AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate 2020

Thanks. I used the one by Ryan https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate/learn/quiz/4700018#content

AWS certification saa-c01, outdated book and udemy video

Hi all,

I bought Ryan's course on udemy. Watched all and learned so much. Then bought the official book from Amazon, read and learned as much as possible. Then bought Jon Borso's practice exam and did the first text, so discouraged to only get 43%. based on all the reviews on reddit, I learned to read the explanation for each answer to see why it's correct and why it's not.

I feel tge book and Ryan's course are missing so much content as I see unfamiliar terms in the test which I am sure weren't referenced in the book or course.

Can you guys please help me find out what I should do, what training course to buy, what book to read to get better?

Here is the course I bought: https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate/

Here is the book I bought: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1119138558/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Thank you in advance

If you are looking for a video alternative, this course is very good and you can find it in offer for $9.99 https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate/

A lot of the acloud guru courses are on udemy.com. Udemy runs semi frequent promotions. I bought the solutions architect course for like $10. Currently it's $15 https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate/

this is what i have: https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate

Further to the info here

Free Courses on offer at the moment - https://learnonline.shop/what-free-professional-certificates-can-i-earn-online/

Microsoft Azure virtual training days (Get a free voucher to take the AZ-900 Microsoft Azure Fundamentals certification exam when you attend) https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/training-days?activetab=0:primaryr4

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate 2020 on Udemy (very good course and goes through a lot of practical application including setup of your free account) - https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate/

Mumshad Mannambeth's CKA course

Mumshad is a good instructor, and the course comes with free test environments and quizzes on live kubernetes clusters via katacoda. Can't recommend highly enough - if you can do the practice exams at the end you can comfortably get a CKA.

Ryan Kroonenburg's Certified AWS Architect Associate Ryan is of acloudguru fame, but he started on udemy. Because it's an AWS course you'll need to learn all kinds of stuff about products you're unlikely to use, but you'll also learn an immense amount about the core aws services (EC2, VPC, S3, RDS, Cloudfront, IAM, Route53) and also common architectural patterns for AWS, or anywhere really.

I like this one:

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate/

I got the following certs in this order using https://acloudguru.com

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate
Certified Developer - Associate
Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate
AWS Certified Security - Specialty

Pay for them on udemy $12 and transfer the purchase to acloudguru
Ryan Kroonenburg is the man.
https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate/

acloudguru got big and started to charge a subscription for the courses

I spent 3 months just doing cloud at home from Dec-Feb and passed the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate after that it was just plowing through getting 3 more.

Once you have the certs company's will just offer you jobs with little experience.
I got one offer for 180K I almost took it but wanted to work for AWS

Amazon will not hire you unless you are the best so get some experience before you apply to Amazon. They are a MF when it comes to hiring.

This is the best crash course to get started from scratch on AWS:
https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate/

It is the same course you will get in acloud.guru, but acloud.guru requires a monthly subscription fee for unlimited access to all their courses, whereas if all you are looking for is to take a single crash course, you can just take the single one on Udemy for around $10-15.

Python - https://www.udemy.com/course/complete-python-bootcamp/

AWS SA Associate - https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate/

Those are 2 that I have purchased and found very useful.

Probably anything on Kubernetes, Docker, CI/CD (Jenkins), Ansible and Terraform that get good reviews will help you immensely.

I also spend time learning the popular programming languages like Java, Angular, React, Spring Boot, etc. because a good deal of my time is spent helping devs understand why their code won't build or deploy.

Is there an area of tech that you're particularly interested in? If so, go see if there's a cert for that. Maybe just choose one or two that sound interesting to you and study those really well, pass the exam(s) and then you receive the cert.

If you really can't figure out what you like, I would recommend either one of these

• AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate

• AWS Certified Developer Associate

I have both of them but you only really need one of them since there is so much overlap. I feel like it was kind of a waste to get both since there isn't a whole lot of difference between them. Gaining AWS knowledge was extremely helpful for me since I work in a small team as a developer but I also manage the servers. I bought the A Cloud Guru courses on https://www.udemy.com/. When it comes to studying for certs, it can be worth it to spend money for quality content.

Here are the courses I took

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate/

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-developer-associate/

There are also other good online cert prep course sites like

https://linuxacademy.com/

https://www.cbtnuggets.com/

https://cloudacademy.com/

but they can be expensive. Other certs could be useful too. As a developer, you should probably know Linux so getting a Linux cert could also be good. You can also go look at job postings and see what kind of certs employers are looking for.

TLDR: Think about what interests you and see if there's a cert for that. If you can't decide on one, AWS or Linux certs could be worthwhile options.

Regarding technical knowledge - absolutely!! One of the things about security functions is that there is always inherent friction between flod, slod, and tlod roles. Especially with external consultants. So having some level of technical proficiency will be most helpful.

IMO - A good way to learn some of the technical concepts are actually to prepare for certifications. A very broad certification if you don't have a lot of experience is Comptia Sec+ - The Darril Gibson book is considered pretty good - https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Security-Get-Certified-Ahead/dp/1939136059

If you are inclined to dive deeper into technical side of security, building yourself a lab where you can experiment can be helpful - you can always get a free 1 year AWS account. You can use this inexpensive training - https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate/ to learn.

As for certifications related to governance and risk assessments - you will probably notice that a lot of Big4 assessors have the CISA - so that could be a good one to get. As well as the CISM.

https://www.isaca.org/credentialing/cisa

https://www.isaca.org/credentialing/cism

​

BTW - FLOD, SLOD, TLOD are mostly used in finsrv but applies in other industries. https://na.theiia.org/standards-guidance/Public%20Documents/PP%20The%20Three%20Lines%20of%20Defense%20in%20Effective%20Risk%20Management%20and%20Control.pdf

References:

https://bash-my-aws.org

https://github.com/anaibol/awesome-serverless

https://github.com/donnemartin/awesome-aws

https://github.com/serverless/serverless

https://github.com/toniblyx/my-arsenal-of-aws-security-tools

https://github.com/topics/aws?o=desc&s=stars

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/8inzn5/so_you_want_to_learn_aws_aka_how_do_i_learn_to_be

Books and Courses:

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate 2020

https://acloud.guru/courses/amazon-web-services

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate

Amazon Web Services in Action 2nd Edition

https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Services-Action-Andreas-Wittig/dp/1617295116

https://www.manning.com/books/amazon-web-services-in-action-second-edition

https://github.com/AWSinAction

Amazon Web Services — a practical guide

https://github.com/open-guides/og-aws

Linux Academy: AWS Certification Training

https://linuxacademy.com/amazon-web-services/courses

QWIKLABS: Solutions Architect - Associate

https://www.qwiklabs.com/quests/10

More at http://Learn.SharjeelSayed.com