How To Score 900+ on AWS Solutions Architect Pro 

Interesting that so many others have had the same experience!

yes. I took the SAA-C02 in the 12th of july and had very same experience and I was also a bit worried.

I think you're on point with what you've said, the only thing I disagree with is that his course is 'too thorough'. It's thorough for sure, but I can only see this as a good thing. The SA Pro cert is not a 'binge a 20 hour course in two days then take the exam' kind of cert; it validates a massive breadth and depth of knowledge that is highly valued and worth putting the time in for. His course is around 60 hours all up, and that's including the additional networking and JSON/YAML lectures. 60 hours is nothing in the context of how much is taught; coupled with taking the time to go through all the exercises properly and experiment on your own, you're looking at the equivalent of 1-2 semester-long uni subjects, in exchange for an extremely powerful and useful skillset.

@@PatrickB1111 I was exaggerating a bit when I said too thorough. I used his courses to pass the SAA, SCS and SAP. I watched nearly every video end to end. And the demos are excellent. There's absolutely no way I could have ran this gauntlet or even considered taking the pro exam without having been exposed to his courses. BTW my first 5 questions were laughably easy and I thought the SAP was going to be a joke. I have never been more wrong.

Thanks for the kind words! Good luck

Thanks and good luck!

Glad you found them useful! 👍🏻

Hey there fellow IBL 😉 why are you doing IBL interviews if you're in your last semester? But yes, these certs do look good when applying for internships / grad roles.

@@PatrickB1111 I put all my theoertical units into this semester, thus reserving my *final* S1 2022 for IBL. I like to think this is my final semester because I'm so excited to get out of uni and into industry. Passed my Solutions Architect Associate + Certified Developer Associate Associate Exam the other day! Thank you for the tips from your AWS course series! Can't wait to study towards my Solutions Architect Professional.

Thank you Robert!

Good to hear someone else has had the same experience 😄

I spent around 3 weeks studying specifically for the exam, and a couple of months before that working towards other AWS exams with a fair bit of crossover. I also had all of the associate certifications beforehand. The whitepapers can be helpful but the time-to-usefulness ratio is pretty low; most of the effort you expend reading them will be wasted. You might learn other interesting information beyond the exam content though.

Thanks Patrick for the inputs... Actually I have completed SAA in Jan and plan is to go for Pro somewhere last week of Dec. But As I don't have real time experience in AWS, I am not sure how much this certification will help me in switching my role. second thought is to complete Database Specialty before Pro... but again getting a chance to work in this area is important... Any thoughts?

@@abhaygodbole9194 Pro is always going to look more impressive than Associate, but it's all about how you sell it. If you try to pull off advertising yourself as a senior cloud architect when you haven't done any real-world AWS outside of the certification, it's going to show. But if you sell it as "I have done X projects to practice and have been dedicated in studying to the point where I managed to pass this very difficult certification" then I can't see how anyone would have an issue with that. It just says you're committed, hardworking and capable, plus that you actually have a lot of domain knowledge now which you can start applying. What is your prior IT/tech work experience like? Have you previously held a related role like software engineer, network engineer or DB admin? Or are you coming into this completely fresh? If the latter I strongly suggest you get experience in something else and keep doing cloud on the side for a while (personally I started in S/W engineering). An entry/mid level cloud role is more like a mid/senior dev role in terms of the breadth of experience you're expected to have across a variety of different domains. But all that said cloud is great to know and will help you out massively in the long term - just don't expect a $150k salary out the gate with CSAA and no other experience.

@@PatrickB1111 Thanks Patrick for the inputs. I am in IT for 18 years now. My experience spread across S/W design development in Java PL/SQL, Python. I have a small site developed using Serverless technology. Please have a look awsomecloud.ga I will continue learning, I have just change the plan I will first try Database Specialty and then the Pro as I have experience in this area. Lets see how it goes... Thanks!

In that case, with 17 years of experience in IT, you should be fine! I checked out your site and it's a great start, are you planning to implement and blog about more architectures? There are lots of cool portfolio style projects you can do with AWS, I'm planning to make a video about this soon :)

Happy to help mate!

Appreciate it!

Congrats on passing SA Associate! Stephane Maarek's course is 9/10, Adrian Cantrill's is 11/10. I don't say that lightly, it's the single best piece of educational content I've ever used in my life. Better than every single uni course, MOOC or other AWS training I've ever done. At this point you'd think Adrian was paying me or something, but no, it's really that good. Every single person who takes it passes the exam with flying colours, and the skills it teaches increase employability like nobody's business. Stephane's course is also fantastic, and yet it pales in comparison. Stephane's is quicker and cheaper so it has that going for it, but quick and cheap is not what you should be focussing on. Think long term. Stephane is great for all the other certs though, since he has courses for most of the certifications out there while Adrian hasn't covered any specialty certs yet. If you follow Adrian's course properly, and do all of the labs, you will have plenty of hands on experience by the end of it. Don't try to cheat the system, why would you want to try to achieve the cert without being able to do anything it tests for? You'll just end up with a barely-passing score, fail your interviews and if you do manage to land a job somehow you'll underperform. I don't mean to be melodramatic but it's much better to focus on learning first, certification second. Good luck! Feel free to add me on LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/patrickbrett1) and keep me updated on your journey!

You are *allowed* to take SAP without doing SAA - they won't stop you - but it costs a lot more to fail and retry than it does to take SAA first 😉

I agree with the comment about the level of guidance for professional versus associate, and I'm glad you found this video helpful. As for the Cantrill course, it's about as close to an instructor led course as you can get online, as Adrian is always available on techstudyslack.com to answer any questions you might have. There's a strong community around that which really helped. I had a few other mentors but mainly used them for broad guidance rather than specific questions. Frankly the course is so good you're unlikely to be left with major knowledge gaps since all the main bases are covered, and you can check out the documentation for a more in depth run-through if you're still stuck.

I did, and I'd say it was a good choice. SA Pro is really freaking hard. Best to have all the ammunition you can - that includes the breadth of knowing sysops and developer tools since they do come up in SA Pro.

Good luck!

Glad you liked it 👌

It submits for you if you run out of time. They may be tough but they're not cruel. 😛

@@PatrickB1111 ah phew thanks, i guess ill just scroll through answers and use up the time! Its just annoying that you feel sick waiting to see your results!

I definitely did have that sense of nausea waiting for the number to come through - at least you know whether you passed or not. On just about every pro / specialty exam I've done so far, I thought I did way worse than I actually did after finishing.

@@PatrickB1111 I wish that was the case, however I normally feel after I have done great! Until the score says I have failed :D haha.

Depends what you're interviewing for. There's no such thing as an "AWS solutions architect associate interview" - it's not really a role that exists. Entry level cloud positions would be considered intermediate/senior by any other standard, since you're expected to have solid experience and skills across a broad variety of IT concepts. Blame the system, it's a bit ridiculous that the flagship AWS cert (SAA) is named after one of the most senior job titles out there. Start off as a software developer, software engineer or 'cloud engineer', unless you have a particular specialty area you want to focus on like networking, cyber security or DevOps. There are plenty of job listings for all of these. Even then, DevOps means developer + ops, so it's best to have some development experience *and* some operations experience if that's your desired path. There are other entry points but software development in a company that uses AWS is your best bet in my opinion. Point being, cloud skills are incredibly useful, but they're usually not sufficient to land a job in the absence of other skills and experience. My advice to you would be to find a position that is both related to the major you took in your IT degree and for which cloud skills are a competitive advantage. Think of the SAA cert as icing on the cake that is your underlying IT skillset. I started out as a developer first and learned cloud during/after. That seems like the path of least resistance. Play the long game here, there is no shortage of junior dev roles if you're willing to put in the hours to learn (and you can be working on cloud projects in 6-12 months if you stick with it and demonstrate your skills) but there's no such thing as an entry level 'cloud architect'.

@@PatrickB1111 Wow..that was very useful. Thank you for the effort and the quality of that response.

No worries, hope it helped.

Personally I like to get all the help I can, so I'd go for SysOps first. It definitely won't hurt, and if you were planning to go for it anyway it makes more sense to get all the associates before the pro certs. SysOps is also the hardest associate level exam, so it will give you a small taste of what you're in for with the Pro. That being said, Adrian's course is designed to get you to pass SA Pro without needing SysOps as a prerequisite, so you would *probably* be fine if you did.

​@@PatrickB1111, thanks to your recommendations, I started Adrian's course and it looks amazing so far. In his videos, he mentioned that AWS SA Associate questions are mostly 1-2 lines of text and that this is the easiest exam. In late 2020, AWS changed the difficulty of the exam. They added lots of questions about VPC and distributed cloud. Most of the questions I have seen were about 5 or more lines of text, and the answers were as big as questions. With that said, I've heard a lot that SA Associate is now on the same difficulty as SysOps, with Developer being the easiest cert. So, I think that I will try to do as Adrian recommend. I will update you after the exam :D

@@rubik6169 hello, just wanna know how this went? It's been a year

@@kolapoobajuluwa5995 I switched to another certification and didn't pass any of described above 😅

I'm not a big fan of whitepapers, just read the ones that look interesting to you. ReInvent talks and more condensed courses are much better value for time

It's definitely possible, though it's easier to do all the associates first. Personally I did the whole associate tier before starting on the specialty/professional level. That being said, Adrian Cantrill's course is designed for exactly what you described. If you followed his SAA course you will be able to follow his SAP course and then take on the SAP exam. I don't know a single person who has failed SAP after taking his course. If you used ACG for the associate level I'd recommend taking his SAA course as a refresher first though. There are of course other instructors out there (Stephane Maarek is good) but I can only sing praise for Adrian as he is just fantastic.

@@PatrickB1111 thanks. Yes, your video was what made me aware of Cantrill’s courses. And i used the A Cloud Guru course on Udemy to study for the SAA. Udemy have a Black Friday sale so weighing up which course to buy next (Maarek’s SAP or another ACG associate course). ACG also have a Black Friday sale so I signed up to a free trial of their yearly membership to check out Pletcher’s course (and perhaps the other courses on offer) and after 3 sections of listening to his lectures I’m not sure if I’m learning as effectively as I did under Ryan’s course. What did you think of Pletcher’s course?

I didn't really bother with Scott Pletcher's ACG course. I don't know why you're debating between ACG or Maarek, Maarek is the clear winner out of those two. But Cantrill is the best in the business, so you should be going with his 😉

All opinions my own of course... there's just a massive quality differential between the learning materials, it can be the difference between mastering the concepts and going nowhere

Hi Arun, I don't believe you can see the answers for the AWS practice exam - you just get your score back. I'd recommend Jon Bonso's practice tests on TutorialsDojo if you want to see your answers along the correct answers - they are a similar level of difficulty to the real exam and very close in terms of the actual content tested.

Thanks very much Patrick. Your videos are very interesting. You can also post some videos like a complete flow path for the cloud engineer or security engineer. What are the supplements course will help for a beginner

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll definitely add it to the list!

Depends how much work you do... following Adrian's SAP course you'll almost certainly get over 850, the course is quite long though. Focus on learning the skills rather than just getting the cert - your actual skills will be roughly proportional to the productive time you put in, so trying to do it as quickly as possible would be counterproductive.

@@PatrickB1111 just passed the SAA and now on to adrians course

Yes, get his associate course at learn.cantrill.io, it's everything you need to pass SAA-C02 from zero

Cantrills course covers a lot of fundamentals outside of the saa02 (like networking 101 etc) so you could pass using his course alone. Highly recommend his material.

@@PatrickB1111 thanks big dog, will do!

@@zorlacmc thanks I noticed the network portion when looking at his course out line. No need to take the network plus course now!🥳lol

Up to you - I'd aim to do both eventually so either will be useful! DB specialty will probably be more helpful in your role whereas SA Pro will open more opportunities in other areas.

It's only been a couple of months for me, so it's hard to say, but it's definitely got a lot of attention from recruiters, and a general sense of ease and respect when talking to more senior developers and cloud architects. I imagine that would fairly easily translate into future work opportunities if and when those senior engineers are involved with hiring decisions. It's an interesting question and something I'd love to make a video about 6-12 months down the line. Perhaps there will also be more to say once I start attending various community-of-practice meetups in person again; I've had a great run with those in terms of finding meaningful connections and job opportunities in the past, and can only imagine that will be even truer going forward.

@@PatrickB1111 Thanks. What I've found is that it can put one near the front of the candidate pack. But, in my experience, it has not translated to a big salary hike. I get more interviews but the jobs themselves are things I could already do before the cert though having the cert makes it easier for them to justify bringing me in for the interview. You are right in the sense that the certification does warrant respect among other architects and in my view, it's useful to leverage those contacts to get the job - once again it's a who-you-know thing more than what you know. That is, sending in resumes to companies that highlight my certification does not seem to , ultimately, be translating to the kinds of jobs I want. It's a bit frustrating that they really like the certification but then turn around and offer a mediocre salary. This tells me that there might be "certification inflation" happening but it's too soon to tell. (It happened with the general security certs which at one time used to mean something. Now people obtain them who have never really worked in an actual security position). It's also possible that companies don't know how complex things like AWS can be so they diminish what it means. I applied for a job that required an AWS cert but it was to manage some basic S3 storage and occasional on-demand EC2 work. So the cert was way overkill in that case and the pay was not attractive. They either wanted a full-on architect at a discount price or didn't understand the true value of a professional architect. I've also seen bizarre situations where they want you to replace major portions of their entire data center in the cloud under the assumption that it's just a matter of "writing some scripts". All some companies hear is that the cloud should save them money and they then assume that it should save them money on salaries also. I guess the lesson here is that we might know how hard it is to get the cert and what it actually means. Whether companies understand this can be another story altogether. I would stick with an approach of getting other architects to help you get a spot. Seems to be the best way. Anyway, let us know how it pans out for you.

Very well put 👍

@@atlantaguitar9689 Thank you for your comment. You just described what I'm going though. I got three Cyber security certs under my belt (Sec+, CEH, and Splunk) with a couple of months apprenticeship experience but no one wants to take a look at my application. Before taking these certs/courses I was told by the instructor that once I get Sec+ recruiters will come to me, but I realized that it was misleading what they wanted was the money. In my opinion I think it's a waste of time to take these certs if you don't have somebody who's willing to offer you a first job.

@@patm8251 I think it's a matter of getting that first security job after which you will probably advance. One area that does tend to value security certs is defense contract agencies who like to list employee credentials in their contract bids. I'm talking about Lockheed, Boeing, SAIC, places like that. I knew a guy who didn't know much about security in general but he was really good with tools like Wireshark and tcpdump on Linux and knowing those well landed him a job. He was also a capable scriptwriter in Python so he could put together some monitoring programs. He then backfilled his knowledge on other security topics. Start with something really practical which is what companies need - maybe even make a few youtube videos or create a github repo with some scripts. It could be as simple as showing how to sniff your home WiFi network to figure out the high traffic devices on your network. Employers love hands-on stuff.

No. Even the developer associate cert doesn't really require you to know how to code.

I agree with the commenter above, you don't need to know how to code to pass the solutions architect exam. For Developer and SysOps having some basic coding knowledge is recommended but again not strictly required either.

180 minutes = 3 hours All the specialty and professional certs are 170-190 mins (I can't remember the exact number, it's around 3 hours though)

@@PatrickB1111 lol omg I knew that 😅

1 hour = 60 minutes. 60 minutes x 3 = 180 minutes. Not too hard. I get that moment too :-)

You're welcome!

@@PatrickB1111 You are always welcome!

You're welcome!

Thanks Upul, I appreciate it!

Those are in my list of videos to put together. Currently pretty preoccupied with work but I'll get to them in the next month or two!

Hahaha, fully agreed! The production quality of this one left a lot to be desired. It was recorded in Photo Booth in a room with terrible acoustics. In that sense it's a bit of a shame it's my most popular video so far 😅 Check out my newer videos (like this one: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wIknowaQEYg.html) where I use a proper condenser mic and camera setup. Would love feedback if you have any.

Perhaps true the other way around - professional has most of the associate. Associate is definitely shorter and misses out on certain professional topics (e.g. advanced direct connect). So if you want to go straight to professional, then yeah, no need for the associate course. Most people build up from SAA though, so starting with that course is a good first step. Not sure if that's what you meant - feel free to clarify if I'm missing something

@@PatrickB1111 yeah, thats what I meant. In theory best of buying the pro. How different is devops from architect associates?

Not sure what you're talking about, default mic in photo booth on a five year old mac is as good as it gets

@@PatrickB1111 got it.....wish for an updated video