How I prepped for the aws solutions architect professional exam (2024)

Well, it’s been quite a journey, and finally. I'm here at the back of glaring stats which sate that the failure rate of the AWS Solutions Architect Professional exam is well above 72%, meaning that less than 28% of the candidates who take the exam manage to clear it.

This was a unique exam from all the others I have sat down for, and I must say was the most challenging of all certification ventures I have undertaken.

Well, I knew about that high failure rate but most importantly I had the desire to be part of the 28%.

What I will share is what worked for me. Hoping also that would translate to someone else's success. Obviously to succeed I had to stand on the shoulders of others who qualified before me, I have references at the end of the article to some shared learnings which I leveraged, and these articles are a must read for you to succeed.

While studying for this exam, the real challenge I noted was that the scope of the exam is quite broad. The detail you are supposed to master is very granular and that is tested by the way they pose questions to. Among a list of choices or responses to questions, in some cases you may not be presented with obviously wrong choices to aid your selection, but you may have all correct choices to choose from and you need to choose the best answer from the question asked. So, you need to have taken a deep dive into many of the services and have thorough understanding of how things happen under the hood.

Well for starters, you need to be actively working in an AWS environment and using AWS to solve real world problems. I have been working with AWS environments for about 5 years running, and not only using AWS environments as play pens, but also working with production solutions ranging from migrations to solutioning of critical high-performance solutions, as well as running and operating AWS environments. My exposure to AWS prior to the certification was broad, but not sufficient to get me over the line in an exam scenario, but at least I had built a sound foundation due to the nature of my job. So, if you do not actively work with AWS daily, you would have to compensate with labs and exercises on the services you need to close in on.

Perhaps another thing worth mentioning is that I embarked on this journey soon after attaining my AWS Certified Developer - Associate certification. I had intended to take a long break but noted that it was better to build on the knowledge that I had here. Believe you me, you may get one or two questions that are directly developer questions.

Learning Material

1. Udemy : Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional 2024 by Stephane Maarek - https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-solutions-architect-professionalThis course is very helpful and one of the best, that I benefitted immensely from. I watched the videos, and it's about 16 hours’ worth of material to watch. You can afford to repeat the videos of you go through these at 1.5x or 2x speed. Also study guide (pdf) resource that comes with course is a useful tool to go through every now and again post going through the video course. Last but not leas each section comes with questions. Do them, and one practice exam right at the end of the course, take it.
2. Udemy : Practice Exam AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional co-authored by Stephane Maarek and Abhishek Singh - https://www.udemy.com/course/practice-exam-aws-certified-solutions-architect-professionalThis course was very challenging for me. I failed all 3 on first pass but how I approached this was iterative as detail below in the Mock Exam Approach
3. Whizlabs : AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional - https://www.whizlabs.com/ .This is very useful material right here. This course comes with 10 Practice exams. I did not do all of them, probably got midways because of exam preparation fatigue. But my biggest take away is that on reviewing the answers, I found the Whizlabs ones to be more detailed and taking the much-needed deep dives into matters, and giving multiple references.
4. Tutorials Dojo - You would not believe it, but I benefitted immensely from the AWS Cheat sheets here. I could alternate this material between heavy reading and light reading as I persistently consumed material throughout my preparation phase.
5. AWS FAQ - Unfortunately, there are some questions that have answers that can only be referenced by to the AWS FAQ pages. You need to pick and priorities these services you need to skill up on and go through these pages. Also, the AWS knowledge center was useful. You need to find time to go through a few of these scenarios where I noted that some questions are potentially derived from here as well.

Mock Exam Approach

Before the next Practice exam ensure that you have done your corrections, and you know what you need to know. Though I was still failing, my marks were gradually improving, and I attributed some of that to poor concentration at times, and sometimes not approaching each question with the right energy and easily losing concentration. That would lead me to not meeting the expected threshold of 75%.

That leads us to the important point, never attempt the practice exams when you are exhausted. Many of the questions are long, windy and they are tucked in with minute details that make the answer obvious if you are well prepared, and a nightmare if you are ill prepared.

a. Take a Practice exam (Marking all questions I didn't understand or the most difficult ones)

b. After the exam, I'd go through the questions I got wrong first, learn from the detailed correct answers given.

c. Go through the correct answers I'd have provided as well, to ensure I was not guessing, and still learn from the detail of the correct answer I'd given to ensure that my understanding was aligned.

d. Take note of learning objective I still needed to read up on

Important Limits/Quotas and Thresholds

I have some important Threshold I consistently would read up on, this is quite handily when you have a long windy question. You can foretell what is required already by just having these fresh in your mind.

Subject area Learning Matrix

I used the learning matrix below borrowed the concept below from Tarun Chaundry referenced below. In summary

· Service in RED (Fundamental services) and Bold Green - the categories you must do in depth.

· Service in Green but not bold - Should know what they are used for with use cases.

The red XX for me is where I needed extra focus, and the single black x’s just for self-progress tracking

References