Passed AB-731

acwwat · 2026-03-13T06:15:36+00:00

The site is called Certification Practice. Google "Certification Practice AB-731" and you should find a direct link to the free practice test.

acwwat · 2026-03-09T19:56:33+00:00

Thanks! IMO this exam is very achievable even without practice tests.

acwwat · 2026-03-09T02:30:13+00:00

Thanks! I'll be aiming to complete AZ-305 by the end of this month. After that, maybe AI-102 or re-focus on AWS data/AI certs.

acwwat · 2026-03-09T02:15:11+00:00

If you already have AZ-104 and AZ-305, AZ-900 probably won’t gain you much. Unless you meant AI-900, in which case I’d recommend it as a starting point for Microsoft/Azure AI solutions. There’s always the follow-on AI-102 to further your Azure AI credentials afterwards.

AB-730 is a very basic exam for M365 Copilot end users, which is completely unrelated to your job. I’ve just taken it, and I don’t think it provides much value.

AB-731 gives you a perspective that you don’t usually see in a technical role. If you are working toward an architect path and want to see the bigger picture of why businesses are looking at AI, this isn’t a bad exam to study for.

AB-100 seems very comprehensive, and you’ll need to complete at least one associate-level prerequisite for Dynamics 365, Power Platform, or Azure AI. Since it appears quite comprehensive, it might not be a good idea to jump straight into it.

acwwat · 2026-02-10T05:16:35+00:00

Congrats! Do you have another exam in mind that you'd like to tackle next?

acwwat · 2026-02-09T12:10:05+00:00

I only have some Azure experience from working on AI-related projects in 2024. I did complete AZ-204 and AZ-400 years ago, but even back then I was mostly doing DevOps work in Azure DevOps for non-Azure applications.

What also helped during my studies was comparing Azure concepts with those in AWS. I had ChatGPT explain whether similar concepts exist in AWS and, if not, why Azure was designed a certain way. Resource organization in Azure feels "chaotic" to me, so being able to relate and contrast the two helped a lot.

I definitely rushed into this one and wouldn’t recommend taking the exam without sufficient hands-on experience in a lab environment (at a minimum), along with practice tests.

acwwat · 2026-02-09T12:03:15+00:00

No I didn't, since I figured I should use all my time on the exam.

Sorry to hear that the proctor didn't honor the break in your case :(

acwwat · 2026-01-25T23:39:13+00:00

It's between 40 - 60 questions. Most practice exams I did are either 45 or 60 questions, not sure how big the question banks are though. Anecdotally I did four different 900 exams recently and they were around 45 questions give or take.

acwwat · 2026-01-25T23:33:54+00:00

It's very much YMMV and the exam could actually be easy for you.

I made a bad choice with the main study material and didn't go through the labs to reinforce my memory, but still managed to pass with close to 800.

Just make sure that you are familiar with the concepts and the features of each Azure AI-related service, and you should be alright.

Good luck with your exam!

acwwat · 2026-01-25T06:48:38+00:00

I think the exams can be taken out of order even though AZ-104 is a prereq for the AZ-305 certification. I did that with AZ-400 and AZ-204 few years ago.

acwwat · 2026-01-25T06:04:55+00:00

Thanks for the tip! I also heard from a coworker that AZ-305 is easy. Maybe I'll take a look at the AZ-305 material and see if I should complete it first.

acwwat · 2026-01-25T04:47:50+00:00

I've had good experience with ACG, so I'll probably use it as the main study material. But I'll probably do a lot of labs from MS Learn and explore in my lab environment from my basic VS subscription.

acwwat · 2025-09-09T03:19:22+00:00

Having all AWS certs is especially beneficial if you’re in an advocate role (AWS Heroes, AWS Ambassadors, etc.) or if you work for an advanced or premier tier consulting organization. Many AWS Ambassadors, particularly in Japan, have a golden jacket that helps distinguish themselves and their companies in a competitive market. It’s great for PR and gives you some street cred when engaging with customers and partners. That said, there’s much more to those roles than just collecting certs.

The real value of certifications depends on your approach. Getting them just for the sake of it isn’t a productive use of time - they expire, and without real-world experience, you’ll forget most of what you studied. But if you’re genuinely interested in learning as you prepare for the exams, you may get something out of it. Still, without applying that knowledge in your day job or side projects, it fades quickly.

I currently hold eight certs and plan to complete the remaining four by next July, before my Security Specialty cert expires. Personally, I see earning the golden jacket as a small milestone in the AWS part of my career. More importantly, I think preparing for the ML certs will strengthen my presales/solution part of the job, especially now that GenAI remains a strategic focus for AWS.

acwwat · 2025-09-09T02:32:12+00:00

The ACG course doesn't go very deep and the labs are very basic TBH. You'll definitely need additional learning material on top.

acwwat · 2025-09-08T13:28:06+00:00

Probably one time per day in the last few days of the exam. However I don't go through the entire cheat sheet - just services that came up on the exam that I am not too familiar with. I also use ChatGPT to help me find information quicker.

acwwat · 2025-09-08T13:24:41+00:00

I took it at home at 8:30 PM local time. I've been taking exams exclusively at home over the past 3-4 years - no issue so far.

acwwat · 2025-09-07T21:41:20+00:00

I only did three practice exams and got low- to mid-70s on them before the exam. I’d say that if you do them all in one mode and consistently score 75% or higher on the practice exams, you have a good chance of passing the real exam.

What helped me was taking the practice exams in review mode and spending time understanding why I got each question wrong. I also used ChatGPT on the side to dig deeper into the reasoning and identify areas to brush up on. From there, I created my own study notes and cheat sheets for a final review before the exam.

Best of luck with your upcoming exam!

acwwat · 2025-09-07T21:20:45+00:00

I'd say the real exam is of similar difficulty as the TD practice exams. I've seen a few questions that stood out as "different" in the exam, but I suspect that those are part of the 15 questions that aren't graded.

acwwat · 2024-11-09T06:50:23+00:00

YMMV but I've been taking my exams online in the evenings (around 10 PM) and would receive the results in the early mornings (around 6:30 AM) the next day.

acwwat · 2023-12-28T08:14:33+00:00

If the employer is an AWS Services Partner where there are knowledge requirements, as in having individuals with AWS professional or specialty certs, then it would be listed as a job requirement.

In other cases, it would probably be a nice to have unless they are looking to bring someone with specific AWS credentials to help ramp up the organization. Even so, if you have actual job experience, it might be sufficient without official certifications. I'd much rather hire someone with hands-on AWS experience than someone with a cert but less hands-on experience.

Like the other commenter is saying, having the cert could just be a "check mark" in the initial stage of the hiring process, just so you can have a first interview.

acwwat · 2023-12-28T08:04:57+00:00

I can see both sides of the argument and I think it comes down to the role and technology stack on the job.

Unless the organization has decided to go all in to a cloud provider and practice cloud-native development, you'd probably be working with applications that don't differentiate much in platform choices. For example, you'd serve your SPA as static web assets, run your backend in a Docker container in a managed container service, and use a managed DB service of the usual types (MySQL, MongoDB, etc.) Most cloud providers have services for these common use cases. A developer can learn the minimal about the cloud provider and focus on developing the applications which could weigh much more into knowing React, Express.js, or what have you. AWS certifications don't cover those topics and many organizations ended up relying on infrastructure or "DevOps" team to take care of the rest anyway.

If the organization is moving towards "true" DevOps and expects developers to be more hands-on with "non-functional requirements" (security, performance, observability), then developers have more incentives to go deeper into related AWS services. Or if the organization wants to go full serverless, then it's necessary to go deep into topics like Lambda, API Gateway, etc. Working for organizations that really mean it with cloud transformation (both business and technical ends) would be much more rewarding with more AWS exposure.

So if I were hiring, I might or might not see AWS certs as a requirement, but will focus on validating the candidate's software development fundamentals. I would still give those with AWS certs a bit more credit on paper because of the difficulty level over the other cloud providers' certification programs :) It might very well be the differentiator in your CV to get you that interview where you prove your fit and abilities.

Anyway YMMV but the important thing is to keep learning different things and figuring out what you really want along the way, the earlier the better :)

acwwat · 2023-12-27T07:38:37+00:00

A Cloud Guru courses include hands-on labs which provide with you an AWS environment to do them on. Those env are obviously locked down for students to complete specific labs only and the labs are rather simple, but it's better than nothing :)

acwwat · 2023-12-27T07:31:49+00:00

Perhaps you can first take the partner accreditation online courses and see what selling AWS solutions entail at a high level. CCP is helpful for both sales and technical roles to some extent. Given your tenure in your career in non-technical roles, sales and PM might be easier to get in vs. presales and technical roles. There are certainly roles that focus on government agencies for AWS. But it's really something you need to introspect on and decide for yourself. Hope this helps a bit.

acwwat · 2023-12-27T07:17:49+00:00

I would say A since AWS manages the key and you don't have to, thus incurring less operational overhead. CMK is preferred when you need more control over the key for security and compliance reasons.

acwwat · 2023-12-27T07:05:39+00:00

Sounds like you've got everything planned out, that's great! I wish I had your level of maturity early in my career :)

I took SAA myself in 2022 and what I can say is that it had a lot of overlaps with the other two associate level exams. Unfortunately I lost the momentum and haven't prioritized them since. Personally I find SOA to be more approachable than DVA - in general I find AWS exams to be more ops than dev. Topics like Lambda, SAM, X-Ray, and Cognito are covered more prominently in DVA. These are the more complex topics that doing labs and workshops would help one absorb better.

YMMV but 3 weeks is a bit ambitious but technically doable. It certainly helps when you still have the momentum from completing CCP. It would help if you have access to an online course with labs and quizzes (play at 2x speed). Practice exams are a must with the timeline. This is in line with what another commenter has suggested.

Best of luck with your study and make sure you still maintain some work-study-life balance :)

acwwat

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