I passed SAA recently (913) as my first AWS cert.

I think it's just barely doable, especially if you're able to devote work time to it. Stephane's course (https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/) is about 27 hours of video.

If you watch that attentively, do the labs, and then work through Jon Bonso's practice exams (6x - from Udemy or Tutorials Dojo) and Stephane and Neil's practice exams (Udemy) - you should pick up all the necessary knowledge. I think that's just about doable in 3 weeks of effort assuming you're able to concentrate and sink a lot of time into it (day, evenings and weekends), and do 2-3 exams a day (they take a bit over an hour each IME) in the run up to the real thing.

A lot of the exam (maybe 70%) is just recognising and understanding the purpose of services and how they are meant to work together. The remainder really needs hands-on experience. After a few practice exams you will rapidly identify areas that you don't really understand - and it will be time-efficient to go into the AWS console and get some focused practice. VPC and EC2 fundamentals, especially - they're covered in Stephane's labs, but you'll need to work independently to hammer the content home.

I understand Adrian's point of view - but if your employer/client is viewing this as a way of making sure staff have enough knowledge to be effective, I tend to agree. I've just started a new job that turns out to need substantially more AWS expertise than I had, and having been through SAA is hugely useful as I know what I'm looking for even though my real-world experience is limited.

Hi. You can surely look for stephane SAA at udemy. Here's the link https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

Yes these certifications are 150€ (for Architect level at least) and you even get money off for the next one you pass.

I had a look at those pages and I can't believe what I'm seeing. £1,295 for the Certified Solutions Architect Associate is mad ! Stephane Maarek's course on Udemy is 12€ ! and the content is probably better.

OP you need to show him that the resources he's paid thousands for are out readily available online at dirt cheap prices. I hope to god for his sake that he managed to actually accumulate the certs at least. If he were to have some development skills he might (emphasis here) find a junior role. A Solutions Architect is a seasoned veteran, and as a cloud engineer myself I haven't met a single one that didn't have extensive experience as a senior dev or senior sysadmin before becoming one. He has been scammed, and needs to cut his losses now before he loses even more of your parents money on this bullshit.

here you go! this one is for the Certified Solutions Architect Associate 2020. He has many others on there, depending on what interests you. Have fun!

Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate 2021 Stephane Maarek's courses are great and he speaks on real world uses of services

Qwiklabs has good training tracks that will create real AWS accounts for you to build with guidance.

Whizlabs is good for practice tests.

AWS and container tech is SUPER useful!! It's a shame that many places think Docker/K8s is a given on an entry level job req though. Still, that stuff is next on my list. I really want to get into cloud technology, tbh, which is why I started the CCNA (also on Udemy). I feel like learning CCNA will give me more value in the eyes of businesses, and on the side may help me branch into the IoT world within embedded systems.

Is this the AWS course? -> "Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate 2020" ... This one sounds good. Might enroll.

Lol, thanks for the compliment but there isn't much to be jealous of. I do appreciate having the (somewhat) deep knowledge of comp architecture, but once you go any higher up than embedded, and even some places within embedded, there is no use for that knowledge. OS is the deepest any SWE should have to know. But if you want to learn, there are plenty of good blogs/vlogs that can explain a lot of the hardware efficiently!

We've both got good things coming, I feel it. Keep focused :)

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

Do you mean that course?

They provide some material but I think they work with local companies that charge companies a lot.

The courses can be found on Udemy, CloudGuru, Pluralsight, maybe even youtube. You can check out /r/AWSCertifications/ . A lot of people like Stephane Maarek's courses on Udemy.

Resources to learn web deployment for non-static sites?

Background: I do full-stack but I have 0 clue about deployment asides from Docker containers and CI/CD pipelines, and the concept of kubernets and microservices.

If I were to deploy a site where...

Tech Stack: React for client, PostgreSQL for database, Node.js/Express for API.

Purpose of the site: like eBay or Shopify, where we can sell and buy stuff! let's say we should be able to handle 1000 users at first and then it should be able to scale up to tens of thousands.

Concerns: Easy scaling would be a great! The target audience would be people in my city, than people around the city.

​

What resources should I use to help me understand this? Would I have to learn a lot about devops or can it be as easy as deploying a side project to Heroku - wondering how much time I should be committing towards this because I can try to find another person versed in devops.

​

Resources I found:

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

Free resources for passing Solution Architect Associate certification (SAA-C02)

Hello Folks,

I am planning to appear for SAA-C02 test within next 3 weeks. I am studying since last 4-5 weeks and finished following free courses till now.

• LinuxAcademy - Project Omega/AWS Essentials course + practice on AWS (with Free tier account)
• AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials (Second Edition) (aws.training course)
• Exam Readiness: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (Digital) (aws.training course)
• Couple of free online tests (filled the gap wherever i was lagging after the test)

Next, I am planning to read/appear for the following:

• White papers
• FAQs
• More free online tests

My queries:

1. Are these resources sufficient or I am missing something very important?
2. Do I need to use paid resources like course from Stephane Maarek and practice test by Jon Bonso?

Your responses will be greatly appreciated :-)

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

This is the course - https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

I purchased it in 2019, but Stephane keeps it up to date and even added SCA-002 material to same course.

Congratulations!

I passed the CCP recently too. When you take the next Maarek course, you'll find some overlap and will be able to take the SAA very soon.

Here it is with a coupon applied.

Is that this one?

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

Udemy courses:

• Stephane Maarek's SAA-C02 Guide
• Stephane Maarek and A.Singh SAA-C02 practice exams
• TutorialsDojo Jon Bonso's SAA-C02 practice exams

Passed SAA co1

Hi everyone,

I took the SAA exam a few days back and passed with a score of 913. I want to thank all of you for sharing your hurdles, experience, and getting me through this journey so I want to share my experience with my fellow aspirants who are planning to take SAA.

I have a fair amount of aws experience along with network administration from my previous workplace. I was working at a co-op(intern) position which definitely help me understand the cloud environment and the importance of certifications in the industry. so, after my co-op term ended, I started preparing for SAA, it took about a month, dedicating anywhere from 1 to 8 hours a day (an average of around 4 hours, I would say). I started with Stephane's course watched all the videos in 4-5 days, took 2/6 of jons bonso practice test scored 76, 72 I barely passed I knew I wasn’t able to retain all of Stephane content since I played them super fast, so this time I watched and followed his hands-on which took about a week more to complete, but this time I was pretty confident and took all the other tests from jons course and scored 82,79,86,90. I wanted to schedule the test but was hesitant so took neal's course since I was able to memorize all the answers from jons course there was no point in retaking those tests. I did all of neals practice tests with scores around 75-85. I went through all the tests, reviewed my mistakes watched some YouTube videos and whitepapers on topics I felt I was weak and re-toke neals and jons tests scored around 90-95 in all, was pretty confident by now, scheduled the test for the next day and whoaalaaa PASSS

The actual test was pretty easy compared to the practice tests they are a very good way to test ourselves, I feel the best way to succeed is to test ourselves with multiple new practice test since there are a lot of em available online.

Test Observations

· Lots and lots of questions regarding load balancers

· Awful lot of questions(atleast 5) about DynamoDB math and selection which was super weird, like for a while I felt like I was sitting for the dev test I was lucky that I went through some YouTube videos before

· Aurora reader/writer endpoints

· Redshift cross region snapshot for DR

· Usual RDS MultiAZ questions

· Lots of various ec2 combinations

· VPC security questions, like default NACLs, security group questions

· 3-5 from SQS, SNS, Cognito

· Usual lambda questions (remember the max 15 mins execution time)

· Cloudtrail vs S3 access logs

· Selection criteria for various storage tiers form S3, EFS, EBS

· Didn’t get many encryption questions like other here

· Selection between beanstalk and cloudformation

Everyone on Reddit knows that stephanes with jons course is the best combo but I would like to add neals course to the package. Finally if students are able to score above 80% in all the tests I would say they are ready for the test no need to overprepare.

A special thanks for jon, neal and stephane for putting so much time and effort in making such materials for us students. I am also thankful for all the guidance and resources I received here on the Reddit, couldn't have done without you guys.

​

jons course https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-amazon-practice-exams-saa-c02/

neals course https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-practice-tests-k/

stephane course https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-amazon-practice-exams-saa-c02/

Best of luck!

r/awscertifications

Start with the AWS Solutions Architect Associates Cert.

Use:

• Udemy's Stephane Maarek's AWS SAA-02 Course
• Udemy's Jon Bonzo SAA Prep Exams

I started in November 2019 from 20 years of IT, web/LAMP, Sysadmin experience, programming. But zero cloud, zero Python.

This is going to intro you to the way AWS works. It's different. And this doesn't even cover most of it. Just the basics like what an S3 is.

To elaborate on this, use this link (Datacumulus is Stephanes website):

https://links.datacumulus.com/aws-certified-sa-associate-coupon

which is ultimately a redirect to:

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/?couponCode=APR_20_GET_STARTED

if you want to learn about clouds, I'd recommend you to use the free tier of AWS but be careful because it could be extremely expensive if you touch something that you shouldn't.

Also, I passed the AWS SAA few weeks ago with this course https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/ and it's really good

Sure :)

There is one called Cloud Practitioner, it is like an entrypoint for AWS World. However, this one is very simple since all knowledge for that is covered in SAA and DA.

SAA: Solution Architect Associate -> Focused on designing product solutions in AWS using AWS Tools. That is good for QA because, since you have a good overview experience in different products, you can grow your career to work as a Software Architect in the future. After that, you can study for SAP (Solution Architect Professional), that it is a complete and powerful experience for your career in relation to AWS.

DA: Developer Associate -> Good for SW developers to understand in a deeper way how some of those tools work. That is ok for a QA to try this, but mostly recommeded for SW Developers. The next stage is DEP (Devops Engineer Professional) - I don't understand too much about this one, but it is more focused on the tools as well.

As a QA, focusing on learning SW Architectures makes a lot of difference. You can have a wide vision about how the SW works and since you already have a quality vision, you can prevent more issues. Developers usually are focused on the specific details, and not on the integration.

I was working for SAA but I needed to stop due to family issues. But I intend to try this one until the end of this year. I was studying using this course from Udemy:

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

Stay safe! Greetings from Brazil :)

I passed recently and I used the Stephane Marek videos + sample test and the bonso sample tests. I'd say the bonso ones cover some extra topics and are more complex than the exam. I took the stephane test until I got 90+ and bonso until 80+.

For me, you start at the top, write down all the basic services and acronyms then a quick definition. Then its scenarios for availability and cost.

Anyway, these videos were great and have notes on which is the 02 material (I have no connection or interest, I just found this to a good study material)

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

Stephane Maareck's SAA Course

Jon Bonso's SAA Exams

​

Thank you and good luck!

Purchase this course from udemy.

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

Course name : Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate 2020

Instructor profile on reddit : u/stephanemaarek

One of the best course to understand aws for beginners. Not only beginners, even advanced level people have also found this great, visit the reviews section for more details.

Especially, your concern is on understanding VPC.

Without doing hands on, no one can understand VPC. Always build your custom VPC and try playing with that. Because there are lot of components needed to be configured on custom VPC.

On default VPC aws would configured everything for us, so that we don't have worry about them.

This course will prepare you for that.

As far as your concern, I believe you should be facing trouble with the CIDR blocks.

https://www.ipaddressguide.com/cidr

The above link will be useful for you to play with it.

I was simply asking for an opinion on what are the best resources to learn AWS. Usually when I want to learn something new i find some playlists on youtube, and then make my own project.
Done my research already on AWS, found something which looks good on udemy:

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

but there are some othere resources like:

linux academy
and there was another resources but i am having a lapsus right now on it.

1/ FREE video course from my friend Andrew Brown.
Andrew is a great teacher and knows AWS inside-out!
youtube.com/watch?v=Ia-UEYYR44s
2/ Udemy course from Stéphane Maarek.
Stephane knows how to condense all the knowledge you need into a fantastic course. You cannot go wrong with this one as well!
https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/
3/ SAA02 course by Adrian Cantrill.
I haven't used this course for my prep but have bought the DVA course and I must say: Adrian's courses are top-notch and his hands-on demos are world-class! If you want to dive deep into AWS, this is your course!
https://learn.cantrill.io/p/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02
4/ SAA02 course by Neal Davis.
I've watched some of Neal's material and it's really great. Another very good choice if you want to sit the exam!
https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-hands-on-labs/
5/ Practice exams from Jon Bonso.
I'm honest with you. If it weren't for these fantastic tests I wouldn't have scored this high! Top-notch, best-in-class. Worth every penny!
https://portal.tutorialsdojo.com/courses/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-practice-exams/
6/ Practice exams from Stéphane Maarek.
I've tried half of these. They seem to be quite good, however, I prefer Tutorialsdojo practice exams because the questions are easier to understand and quite similar to the real exam. https://www.udemy.com/course/practice-exams-aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate/
7/ Practice exams from Neal Davis.
I've only tried 1-2 of them but they seem to be more difficult than the real exam. Might be good training but I decided I would be fine without taking all of them.
https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-practice-tests-k/
8/ Reddit Community AWS Certifications
Great community that shares tips and insights. Very friendly people that try to help each other!
reddit.com/r/AWSCertifications
9/ Exam Topics
So I am not 100% sure about the correctness of these example questions but some seem to be spot-on. Take this with caution because some solutions might be wrong!
https://examtopics.com/exams/amazon/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/view/
10/ AWS Whitepapers
AWS recommends going through these for the exam. However, I only had a quick glance at them and scored well anyway. But, if you are serious about AWS you should definitely read them.
aws.amazon.com/whitepapers
11/ Tutorialsdojo Cheat Sheets
Okay, these cheatsheets are one of a kind! All the info you need in a handy format. I've used these extensively and it was very much worth it!
tutorialsdojo.com/aws-cheat-sheets

Sorry but no. I only used 2 video courses to become AWS Solutions Architect Associate with no prior experience in AWS. Here are the resources:

1. https://learn.cantrill.io/p/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02

2. https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

You will spend $50 in total. And trust me, these are very good trainings.

I would heavily recommend some Udemy course. You can gain tons of time quickly, I did it, it was worth a million:

Go fast in both:

About general AWS: https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/ . For this one just focus on the main aws services they use: S3, EC2, RDS, ....

And this is the best I found about the IAM service: roles, policies, etc, a confusing topic: https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-security-specialty/

Go fast initially to get the whole picture, then you can reduce a bit the speed once you feel more comfortable. Just wait to have a good price offer, you can buy each for 12 pounds or so

congrats bro - any advise - my exam will be on 18th which is next 4 days

i also attend udemy - stephane marek https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/learn/lecture/17956610#overview

​

and the practice exam from jhon bonso https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-amazon-practice-exams-saa-c02/

​

any suggestion how should i prepare 3 days before this exam ? seems thiss one is my first attempt and i hope can pass this Thanks

The most popular enterprise cloud vendors are Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and AWS, .. And there are many others.

I believe AWS most popular world wide but also most expensive too .

Anyhow if you learned funfementsls one any of them you should be able to pickup the others easily.

If you interested in AWS there are many certificates to take SAA-C02 base line and usually people ignore CLF-C01, EXAMS costs 100, 150 and 300 dollars depending on level. And depending where you want to reach you can take more certs or at least study more services and products ( I belive there are 23 certs)

r/AWSCertifications can help you with your jureny with AWS.

Here there are live webinars typically around 4 hours or so, but it's never enough to get funfementsls.

Normally people buy either udemy courses, like this one aws Stephane 10 dollars now, but people argue this course geared towards the exam only, hence no practical knowledge.

This course is more comprehensive Cantrill it's like 40 dollars and 60+ hours

If you want learn GCP you can use coursesra also there are Azure courses, I belive there are free.

And if you want to learn cloud more efficiently, just have basic knowledge about network (osi model) and some encryption basics (RSA) maybe. Cantrill course cover these basics and I think networks funfementsls are free.

Good luck.

u/acantril he has his own courses. Besides that you can choose Stephane course as well. Below are two courses I mentioned:

https://learn.cantrill.io/p/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

I don't think certs matter for experienced full stack devs. But for junior devs, an AWS Solution Architect Associate cert will easily separate you from your competition and show companies you have a good all around understanding of a cloud platform and makes you very valuable for companies that use AWS.

Furthermore, studying for it will give you a big picture understanding of backend system architecture, being confident with AWS which you'll likely work with everyday as a webdev and as a result gives you knowledge to build more complex web projects. In my opinion it is the best crash course you can get for web technologies, as well as it's a practical way to prepare for system design style interviews which are becoming popular in western companies. Seriously just study for it and you'll eventually understand how helpful it is

For study resources, there's probably free youtube tutorials for it but I like Stephane Maarek's udemy courses like this. Wait for udemy sales, usually it's either selling at $9.99-13.99. Acloudguru is also highly recommended at forums like reddit but I never tried it.

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

I believe this is for the new test.

https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-amazon-practice-exams-saa-c02/

These are the practice test.

All the information / material to pass the test can be found in these two courses. Wait a little for them to be on sale and you can get them for very cheap.

There are free video courses on youtube that you can follow, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10JKpg-eqZU&list=PLt1SIbA8guuusDOIqQuiFKerF_4_nQ_Xs
however, since the videos are all over the place with a wide range of topics, it can be hard to know where to start as a beginner.

I recommend courses dedicated for the exam, like this one from tutorials Dojo:
https://portal.tutorialsdojo.com/courses/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-exam-video-course/

or this one from Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

​

Whatever path you may take, I suggest you allocate a fixed time per day (or per week) to study and be sure to stick to it. Just based from my experience :)

Good luck!

Sure, the abbreviations here were also a bit confusing to me when I first joined this sub:

Stephane Maarek's course on Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02

Neil Davis https://digitalcloud.training/

TD (Tutorials Dojo, also sometimes referred to as "Bonso practice exams") https://portal.tutorialsdojo.com/courses/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-practice-exams/

Passed AWS SAA C01 this afternoon

Did the At-Home Online Proctored exam. You must take a picture of yourself, your ID and your workstation setup (front, back, and both sides) The registration and setup took about 5 minutes from the time I hit "Begin"

I haven't received my score but the final screen showed "PASS". Looks like it could take up to 5 days to post the results, unsure if anyone else has done an Online Proctored but I'd like to know how long it took for the results to post.

Study time:

About 1 month, maybe less. I started everything June 6th.

Study Materials:

ExamPro.Co

• The Free version here AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate 2020 - Youtube
• Yes this will work for the C02 exam - but I decided to do c01
• Paid version with study notes and exam practice : https://www.exampro.co/
• I loved this FREE course so much I paid for the Study guide and exam practice from the site. Clear and concise on the explanations. No fluff! Helped me solidify my knowledge. I was able to go through the 10 hours free course in about 8 hours through 5-6 days after the family goes to sleep.
• I also went through this course again last night at 2x speed just to review and remember those small nuisances I forgot or mis-remembered in my study
• https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/
• I liked the in-depth tutorials and follow-alongs
• Very detailed and some of the questions of the exam were similar to the items he teaches that your need to remember as an architect

u/johnbonso

• https://tutorialsdojo.com/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/
• These will get you into the mindset; everyone knows this and these questions are SPOT on
• NO this is not a DUMP of exact questions - that's unethical
• BUT these questions are very similar to help you understand how to think through a question, use the things u/stephanemaarek talked about needing to remember in how to think like an architect and the simple understanding of the services in the ExamPro

My experience :

15 years in IT - help desk, level 2 desktop support. Admin for Linux, Windows, SCCM, Citrix, VMware, Cisco, F5 LTM, GTM, WAF, SSL/TLS certificate management, Windows Security

CISSP, CCNA

SA - which resource would you say is best to study?

I'm looking for resources to study for the SAA....I just passed the CCP yesterday, but overall, I wouldn't consider myself to have the most in depth understanding of a lot of IT concepts, so I'd want an ELI5 teaching approach that really breaks down the fundamentals...That being said, ....

It seems like most people are agreeing that Jon Bonso's exams are the best ( Home - Tutorials Dojo )

.....or, Stephane Maarek's ( Practice Exams | AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate | Udemy )

​

But, what study material do you think is the best?...Which gives you the most practice, rather than just video watching?

​

Adrian Cantill ( Homepage | learn.cantrill.io )

Stephane Maarek ( Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (SAA) | Udemy )

A Cloud Guru ( Dashboard - A Cloud Guru )

freeCodeCamp ( AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate 2020 (PASS THE EXAM!) - YouTube )

Udacity ( AWS Cloud Architect Online Course (udacity.com) )

CBT Nuggets ( AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate - SAA-C01 - SAA-C02 - AWS Certification Training | CBT Nuggets )