AWS Certified SA (Associate Level) – Prep Tips

Kamal Arora
Solutions Architect

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AWS Certification

Learn more at aws.amazon.com/certification

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

1. AWS Exam Certification Site

http://aws.amazon.com/certification/certification-levels/certified-solutions-architect-associate/
http://aws.amazon.com/certification/faqs/

• ~ 750 Kryterion centers globally

• No pre-req’s (Architecting with AWS training recommended though)
• AWS Business Professional and AWS Tech Professional (nice to have them cleared as well)
(APN Portal Self register - https://www.apn-portal.com/selfregisterpartner)
 AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

2. AWS Exam Certification Guide

http://awstrainingandcertification.s3.amazonaws.com/production/AWS_certified_solutions_architect_associate_blueprint.pdf

• Multiple choice and multiple answers

• 80 minutes
• ~ 55 questions
• 65% passing

Examination Blueprint (remember the topics & weightage)…

• Designing HA, Cost Efficient, Fault Tolerant and scalable systems – 60%
• Implementation and Deployment – 10%
• Data Security – 20%
• Troubleshooting – 10%
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

3. AWS Sample Questions

• Few Sample questions at - http://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-solutions-architect-associate/
• Practice Exam also available for $20
• Read the Getting Started with AWS Self-Study Technical Training Guide For APN SI Partners
• No Dumps available!
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

4. Whitepaper Review
http://aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/
a. Overview of Amazon Web Services
b. Overview of Security Processes
c. AWS Risk & Compliance Whitepaper
d. Storage Options in the Cloud
e. Architecting for the AWS Cloud: Best Practices
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

5. Architecture Center

http://www.aws.amazon.com/architecture
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

6. Labs
https://run.qwiklab.com/
http://aws.amazon.com/free/
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

7. AWS Services Documentation & FAQs

• http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/
• http://aws.amazon.com/vpc/faqs/
• http://aws.amazon.com/iam/faqs/
• http://aws.amazon.com/sqs/faqs/
• http://aws.amazon.com/sns/faqs/,
• http://aws.amazon.com/rds/faqs/
• http://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/faqs/
• http://aws.amazon.com/s3/faqs/
• http://aws.amazon.com/swf/faqs/
• http://aws.amazon.com/route53/faqs/
• http://aws.amazon.com/elasticmapreduce/faqs/
• http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/faqs/
• http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/faqs/
• http://aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/faqs/
• http://aws.amazon.com/elasticache/faqs/
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

8. Other useful resources

• AWS Blog - http://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/

• AWS on Slideshare - http://slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/
• AWS on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/AmazonWebServices
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

9. Third party content

http://www.linuxacademy.com

https://cloudacademy.com/

http://blog.cloudthat.in/sample-questions-for-amazon-web-services-certified-
solution-architect-certification-aws-architect-certification-part-ii/

http://www.pluralsight.com/
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

10. Read this Getting Started with AWS Self-Study Technical Training Guide For APN
SI Partners

https://portal2010.amazon.com/sites/ESA2010/Decks/Shared%20Documents/Certification/Building%20Blocks%20for%20Devel
oping%20Essential%20AWS%20Technical%20Skills-%20A%20Self-Study%20Guide.pdf
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

11. Take the Free Sample on the AWS web site

• http://awstrainingandcertification.s3.amazonaws.com/production/AWS_certified_solutions_architect_associate_examsample.p
df
• http://blog.cloudthat.in/sample-questions-for-amazon-web-services-certified-solution-architect-certification-aws-architect-
certification-part-i/
• http://blog.cloudthat.in/sample-questions-for-amazon-web-services-certified-solution-architect-certification-aws-architect-
certification-part-ii/
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

12. (Optional) Take the paid exams

AWS
• Associate practice exams cost $20. Register
here: https://www.webassessor.com/wa.do?page=publicHome&branding=AMAZON
Third Party
• https://www.udemy.com/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-level-2014/
• https://cloudacademy.com/
• http://www.linuxacademy.com/

Before signing up for any class, take a look for a coupon code around the web – easy to get one for 50% off or so.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

13. TIPS: Security

 IAM, Roles, Authorization and Authentication, Policies, MFA, CIDR, DDOS mitigation, App vs. OS vs. Infrastructure, Security
Groups.
 How to secure API calls. Data encryption at rest and in transit.
 S3 Security! Role – user can assume the role of another user in different application can assume a role to access other
services via api calls;
 Policies – know how to construct (elements) and differences between IAM and service specific policies like S3 bucket.
 Read and re-read Security Whitepapers!
 Top 10 AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) Best Practices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AZX8COgnmU
 Security Best Practices on AWS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q79kFxwUEqM
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

14. TIPS: Networking

• Know VPC very well (Subnets, IGW, NAT, Route Table, ENI, VGW, CIDR notations, SG, EIP),
• Regional vs. AZ constructs
• Selecting the Best VPC Network Architecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6Q5dWjFdiU
• From One to Many - Evolving VPC Design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKSsJJqzyyI
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

15. TIPS: Scalability

• Whitepapers!
• Know how to architect a self-healing scalable applications on AWS (Autoscaling constructs like lunch
config\ASG\Conditions\Policies, Bootstrapping, CloudFormation, EC2 Metadata, CloudWatch Metrics and monitoring)
• AWS re: Invent STG 303: Building Scalable Applications on Amazon S3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYnVRYbUR6A
• Building Scalable Windows and .NET Apps on AWS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIs2ektEXq4
• Massive Message Processing with Amazon SQS and Amazon DynamoDB:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9pMxdUbBGs
• Scale Your Application while Improving Performance and Lowering Costs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EKKKtdoRcA
• AWS re: Invent ARC 205: Building Web-Scale Applications With AWS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wZAN2_W6Ns
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

16. TIPS: Content Delivery

• Route53 (Latency based vs. Round Robin vs. Weighted, CNAME vs. Alias vs. A vs. AAA entries, Zone Apex);
• ELB (Public vs. Private VPC set up) – good for Web and App tiers but not suitable for DB – regional service – can set up Sticky
Sessions if necessary but its anti-pattern;
• CloudFront – global service with POPs edge locations – latency based routing and caching – origin could be S3 or any other
web server – use cases static web sites\images\videos\live streaming;
• S3 is HTTP\HTTPs object oriented storage system with GET\PUT REST capabilities – content can be served directly with right
permission within a region.
• Introduction to Amazon CloudFront: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-nCMrmxmgs
• Using Amazon CloudFront to Protect Your Content Delivery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpdlVrliMf0
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

17. TIPS: EC2 Sizing and Families

• There may be questions about Families (optimized for Memory vs. Network vs. Storage vs. GPU)
• Instance Types: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/
• Purchasing Options: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/purchasing-options/
• Improving Availability & Lowering Costs with Auto Scaling & Amazon EC2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fbkAq4mUW0
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

18. TIPS: Pricing

• How to architect for cost – On-demand vs. RI vs. Spot, Free Tier for a year, Managed services more cost effective than
customer managed on EC2. Turn off what you don’t use.
• Billing alerts and monitoring with consolidated billing across accounts, utilizing tagging. Scale In after scaling out.
• Downsize instances proactively when demand is low.
• Estimating the cost of running a 3-Tier Web Hosting Application: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsEX3W6lHN4
• Reducing Cost & Maximizing Efficiency: Tightening the Belt on AWS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-MSlc3m-k
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

19. TIPS: Storage

• Ephemeral (direct attached) vs. Block Storage (EBS) vs. OO (S3) vs. RDS vs. NoSQL (DynamoDB)
• Introduction to Amazon Elastic Block Store: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKftR47Ljvw
• Instance Store: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/InstanceStorage.html
• Introduction to Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRLs5t-iS_Y
• Maximizing Amazon S3 Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXHw0Xae2ww
• Introduction to Amazon Relational Database Service: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz1zmyHw9G0
• AWS Storage and Database Architecture Best Practices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6cxi1YoXRk
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

20. TIPS: HA, Backup and DR

• Whitepaper!
• EBS Snapshots, AMI, restore from snapshot to new EBS and mount to EC2;
• Push snapshots to S3 bucket to Glacier (VTL);
• S3, AMI, Glacier are Regional services but EC2 and EBS are AZ dependent! RDS snapshots and data replication across regions.
• Patterns for High Availability: http://en.clouddesignpattern.org/index.php/Main_Page#Patterns_for_High_Availability
• Architecting for High Availability & Multi-Availability Zones on AWS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uE2XULbT3o
• Backup and Archiving in the AWS Cloud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgxZZpoufTI
• Backup and Recovery: http://aws.amazon.com/backup-recovery/
• AWS Storage and Database Architecture Best Practices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6cxi1YoXRk
• Archiving Amazon S3 Data to Amazon Glacier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cwpengIjkw&spfreload=1
• Disaster Recovery Site on AWS - Minimal Cost Maximum Efficiency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01hSWAOJGLY
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

21. TIPS: Application Services

• Know SQS, SNS, SWF, CloudWatch really well!

• Getting Started with Amazon SQS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XGm2VyNV4E
• AWS re: Invent SVC 105: AWS Messaging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwLC5xmCZUs
• Massive Message Processing with Amazon SQS and Amazon DynamoDB:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9pMxdUbBGs
• Getting Started with Amazon SNS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5j1U3qFXDY
• Cloud Infrastructure and Application Monitoring with Amazon CloudWatch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ExkEX3ftFs
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

21. TIPS: General Recommendation

• Read up on placement groups and know how to use them!

• ARN – know how to construct for different services like EC2, S3, ELB, EIP, VPC, EBS. Study S3 documentation and know:
buckets, keys, objects, declaring object and bucket privileges\policies.
• Remember everything that is doable via AWS Management Console we can accomplish via API calls either through CLI or SDK
programmatically.
Schedule Your Exam
• Go To: https://webassessor.com/aws/
• Exams and practice exams are delivered through our testing
partner Kryterion
• Under “Getting Started” section click “Create an account”
• Log in and select an Exam
• Select a Training Center near you and schedule your time
• APN Partners: To receive credit on your APN Partner
Scorecard, Create an APN Portal Account and register for an
exam with your unique firm’s domain.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level

All the Best!