AWS Professional Certification Guide

Following on from the earlier post covering my experiences taking the AWS associate level certifications, this post covers preparing for and taking the AWS Professional level certifications.

Given that I started studying for these certifications coming up to the Christmas break and there were no suitable exam slots until late January, I decided to study for both the SA and DevOps pro, before sitting either exam. I found it to be a good decision given that there is a good amount of content overlap and I felt more confident going in to the first pro-level exam. The task was daunting – 6 weeks to preparation time for both exams and towards the end, I felt that pace was pushing too hard (if repeated I would have give myself at least 6 weeks per exam). Overall preparation time is relative to the amount of previous experience you have in the subject area and the amount of time you can invest in a given period. I managed an intense amount of study per day which was made easier by a combination of public holidays and planned time off from my day job.

It is a huge relief to be successfully on the better side of the pro-level certifications, something that was far from certain going in to the process. My preparation focused on the same techniques as during the associate level . Firstly, video training from Linux Academy and acloud.guru, secondly, AWS documentation (some of the industry’s best documentation) and finally (most importantly) hands on practice with AWS (lots of this at the pro-level along with some real world experience if possible).

AWS Solution Architect – Professional

As mentioned before, I feel the SA certification has the most wide ranging content which makes for the most daunting preparation. That being said, I didn’t find it the most difficult of the two. Linux Academy is the most comprehensive video training and offers a high standard of content backed by labs and additional tailored documentation, which made preparation that much easier than it would have been otherwise. I also took the acloud.guru course, which is great at focusing on the exam specifics (take both courses if possible).

One of the key things to be aware of when it comes to the exam is the time available, it’s tight! There are approx. 80 questions (I had 77) which have to be completed in 2 hours 50 minutes (170 minutes). The questions are wordy and have multiple theoretically correct answers, the key is to look for what the question is looking for in terms of technologies used and best practices. Reading the questions and deciding on the right answer took me a surprisingly long time. Rather than trying to keep an eye on the number of questions answered vs. amount of time remaining, I set myself a 2 minute rule for each question  and for the questions that took too longer – I gave my first/best guess.

My thoughts on preparing for and taking the exam:

• Pay particular attention to ElasticBeanstalk and OpsWorks. When do they work together? What are the different deployment types? How do you deploy and rollback? What languages are supported?
• Get familiar with EC2 instance types. There are a lot of EC2 design related questions and knowing which instance to use in which scenario is essential.
• Understand connectivity, how each type is setup, how it works, routing, propagation (VPNs, VPCs, VPC Peering, DirectConnect)
• Understand how to optimise EC2 storage performance, when different instance types are beneficial and how to optimise EBS performance.
• Do you know when to use different caching engines? When would you choose Memcache and when might you prefer Redis?
• How do you loose couple services? Do you know how, when, and why to use SQS and SNS? Do you know the limitations and when it is not appropriate to use one or the other of these services?
• Understand when and how to use AssumeRole,  AssumeRoleWithSAML and AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity.
• Make sure you understand consolidated billing, how to set it up and what it offers. I got a few easy points questions on this topic.
• All of the training material, documentation and hands on practice is important and this list isn’t an overall guide to the exam but some pointers that would have been useful to know prior to taking my exam.
• I found the official practice test for the SA pro exam to be highly misleading, poorly worded and generally I felt that it did me more harm than good when preparing for this certification. AWS really need to get the practice test updated. I recommend using the tests provided by Linux Academy.

AWS DevOps Engineer – Professional

The DevOps experience was the most varied for me. I found studying for the exam to be one of the most enjoyable experiences and learned a lot about OpsWorks, CloudWatch, AutoScaling (lifecycle hooks, self healing) and the various APIs however, the exam was by far the toughest of all. Contrary to some of the articles/blogs that I’d read before sitting the exam, I found it was by far the most challenging on time. I had exactly 80 questions to cover in 2 hours 50 minutes. The questions felt as wordy as the SA pro exam and took me longer to answer – often exceeding my 2 minute rule. The situation got so bad by question 35 that I had to skim read and answer the next 5/6 questions to catch up on time. Definitely be weary of time with the DevOps exam!

In terms of my preparation, both Linux Academy and acloud.guru were equally valuable. The key for me, even more so than in all of the certifications, was the AWS documentation and hands on practice – it was a huge help to develop my understanding.  I recommend researching the topics in depth, I naturally found myself doing this more than in the other certifications because I felt weaker on some of the subject areas and really wanted to familiarise myself with the CLI, API and SDK’s.

My thoughts on preparing for and taking the exam:

• CloudFormation is one of the main topics in this exam. Understand template structure, intrinsic functions, WaitConditions, Helper Scripts, Stack, Update and Deletion Policies – I strongly recommend hands on familiarity along with theory.
• OpsWorks and ElasticBeanstalk are also covered in detail. Understand OpsWorks auto healing, stacks, layers, lifecycle events, instances, and EB ebextensions, use cases, SDKs, supported languages.
• As in the SysOps certification, DevOps builds on CloudWatch so learn about metrics, logging and monitoring.
• AutoScaling is also covered at an advanced level. Learn about lifecycle hooks, termination policies and API, CLI and SDK calls etc.
• Deployment strategies. Blue/Green or A/B, All at once, Immutable, Rolling.
• The official practice exam for the DevOps pro exam is much better than the SA pro and is relevant for exam prep.
• In summary, study the theory but there is serious benefit in putting this in to action with hands on practice.

Conclusion

The AWS Professional level certifications are a big step up from the associate level certifications and do an excellent job of testing true understanding and hands on abilities. The time aspect is one of the most challenging aspects of both exams but particularly the DevOps exam. If choosing to the take the practice exams be weary of the SA pro exam but I do recommend the DevOps pro practice exam. The practice exams from Linux Academy are by far the best that I found during my pro-level studies.

Final thoughts:

• Always read the exam blueprint and AWS exam guidance. This is easy to over look but provides great context, detail on expectations and generally gets you in to the mindset of what AWS are assessing with the certification exams.
• Learn to read fast! What I mean here is concentrate on exam strategy and timing, when taking the Linux Academy practice exam, allow yourself no longer than 2 minutes per question and prepare yourself for the 2 hour 50 minutes of heavy read, consider and answer type scenario of the exam.
• Practice and practice some more. At the associate level, you could get through with theory but I strongly believe that is not the case with at the professional level.

In addition to reading my blog, read blogs by Adrian Cantrill, Nick Triantafillou and Stephen Wilding (all linked here and below) which I found were a huge help during my preparation.

If you feel that I can help your studies in any way – get in touch! Good luck!

Resources

Blogs

http://cantrill.io/

https://hydrasit.com/blog/

http://ozaws.com/

Official Exam Links

https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-solutions-architect-professional/

https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-devops-engineer-professional/

** Unlike with the associate certs, I won’t link specific documentation here as there is a huge amount of content and particular focus areas will depend on your current level skills and experience **