AWS has recently opened AWS certification with online proctoring via Pearson VUE, likely due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Being locked at home because of the pandemic and having more time than usual, I set myself the goal to pass one of their certifications. I will not describe all the certifications available for AWS, AWS does it properly. After working for 10 months with AWS building a Data platform, I though the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate certification could be the one that will best validate my experience and knowledge. So I chose an exam slot, at home, with a 2 weeks delay to prepare myself, and (spoiler) I succeeded the exam 🎉
I wanted to give you my feedback about how I prepared myself and write down few tips so that you can do the same and eventually pass the exam too.

Preparation

Ready

One of the best resources that helped me is the AWS certifications subreddit. It contains plenty of advice and I found answers for almost every question I had. After searching for the most relevant courses, I quickly figured out that Stephane Maarek courses are one of the most useful regarding the architect exam. I bought the courses on Udemy but, later, reading an AMA from him, I realized it is better to go on his website (reason here).
It turned out that the course was very helpful for the exam. It covers the parts you need to know and helps you understand how to approach it. He took the time to create real-world use-cases to give an overview of how the services can be used together. I found it very interesting. He also included some tips for the exam itself, like the fact of having a 30 min bonus if you’re not a native English speaker. Go for it, it is available for less that 20$ and it is worth it.

Steady

I bought some practice exams too, Jon Bonso ones (I also bought them on Udemy). Same here, subreddit community says they are the closest to real exams. I think they were very helpful because they contained detailed answers and explanations for each question. However, I also felt they were not too close to the real exam questions but rather harder. Jon Bonso practice exams questions are often very long, with a lot of details and it could be annoying sometimes. I had the feeling of reading details that could be avoided, and when you have 65 questions to answer, it could be really boring. Despite this, I think it is worth it because of the detailed explanation he wrote, not to mention it is affordable.

GO !

These 2 resources and my experience were sufficient to pass the exam. I should warn you that even if you have more than 10-month experience you probably should go for a course. In my case, even though I had the opportunity to use a wide range of services on AWS, there were still some of them that I haven’t seen before or some configurations/options I didn’t know about. On top of that, you should also learn about services that you may not want to know about. I am a huge fan of Terraform, and I have almost never used CloudFormation but I needed to learn about it just for the exam…

These advice apply to the architect associate certification, they may not be relevant for other AWS certifications.

Online proctoring

You’ll be asked to prepare some stuff before the exam, here are the things I wish I had known before taking the exam. They will ask you to check system requirements. Basically nothing more than a computer (Mac or Windows, no Linux allowed …) with a webcam, a microphone and a good connection. You’ll install a software that will ensure you’re doing nothing else but answering exam questions. And before starting, proctor will ask you to video check your desktop, nothing is allowed at hand reach, not even a bottle of water. And of course you should be alone in the room (it will be video checked also) and you’re not allowed to leave the camera as the proctor will monitor throughout the whole exam duration.

If everything is OK, you’ll have 140 minutes to answer all 65 questions.

Being certified

After answering the 65 questions, you’ll have ~ 10 other questions about the online proctoring exam (to get your feelings and feedback), and you’ll know right away if you passed the exam with no more details. A few days later you’ll have your score and some details (but very few) about your results.

You will also have a certificate 👨‍🎓, a public badge and some assets and logos (along with some brand guidelines) that you could use on your mail/website/social network to show off.

Summarize

It cost me less than 200€

• course : Stephan Mareek one ~ 14€
• practices exams: Jon Bonso ones ~ 11€
• The exam itself : 162 €

and it took me a dozen of hours to prepare the exam (and of course my working experience on AWS).

I hope it can help and lead some of you to become an AWS certified Architect too 🙂

Disclaimer : I am not affiliated with the authors of the resources I have shared in this post and I have no interest, I just wanted to share my reads and methods that I found efficient.

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Sources:
https://www.udemy.com
https://courses.datacumulus.com/
https://tutorialsdojo.com/courses/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-practice-exams/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AWSCertifications/comments/fsfe73/i_am_stephane_maarek_and_i_create_online_courses/
https://home.pearsonvue.com/