The amount of certifications you can get from AWS can get a little overwhelming, once you learn about the intricacies that each entails.
The good news though is that regardless of which path you go down, when it comes to passing the exams there are some common concepts that you can remember to help you out. I’d like to give you a few of them that you should know, but to get the most benefit you should enroll in free AWS training here.
AWS Services in the answers to a question are always real
Unlike traditional schooling, the way AWS tests your knowledge is not by giving you trick questions. If in an answer to a particular question they mention a service called AWS cat lasers, then it is a real service (that I immediately want to start working with).
What they will do instead is try to see if you know how particular services best fit together depending on the use case. For example, if a client is requesting a SQL like data service, would you recommend RDS or DynamoDB?
Remember the 6 pillars of cloud computing
Conceptually, they all apply in any scenario involving workloads in the cloud. It is helpful to remember what each of them are because a lot of times you will be asked to suggest the best possible solution that reduces costs specifically, for example.
Or you might be asked for the solution that provides the most secure and automated approach. Speaking of automation, if you ever see an answer to a question that involves manually doing something, then 99% of the time it is not correct. That directly goes against the operational excellence pillar, because you want to try to automate as much as you possibly can.
Finally, while sustainability is one of the six pillars, it is relatively new. Most of the concepts covered will go over the other 5 that actually involve cloud computing workloads.
If you have labs, validate your answers
Some exams require you to do labs where you are put into a console session and given a set of tasks to complete. For example you may be asked to configure a security group to allow a Lambda function to do something on a database.
Before changing some things and submitting, do your best to see if there is a way that you can validate your answers with. You are free to click around the console, however there is no doubt IAM policies are in place that limit you to doing certain things.
Sometimes though, they will provide your Lambda function with a way to validate its connectivity, or maybe you can run a reachability analyzer (I didn’t try this but I know it is an option in the console).
Try to rule out 1–2 answers
Most of the time there will be at least one, but possibly two answers you can rule out pretty quickly. For example, many times I have seen a question asking about the best possible database solution.
Now if I look at the answers, and one of them involves EC2, then I can automatically rule it out because I know that is a compute service and not a database service. I don’t even have to know the details of the rest of the answer coming with the EC2 one, because I already know it is not a database solution.
Read the last sentence or two of questions carefully, those are the concepts they are looking for.
Hopefully these tips help you out a little bit if you can keep them stuck in your head somewhere. As I mentioned there are a ton of great resources out there to further your learning so you can boost your confidence taking your exams.
Personally, I’ve always been a bad test taker, but I am able to get through with tips like these. If you don’t know the specific answer to a question, start thinking conceptually about what makes sense instead.
Hopefully this story was helpful to you, and I wish you the best of luck on your continued journey through cloud computing. If you found this helpful and would like to hear from me more, you can use the link below to subscribe to my newsletter (and become a Medium member if you aren’t already). You can also check out some of our courses designed to help you pass cloud computing exams on your first try.
Comments