Review of acloudguru course AWS Certified Solutions Architect –Associate

In this post we are writing a review of acloudguru course  AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate on Udemy .
When I decided to go for AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam I was confused about how to start with preparation. Syllabus of the exam is vast and covers a lot of topics. I needed someone to guide me for this exam.
After going through many forums I came to the conclusion that I’ve two options.

1. To attend the course at one of the training institutes. The official training cost range from $800 to $1500. Even the institutes offering non-official training quoted $400 to $900. This was huge money considering that my last company was not sponsoring this course and I have to pay for it myself.
2. Second option was to look for online courses. These course are cheap ranging from $10 to $100 but I was not sure about the quality of content and how much I can learn with just online training.

After going through multiple forums and blogs I ended up listing online courses from two vendors  Linux Academy and acloudguru.
Linux Academy has good material and people have written some good feedback for them. But the problem with them is that you have to buy their monthly subscription with plans starting from $29. I knew that with a full-time job I won’t be able to complete the course properly in 1 month.
So I checked on acloudguru course.  Many people have given good feedback for this course too. The course was listed on acloud.guru website for $29. But I found the same course on Udemy for $10 in a special offer at that time. Udemy also provides you free lifetime access to the course. I found this was most suitable for me so purchased it. Also once you buy the course from Udemy you can get free access to the same course on acloud.guru website also.
Now coming to the acloudguru  AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate course itself.
As of Apr-2018  course has around 22 hours of on-demand video.
The course is very comprehensive and it gives you a good understanding of topics. Instructor(Ryan) is very energetic and he tries to teach you the topic in a very simple way. So even if you don’t have background in AWS then also you will understand the topics with not much effort.
It covers a lot of practical labs which you can follow by creating your own AWS free tier account.  It covers almost all topics of the exam. So you don’t have to worry about the syllabus.
It also has quizzes in between the course for knowledge check and also full length mock exams to test your understanding.
One of the recommendation for the exam preparation is to go through the white papers. Each of the white paper is a big pdf of 50 to 200 pages. And for the associate level you are supposed to read around 6 to 7 of them. This can be overwhelming but Ryan cover the gist of these whitepapers in his course.
The course is very useful to get you started on the AWS journey.  But the course alone is not enough to clear the exam.  You need to have good practical knowledge of AWS for clearing the exam and this course give you the correct direction.
You can get good sample exam questions for practice from another course of acloudguru on Udemy  Exam Questions – AWS Solution Architect Associate or from Jon AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Practice Exams for which most students have written great feedback.

How to become an AWS Certified Solution Architect in 30 days ?

In this post we will be discussing on how to clear the “AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate” exam in 30 days .
AWS exams are not restricted to any version as you see in other exams like RHCSA on RHEL 6.
The syllabus is vast and keep on changing as AWS keep on adding new services. So, hard work alone won’t help. Also, your prior experience on few specific AWS services won’t help you clear the exam easily. As the questions in exam are on wide range of services.
Below I am listing a smart plan which can get you ready for the exam in 30 days.
First 7 days.
If you are looking for very quick overview of all services so  that you can sound familiar with AWS you can refer this post.
You can also refer to our free AWS Crash Course  if you want to go little deeper. It will give you good knowledge of key topics in short time.
Later go through the online training and videos. You can look at AWS re:invent videos. But if you are new to AWS it’s recommended that you buy an online course. Content of both acloudguru and linuxacademy is good but I used the acloudguru course on Udemy as it provide lifetime access to the course. You can read my complete review for the acloudguru course here .
TIP:- We found that buying the acloudguru course from  Udemy is cheaper in comparison to  acloud.guru website. It’s the same course AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate on Udemy at cheaper rate, as generally Udemy provide heavy discounts on courses.
Day 8 to 14
For the next seven days repeat the exercises in the course doing hands on in your own AWS account.
TIP:- Create a billing alert in the account. It will remind you if you are going above the free tier limits and save you from unpleasant surprises.
To see how to create a billing alert refer here.
Day 15 to 21
Online course will give you a good base. As you don’t have to worry about the syllabus. Next step is to go through the listed AWS white papers.

• Overview of Amazon Web Services
• Storage Options in the Cloud
• Overview of Security Processes
• AWS Risk & Compliance Whitepaper
• Architecting for the AWS Cloud: Best Practices

Here you can get all the AWS Whitepapers .
Day 22 to 30
Finally go through FAQs of AWS services. Here I am listing few key services from which you can expect most questions.

• EC2
• S3
• EBS
• RDS
• VPC
• ELB
• Route 53
• Glacier
• Cloudfront
• Direct Connect
  

  Tips for the exam:-

• You won’t get more than 3 mins per question.
• You may find some very long questions in exam. Best strategy to tackle them is to read the answer options first and than check for relevant info in question.
• If you find a question confusing, better to mark it for review and check it later.
• Since it’s an AWS exam so look for AWS related options in the answers.  Chances are high that  Non-AWS related option in answer will be wrong.
• AWS exams generally don’t focus on mugging their datasheets. So you won’t get a question like “How much RAM does a C3.xlarge offer?” .
• For cost optimization Spot instances are best. If you are confused about option between dedicated and spot, choose spot if question talks about cost.

You can check out the exam blue print here. And can refer to sample exam questions here.
Once you are done with Associate level and you want to move to the next level check How to prepare for AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional .
Hope this post helps you in your preparation. Do let me know if you have any query.