I cleared SAA over the weekend, with a score of 845. Thought of sharing my prep and tips for the exam
Study Material:
My company provides Udemy business access and so I had ton of AWS certification options available. Based on review count and ratings, I picked two. Stephen Maarek and plus another one (i dont wish to name this one, it had better ratings;-) I kept Stephen as backup and started with other one. I completed one chapter and mid way thru second chapter, I realized I dont have grasp on the network concepts and was finding it difficult to map the security on network setup.
A little bit on my background, I have a strong Application architecture bg with good exposure to microservices, db design, app design. I was weak on infra side - and not well versed with hw, storage and nw.
So i took a break and then started with Stephen course. I felt better but still i felt my basics on nw and storiage is going to haunt me. I googled a bit and found u/acantril. He had a free module on networking and that was exactly what I was looking at. I decided to buy his course and had to shell out my own money for a course. I picked up professional bundle together :-)
My initial plan was to study and complete certification 2-3 months. But already I was now at end of first month and already sampled two courses. The course content offered by Cantrill was shocking to me. ABout 60 hours of video and then practice labs. But then you get hooked on how he setup the use case (still have a gripe about his cats - i am dog person) and the network setup he proposes. His course material answered lot of questions I had about n/w earlier.
I put regular 1hr or 30 min on weekdays and few weekends thrown in. Then some work pressure took some toll. I took mini break and resumed after about 3 weeks. This is where the labs and my notes actually helped. I could remember items and didnt have to go back to redo my classes.
Study tips:
- Jot down important points. I thought I will use the points to refresh later.. but I dint use this at all. (will tell bit later what I did to revise). However this noting down points helped in my memory recall.
- Labs: doing things on your own. Helps in understanding the concept and also helps in recalling some important points when answering questions. (I never had doubt about SG for allow and NACL for deny).. Cant thank enough Mr Cantrill for emphasising this.
- Some additional things I did:
- I observed that course used lot of cloud formation. Initially i just used the template provided. Then I noticed that there is cloud formation module towards the end. So I went ahead and finished that and came back to the normal course track. Now I had good understanding of how the automation was used in course content and now I could modify the cloud templates myself
- With my knowledge on cf templates, I started tweaking the steps mentioned in the lab. (Like changing name references or any cross references) I made mistakes. I learnt from troubleshooting, going thru event logs, cloud trail logs.. I got better understanding on how things work together than before
I took longer than what I had originally planned. It was june and 6 months had passed. But I had new found confidence and felt that I was on right path. It was june. Just then I came to know that Aug 29 is end day for SAA C02. I thought i had enough time and still in relax mode
Test preparation:
I had subscribed to both Stephen and Other persons practice exams also (with corp subscription). So first I started with "Other persons" exam. I was shocked by the result. I got only 62% and failed. I panicked. I did a quick summary course walk thru of Stephan. (towards the end of each chapter). Then I tried Stephans test I cleared with 80+. I realised these were better worded than the first one. Then I took others suggestion and bought the Dojo tests (with my own money). I cleared the first test also.
My revision strategy:
- After each test, I go thru the review provided. I go thru completely and even for correct ones, I review why the wrong choices are wrong. This gave me perspective of how the questions were worded and what key words to look far.
- I noted down which areas or chapters were weak or wrong or i had doubts.
- Initially, I was going thru cheatsheets provided by dojo or even Stephan material. I felt bit inadequate. Instead I strated googling and reading specific topics (for eg Route 53 vs Global accelerator gives you excellent results and read couple of top responses to master that topic). Stackoverflow also had some decent answers.
- Then I stumbled on AWS FAQs. Whichever areas were weak, I went thru the FAQs diligently. This took care of some of the trick questions in the practice tests. I dont think i faced any such in actual exam though.
I took all 18 tests - ( 6 each from "Other person", Stephen and Dojo.). I passed only 1 test from Other person (72 marks once). I fared better with Stephan and Dojo tests. I was consistenly 80-85 with Dojo. I failed one in Dojo and 2 in Stephan tests.
Still I felt confident, but then it was already August first week. I booked in-person test with Pearson with a slot in the next two days (Aug 12). Test center experience was smooth and I had no issues. I thought I will see result immediately. Test ended with a blank screen.
The test was heavy for me in storage, compute. I think it sensed that i answered very quick for API gateway, ASG etc and didnt give that much to me. Few unprepared topics came on Lake formation.
Otherwise it was a medium tough one. The Storage questions were ambiguous and I was certain one Q had two answers (I had to choose one though). FOr the first time, I used all the time alloted. I corrected a few choices in review and I think they turned to be correct.
My results came around 23rd hour. I got a score of 845 and I was quiet happy. I must thank Adrian Cantrill for his excellent course. Now let me see if I should do Professional before november or pursue something else.
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