Earlier this year, I passed the AWS Developer associate certification and completed the trifecta of all AWS associate level certifications. I then decided to take the next AWS exam in 2023, but a couple of things happened which forced me to change my plan. First, my employer set a goal for me to achieve the SA Pro certification in 2022 and then the news came out that the current (SAP-C01) version of the exam was going to expire on Nov 14, 2022. As a result, I decided to take the exam this year. This blog documents the resources and my journey of achieving the SA Pro certification.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional
I began studying on and off for the SA Pro certification back in April 2022. At the time, the study pattern wasn’t well established. I used to attempt a few questions from Tutorial Dojo’s practice tests after dinner and on weekends, but hadn’t properly started working towards achieving this certification. A few months went by and I was looking for a course to start preparing seriously. I had mainly used Stephane Maarek’s courses for my previous certifications and I thought about using the same for SA Pro. However, I came to know about Adrian Cantrill’s SA Pro course while reading comments on reddit and on Slack groups. Due to the positive feedback received by the course, I decided to opt for Adrian’s SA Pro course even though it was almost a 70 hour long course.
The start of the SA Pro journey was really positive and I really enjoyed Adrian’s teaching style. Adrian goes above and beyond to teach a topic which helps to understand different AWS concepts. I used to go through a few lectures on weekends and then take notes on the lessons learned. Although the start was good, it didn’t seem I would finish the course in time to take the exam before Nov 14 due to the length of the course and the available time. Additionally, putting in hours to study and managing the personal life became a bit challenging which slowed the process of studying for the exam.
At the end of Aug 2022, I knew a change was needed to achieve the target. I started studying after work every weekday and then extensive study on weekends. While going through Adrian’s course, I also used to solve questions from Tutorial Dojo’s practice exams for a change and to avoid making the study pattern monotonous. Although I was making good progress and understanding different topics covered in the exam guide, I wasn’t certain how I was going to retain all the information and use it during the 3 hours of the exam. At that time, I decided to sign up for Maarek’s 15 hour course. As I was already familiar with Stephane’s teaching style, I finished the course on a weekend and it was one of the best decisions I made in the SA Pro journey. I prefer courses which are straight to the point which helps retain the knowledge required for the exam. Additionally, the summary lectures and lecture slides made the preparation even easier.
During the preparation, I also signed up for Digital Cloud Training’s practice tests to give myself more practice questions to study. After the courses, I used to take practice tests and then rinse and repeat until I understand all the concepts mentioned in the questions. Lastly, I took the exam on Oct 15, 2022 and received an email from Credly followed by an email from AWS on Oct 16 informing me that I successfully passed the SA Pro exam. Looking back, this was by far the best and the most fulfulling certification study experience due to the depth of knowledge and efforts required for the exam.
Resources used -
- Stephane Maarek’s AWS SA Pro course on Udemy
- Tutorial Dojo and Digital Cloud Training’s practice tests
- Adrian Cantrill’s AWS SA Pro course
Here are a few things that I learned after passing the AWS SA Pro certification:
- As described in my previous blog, I firmly believe in overpreparing for an exam to get the expected result on the exam day. However, the breadth of exam topics for this exam is so huge that it’s not feasible to overprepare. I didn’t get time to read AWS documentation, FAQs, and whitepapers.
- Time management is crucial during the exam. 75 questions in 180 minutes seems doable, but the questions and answers are long so fast reading is a nice skill to have for this exam.
- Practice exam questions or rewatch videos until you are confident. Give yourself enough time to study for this exam as cramming will not help.
- Don’t worry about the difficulty level of an exam. I believe the level of difficulty is subjective. Focus on your preparation with the right resources and the difficulty level of an exam wouldn’t matter on the exam day.
This was my journey of achieving the AWS SA Pro certification. If you are also preparing for any cloud certification, then good luck and happy cloud computing.