

The udemy course was not long, only 8 hours and I completed it in one week. Since I had strong development background in J2EE and all those services required by the Developer exam are similar to some J2EE services so it is not difficult for me to understand them by applying the concepts I learned from J2EE. I watched it one more time the second week and felt confident about it so I took the practice exam from AWS. I passed!

Then I scheduled the real exam for Developer - Associate on Saturday, May 28, 2016. And not surprisingly, I passed!

AWS Certified Solution Architect - Associate

Through the study from udemy, I found out the course is actually developed by A Cloud Guru, so I transferred my purchase from udemy to A Cloud Guru. From there I found out that many people were taking the certifications and every day there was at least 60 people got certified in Solution Architect alone. I was inspired by those people and I made the decision to continue the journey to get all of them.

It is easy to make a decision but it is difficult to carry it through. However, from that day on, I managed to pump all my spare time into AWS study. The course alone would not help you to pass the exam, the instructors also ask people to read FAQs and white papers. I bought a Kindle so I can read AWS FAQ anytime I got a couple of minutes. But the diagrams are not displayed properly so I bought an iPad later to read white papers. The diagrams are much better on an iPad.

It only took me two weeks to get the first certification so I was overconfident I took this exam on June 4th, 2016, and failed at 61%. My heart sank after I saw the result but I didn't give up, I continued studying and reading more whitepapers.

Finally, I passed Solution Architect - Associate exam on Saturday, June 25th, 2016.

AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate

After I failed Solution Architect - Associate exam, I started preparing for SysOps Administrator - Associate since I need to wait for two weeks before another attempt. I did the practice exam on AWS and passed, so I took the real exam but unfortunately, I failed at 65% on June 13th, 2016. I could have passed if I managed to learn a little more. I didn't give up and continued learning.

I passed SysOps Administrator - Associate exam on July 1, 2016. It was a Friday before the holiday so I could leave earlier for the exam since the exam center was closed on Saturday for the long weekend.

AWS Certified Solution Architect - Professional

I used Acloud.guru courses alone for all three associate-level exams!

After passing 3 associate exams, I became more confident that I could achieve the professional level. I was excited about that.

People said the Professional level exams are extremely hard so besides using Acloud.guru, I also started using linuxacademy.com for the preparation of professional-level exams. I found their practice exam pretty good.

It took me almost two months to get ready for the professional level and I passed Solution Architect - Professional on August 27th, 2016 on my first attempt. The exam is no doubt one of the most difficult ones since it requires a lot of reading and thinking during a 3 hours period and it can test people's time management skills as well since you need to keep a constant pace and keep focused at all times.

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional

After another three weeks of study, I passed the DevOps Engineer - Professional exam on September 17, 2016, on my first attempt. When I prepared, the course from linuxadademy.com wasn't ready and the only course available was from acloud.guru. The exam is very deep in certain areas and I read user guides on CloudFormation, OpsWorks, and Elastic Beanstalk.

Preparation

From May 14th to September 17th, I spent all my weekends studying AWS materials. Every workday, I got up at 6 AM and while feeding my dog, I watched Acloud Guru videos so I didn't waste time. The fraction of time added up to one hour in the morning. And I allocated at least two hours every night to study as well. On weekends, I went to a local coffee shop and studied there for at least 4 hours every day.

Don't want to repeat the contents, but these blog posts gave me some insights on how to prepare for professional-level exams.

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/aws-certified-solutions-architect-professional-road-success-oliver

https://cantrill.io/certification/aws/2015/10/04/passing-the-aws-solutions-architect-professional-exam.html

https://hydrasit.com/passed-aws-solutions-architect-professional-exam/

I highly recommend reading them if you are planning to take professional-level exams.

Motivation(Fictional)

If you ever wonder how did I have so much motivation to complete all of them in so short a time, here is the story.

I had a dream. In the dream, Confucius said,

AWS is a humongous beast, if you only pass AWS Certified Developer, you can only know AWS as a snake. You need to pass the other ones to know it as a tree, a wall, a fan and a rope. What animal is it?

Gandhi said,

an elephant. [Note1]

I woke up and made the decision to pursue them all.

Confucius said,

Happyness comes from moving out of your comfort zone, conquering your fear and achieving your goal.

It is important to have a goal and pursue it. If you are not sure about yourself, go watch this movie, The Pursuit of Happyness[Note2] and you can also understand why the title of this article was spelled wrong.

Now I graduated from AWS Academy and I am helping team members to get certified. Certification shows some level of competency and it is also an indication that you are willing to learn new things and are capable of acquiring them.

I did it. The key is determination and dedication. With the same amount of?determination and dedication, you can do it too. I will be happy to see more and more people get certified. [Note3]

More Certifications

AWS released more certifications and I completed all 9 AWS Certifications on 2/24/2018!

Total Recert!

When the first 5 certifications expired, I did a total recert. With the help of whizlabs.com, this certification became easier to crack.

https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6461159282338525185

AWS Certified Alexa Skill Builder - Specialty

AWS Certified Machine Learning - Specialty

AWS Certified Database - Specialty

https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/yujunliang_aws-certified-database-specialty-activity-6643214944915509248-pVEU

AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty

AWS Certified Solution Architect - Professional

The Story of This Journey

Exam History

This is the entire history of AWS exams, hope it is helpful for you to know the effort required to get fully certified!

Notes

[Note0] There is a side story, Code Monkey and Manager Rob

[Note1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant

[Note2] Movie Trailer - The Pursuit of Happyness

To be continued.....