Become AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional

 

If you're thinking about taking the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional Certification and need help with the test or just looking for information to help you study, you've come to the perfect place. This blog will help you understand the certification specifics, contents, and most commonly questioned subjects, as well as give useful study materials, sample examinations, and seminars to help you prepare for your exam.

Professional Overview of AWS Certified Solutions Architect

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional credential is the most difficult to obtain in the AWS ecosystem. Many experts who have achieved challenging certifications such as PMI's Project Management Professional and ISC2's Certified Information Systems Security Professional consider the SA-Pro exam to be more difficult to pass.

The Professional Certification Exam's Difficulty

This is because the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional certification tests your knowledge of a wide range of AWS services, as well as your ability to develop a dynamic, multi-service architecture that adheres to AWS best practices.

Second, the test questions make good use of what AWS refers to as "Distractors" - carefully prepared phrases and scenarios that are believable enough to make you doubt yourself. Distractors might force someone with insufficient expertise to spend longer than necessary to answer questions, which leads to the third issue.

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional exam is cognitively taxing and demanding. Candidates must complete 75 questions in around 3 hours. This does not appear to be a difficult mathematical problem (you should use 2 minutes for each question, which gives you just enough time to revise and fix any errors).

In practice, the questions are complicated, and the situations are lengthy. It is very unusual for candidates to become trapped in a question and discover they have spent far longer than the allotted two minutes. From my experience, I've had to use every single minute for the SA-Pro certification, something no other certification has required of me.

The extent of the services covered by this certification may be found in AWS documentation. The Solutions Architect - Professional exam necessitates a deep, hands-on understanding of a wide range of AWS services, as well as expertise in using several services to design new solutions.

The Best Self-Paced Courses

You will need to undertake some reading and study in addition to instructor-led courses and training. Fortunately, that information is readily available. AWS offers white papers and study guides that are always free and available. You may locate the test guides and whitepapers by browsing the AWS Certification page and scrolling to the bottom.

The Exam Readiness Handbook is also accessible through AWS. This might help you test the waters and determine your current level of knowledge and readiness.

Free Training Resources

While the aforementioned products are amazing in terms of information and training, we understand that not everyone has a lot of money to throw away on tutorials, training videos, and labs. Many wonderful free resources are available to assist you to study for this gruelingly difficult Certification.

Go to YouTube and search for PASSYOURCERT. There is a whole playlist dedicated to the AWS Solution Architect Professional certification on the channel. The AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional | AWS SAP | Full FREE AWS Video.

You may also utilize Digital Cloud's free practice questions to test your knowledge and determine which areas require more attention before tackling the genuine thing.

In addition, AWS Re: Invent videos might provide you with a lot of information on new services that are part of the tests. These are demos and training films directly from the individuals who provide these services and solutions, and they may be a great asset.

Practical Labs and Practice Exams

Simply watching training videos and attending instructor-led workshops may become exhausting and repetitive. Fortunately, there are several tools available to assist you with attempting actual training and practice questions. This allows you to simulate a genuine test atmosphere, which can aid in preparation and prepare you for time management, which will be essential while trying this certification.

My initial findings were awful. I would either run out of time or fail with a score of 40-50. The practice examinations, on the other hand, are well-designed. There is a detailed explanation of the right choice as well as information on the AWS Service from which the questions originated. By reviewing my exam results, I was able to pinpoint areas where my knowledge was deficient and go back and brush up on them. Ultimately, this enabled me to be more prepared and reach 80-90 percent on the following efforts.

More practice examinations are available from Udemy - This is a set of six tests, each with 25 questions. While the examinations do not simulate the real-life, intense time constraints of the actual exam, they do include extensive explanations that will help you throughout your study sessions.

Study Guide

I'd want to start this part by mentioning that everyone has their manner of learning, and what works for me may not work for you. This qualification requires at least a couple of months of training.

Before pursuing the Solutions Architect - Professional certification, I put in around 150 hours over 5 months. I took notes and created illustrations of the subjects covered in Stephane Maarek's training course. My hands-on experience working with AWS came in useful during certain lectures, and I learned a lot during the others. Keeping a cheat sheet of services, what they do, and how they communicate with one another, as well as developing infrastructure diagrams of how services are related, was a huge assistance. Keep in mind that the SA-Pro certification is more than just a quiz on which services to employ. It tests your understanding of AWS Interconnectivity and how many services may work together to produce a scalable, efficient, and fault-tolerant solution.

I performed the practice questions rigorously once I finished the preparation. Do not be worried by early failures; instead, use them to identify knowledge gaps. The practice questions listed in this blog are fantastic, with detailed explanations of right and incorrect entries. Also, try to scan the questions and eliminate incorrect answers as soon as possible. As a possible remedy, these replies often indicate the incorrect AWS service. Learning to eliminate the erroneous option will offer you an immediate advantage and allow you to save crucial seconds. The exam questions are lengthy, convoluted, and misleading. Every second counts, believe me.

Exam Structure

Discuss briefly the AWS Services and the breakdown of the Solutions Architect - Professional test. This is not fixed in stone, as various services frequently appear in the test. AWS Organizations is a critical topic that is frequently tested. Refresh your memory on organizational units, service control regulations, and how to build cross-account responsibilities.

Data storage and cloud migration are equally major topics. Consider when you should utilize AWS Snowball vs. Direct Connect. Data synchronization. When should you utilize DMS and when should you use Server Migration Service?

Finally, as previously said, networking is a significant component of the exam, and you will be questioned about networking solutions throughout the certification. Refresh your AWS VPC and network knowledge (go over every service that comes under the VPC service, including Transit gateway, VPNs, VPC peering vs. endpoints, High Availability for VPN Endpoints and VPN, etc.).

Summary 

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional certification is one of the most difficult in the IT field; however, with a good understanding of AWS, some hands-on experience, and the assistance of the study material and resources provided in this blog, you can arm yourself with the necessary knowledge, experience, and expectations to attempt and conquer this intimidating challenge.