How I Got My AWS Certification

Gives me something useful to do while idle and looking for a job. I mean, how hard can it be?
Entry-level AWS certification is the Certified Solutions Architect - Associate. Next level up is Professional.

Read from somewhere that the best way to go about this is via A Cloud Guru's course from Ryan Kroonenburg. Apparently, they used to host their courses on Udemy, and I guess business was so good that they decided to launch their own platform and host their own training videos. The 2018 course on ACloudGuru is $99. If you've bought the course elsewhere, you can transfer it to your ACG account and have access to their updated content. So I went to have a look at Udemy and guess how much is the ACG AWS CSA - Associate course? Currently going for a discounted price of $15! I guess you already know what happened next. Paid for my first Udemy course, and ported it over to ACG.

So I spent the next few days and weeks and months watching the video lessons whenever I have free time. Content is basically Powerpoint slides with Ryan's voice in the background providing additional commentary. First few sections are a bit dry, as we had to go through the intro, some history, overview of AWS and its major components, setting up a free-tier account, etc. Best thing about the course are the lab exercises. For the more complicated topics, we get video recordings with step-by-step explanation - spinning up your first EC2 VM, how to properly set up VPCs, implementing HA, etc.

Once I finished the course, and typed up all my notes, the next step is to take the certification exam. Concerned that the mock exams included in the ACG exam might not be enough to help me pass, I turned to online resources like AWS' own practice exams, Jayendra's Blog and WhizLabs. The latter's exam package costs $20 and gives you:

• 7 sets of 65 unique questions each (mock exam)
• 11 section tests (165 unique questions)
• explanation for every question
• unlimited access

As I don't like to over prepare, I didn't even take all of the practice exams. Did a set of 65 questions once. Didn't have time to do the sections tests. I also downloaded some sets of review questions and plugged them into Anki on my phone for constant review. (Quizlet also have some sets for AWS.) Once I got them all down pat, I took the actual certification exam. Aced it in one go.