How to prepare for AWS Certified Developer - Associate certificationexam

In one of our earlier post we have detailed about which AWS certification is suitable for you ?
If you have decided to go for AWS Certified Developer – Associate certification this post is for you.
If you are  an absolute beginner you can start with free labs from AWS . To practice further you can create free AWS account. These two actions will get you started on AWS.
Beware that if you go beyond free tier limits you will be billed. Best practice is to create a billing alert.  This alert can save you from unexpected bill shockers.
To further hone your skills you can either go for AWS classroom training or go for online courses. The classroom training will cost you from USD 800 to USD 2000. While the online courses can cost you from USD 10 to USD 300, depending on which course you choose.
Our personal opinion is that you should go for online courses as they are cheaper and if you follow their labs honestly they can be as good as classroom training.
In online courses we recommend two providers acloudguru and Linux Academy.  Both have monthly plans to buy the courses but they can become bit costly if you can’t complete the course in 1 month.
We have observed that acloudguru also provide the same course on Udemy where you get lifetime access to course with just one time payment. Also, Udemy provide heavy discounts on courses during sale which can get you a good bargain.
Thus, we recommend this AWS Certified Developer – Associate course  of acloudguru on Udemy . Also, once you buy this course on Udemy you will get access of the same course on acloudguru website also.
The acloudguru course instructor Ryan is an industry expert and deliver the course really well. The course will cover almost all the main topics which are asked in exam.  (Though we have observed that as of Apr-18 it was missing a session on AWS lambda for which the questions have started appearing in exam. Hope they update the course soon.) Currently you can learn about lambda from Ryan’s other course on AWS Lambda .
It’s a good idea to follow all the labs with the instructor and once you get confidence redo the labs independently. Don’t forget to complete the practice quizzes to check your knowledge.
This course will give you good base for the exam. But, the course itself is not enough to clear the exam.  You should go through whitepapers and FAQs of atleast below service .

• EC2
• S3
• SQS
• RDS
• DynamoDB
• Lambda

Exam pattern
Exam has Multiple-choice and multiple-answer questions. Exam is of 80 minutes.
Practice Exam Questions
To get a good evaluation of your preparation you can go through another course of  acloudguru sample exam questions on Udemy  .  Many test takers have said that they got similar questions in exam.
Exam Cost
Exam will cost you USD 150. AWS also gives you an option to book a practice exam for USD 20 before you go for actual exam.
How to book exam
To book an exam you will have to create an account in AWS Training and Certification Portal .
Passing score
AWS doesn’t reveal minimum passing score and it keeps on changing. But we have observed that generally people who score above 80% passed the exam. You will immediately see the score on you screen once you finish the test and will also get a report on your mail within 1 hour.
Exam Tips

• Get good sleep and keep calm during 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.
• 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?” .

That’s all folks! Best of luck for the exam!
Do let us know in comments section if you have any query.

Review of 70-534 70-535 Architecting Microsoft Azure SolutionsCertification course on Udemy by Scott Duffy

As I mentioned in my earlier post that I had a good experience with Udemy’s online course while preparing for AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam.
So for preparation of Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions Certification also I wanted to buy an online course.
When I started my search for a suitable course I zeroed in on  Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions Certification  course by Scott Duffy on Udemy.
Scott himself is a certified architect and got a rich industry experience. Going through the course content I found that it covered almost all exam topics. Also Scott keeps on updating the content as the syllabus changes. And if you buy from Udemy you get free life time access to the course so I went with this one.
Now coming to the course.
After buying the course as I went through it I found the content to be good but the content delivery of Scott is not as good as Ryan of acloudguru whose AWS course I have completed.
Scott mixes many Developer course topics with this course which can be good if you are from development background but not essential for the exam.  For the exam you need the basic understanding of coding so that you can read and understand the code.
Course has many quizzes after the modules which are helpful in testing what you have learnt. It covers hands on exercises which you can follow in your own MS Azure free trial account.
It has mock exam at the end of sections but when I gave them I found that no matter how many times you give the mock exam it reflects the same score that you got when you appeared for the mock exam first time. I informed Scott about this on the forum page and he said he will get it sorted. Hope it’s fixed now.
Overall this course covers most of the exam topics and if you are a beginner in Azure it will give you a good base.  Also as of Apr-18 this is the only course on Udemy which covers most topic and get you exam ready.
If you already have background in AWS then I recommend that you also go through the course Microsoft Azure for AWS Experts by Microsoft(Update: This is now a paid course).  Few of the Azure terminologies are confusing and if you relate them to AWS it will help you understand them quickly. You can also refer to our post where we have compared the services of AWS vs Azure .
Read the post Azure exam pattern to know more about  what’s asked in exam. You can supplement your preparation with sample exam questions by Scott.
Scott also got a good course on 70-533 Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions .
Do share your queries or opinion with us.

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.