Many companies offer learning budgets to grow their Employees. Some people spend them on courses, books. Some go to conferences, others get certificates. I was interested to get the “AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate” certificate. In this post I’m going to tell you what I had to do to prepare for this certification and pass it.
Certificate “AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate” shows that you know about AWS and can build reliable infrastructure on it. As other certification without practice it will not give too much advantage, but at least will make your CV stand out.
First of all, I found a center where I can pass certification in Poland, so I didn’t need to travel to other countries.
So, I decided that not so much was left to do: register and pay for certification, do some training, read books and finally pass the certification. Simple!
Now I will describe all the steps one by one.
Register and pay.
To register you need to go to the certification site and find a free time slot in the chosen location.
Why in that order? Why shouldn’t you read books and pass courses first?
Answer for me is motivation. In case you choose books and courses to pass first, you can always doubt about your level of knowledge. After registration the deadline is set. I had another example when I bought courses on black Friday and it took me 6 months to start proper preparation and register to the course, so this time I decided to set the deadline and have 1 month to train.
Cources and other preparation materials.
1. Linux Academy (cources)
Pros:
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Materials are well structured and go from basic to advanced.
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Practical labs, prepared with just one click and answers not only How? but also Why?
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There is a forum where other students share their exam experience.
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Gives some example questions from certification.
Cons:
- subscription costs $50, so it’s not the cheapest course. On the other hand, you can learn a lot of other topics within your subscription period.
Summary:
Not the cheapest source that gives you theoretical and practical knowledge. I decided to challenge myself and pass this course in 1 month after the subscription. Definitely, if you spend 1-2 hours daily covering all the practical labs it will take you about 2.5 weeks. This is the time I spent to pass “AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional Level” preparation course. Recommend
2. A Cloud Guru (cources)
Pros:
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Often on udemy.com you can get them discounted.
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Materials are explained in full detail, so you only need to get some practical experience.
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There is a forum where other students share their exam experience.
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Gives some example questions and tips for certification.
Cons:
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On the Cloud Guru site this course costs 99$, but you can also subscribe for 29$ and try to pass it in one month.
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In comparing with linuxacademy.com you don’t get test labs and you need to have AWS account (anyway free tier would be enough).
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If you buy it on sales, you can reduce your motivation to learn (for me it was the case, when I waited for 6 months to start doing something).
Summary:
Not an expensive course(if you have a discount) that gives you thorough knowledge without practice that you should do separately.Recommend
3. AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Official Study Guide: Associate Exam 1st Edition (сайт)
Summary:
A book from Amazon that I haven’t read, even didn’t know about it when prepared for certification. Heard that others recommend it.
4. Amazon certification preparation (site)
Summary:
Here you can find some examples of questions from exams. Gives some tips for certification.
Preparation.
As I mentioned above, I spent 1-2 hours per day working with theory and practice. Also, we use AWS for work, so such experience would be also a benefit. Can recommend taking notes, like at university, as it would structure your knowledge and compress it to a couple of pages that you can always restore.
Just do it! Come and pass.
I would recommend coming in advance to the certification center, so that you can have some time to find the right office, get ready and drink tea. Before you start the exam you will be asked to put all your gadgets and documents into the locker. I forgot to remove my smart watch and the invigilator of exam was very surprised. Luckily, I was not banned for this.
Exam lasts for about 80 minutes, you will have 60 questions with more than one correct answer. After you pass the exam, you get an email with your result and link to the certificate that will be valid for 3 years.
Conclusion
Probably you can successfully pass the exam without books and courses. For this you need to read carefully all the documentation for services and have working experience. However, I know people with good practical experience that couldn’t pass this exam on the second try. For this reason, I recommend using courses or book.
Also, I thought about passing the “AWS CertifiedDevOpsEngineer - Professional” exam. I have passed courses to prepare for that exam, but right now I don’t have a clue if it is worth it. But this topic is for one of the next posts.
What do you think about certification and has it ever helped you?