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AWS Certified: Solutions Architect Challenge (Free Training & 50% off of AWS Architect Associate Exam) @ AWS Cloud

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I came across this, a free learning with live sessions, webinars, videos and all resources. Started in June, but the live webinars starts from Today (PT Time). Register ASAP if interested to become a Solution Architect in AWS.

REGISTRATION
EXAM VOUCHER
EXAM GUIDE
RESOURCES
Live Episodes — Covers High Performing Architectures, Security, Cost and miscellaneous

Complete the study challenge and take 50% off the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02) exam with voucher code. Exam should be booked before November 2021 but should be taken before December 2021 (There are dates given, please refer to the terms and conditions). EXAM VOUCHER WILL BE EMAILED WITHIN 7 days AFTER YOU REQUEST FOR VOUCHER.

NEED BUSINESS EMAIL as mentioned in the links.

This is a Pearson exam.

You will receive a confirmation email immediately after registration and there will be a link to request for voucher, links to resources/agenda/calendar.

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closed Comments

  • If I complete this course, will I get a payrise??

    • +17

      If I were your boss too, I would give you a payrise

    • +13

      If you want a pay rise, you need to find another job and negotiate to stay :-)

      • +1

        Should I bring a gun to these negotiations?

        • -1

          Guns have been banned by Howard in 1996….

    • +4

      No, I have that piece of paper (well, it is actually digital nowadays), no pay rise. Other team members also have this cert. No pay rise for them either.

      One ex-colleague did find a new job elsewhere after getting the certification.

      It's a helpful certification I guess. AWS has too may products so you don't need to know everything in depth. Honestly, it just gives you the fundamental knowledge.

    • +3

      Getting the cert by itself..Not much / nothing.

      Doing something with the knowledge you have gained, and working hard to create something great.. Yes, you will do alright out of it

    • +1

      You can use it to negotiate as it can benefit your partnership agreement with AWS if you leave etc.

    • Will you get a pay rise? …….
      Computer says, No!
      Well, do you even work in IT?

      • No I'm an accountant by trade, but happy to upskill myself and jump ship to a more lucrative job

    • +1

      I kept getting fascinated by people's mindset of getting payrise instead of asking for it or asking for it from the boss instead of from the market.

      If you are the boss, you will find this is the kind of stuff you want to keep, as this guy has no idea about his market value and will be happy to stay with little or no pay rise.

      Please think reversely, and act accordingly.

      • I think it's good for people to look at the market for a pay rise.

        If I were the boss I would give a pay rise to employee who put in the good work, at the end of the day, you want to motivate them to stay.

    • You might be able to quit and get a better paying job with a better employer ..

  • +2

    I would assume prior programming knowledge is needed?

    • +3

      Nope, SA Associate (and Pro) doesn't require any programming knowledge. It's more service and infrastructure-related.

      • +1

        Now thats what I like to hear, cheers.

    • (per the exam guide linked by the OP)


      Recommended AWS knowledge

      The target candidate should have the following knowledge:

      • Hands-on experience using compute, networking, storage, management, and database AWS
        services
      • The ability to identify and define technical requirements for a solution that involves AWS
        technology
      • The ability to identify which AWS services meet a given technical requirement
      • An understanding of best practices for building well-architected solutions on AWS
      • An understanding of the AWS global infrastructure
      • An understanding of AWS security services and features in relation to traditional services
  • +12

    Usual cost = USD 150
    With this voucher = USD 75
    - genuine bargain

    • +2

      Tax deductible too.

      • +2

        Only if you work in IT, correct?

        • +2

          Is it worthwhile doing for someone not in IT?
          This is a relatively straightforward exam for people in IT (especially if you use AWS at work). Dunno, perhaps it is also easy for people not in IT.

          If you don't pass the exam, you basically wasted $75 USD.

          • +3

            @netsurfer: I'm not in IT but I've got an interest in this sort of stuff.

            I'm planning to go through all the material and check it out, if it does end up being too difficult then I simply just won't buy the voucher.

            Something good to have under your belt imo for career prospects if it interests you.

            • @mangobango: 100% the right attitude here mangobango. if you want to enter this field then highly recommend

            • +2

              @mangobango: Have a quick look at the sample questions. You can get a feel of what this certification is about.

              https://d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-sa-…

              The actual exam is slightly harder than the sample questions. By the time you are ready for the exam, you must be able to answer these sample questions correctly with ease.

              It's actually real AWS work experience that matters more. When you look at some of the online training videos for these certification exams, they are mostly for you to know enough to pass the exam. In real work situation, you don't implement them that way. The AWS course would be more real life like I reckon.

        • +2

          Yes, per ATO:

          The course must have a sufficient connection to your current employment activities as an employee and either:

          • maintains or improves the specific skills or knowledge you require in your current employment activities
          • results in or is likely to result in, an increase in your income from your current employment activities.

          You can't claim a deduction for self-education and study expenses for a course that:

          • doesn't have a sufficient connection to your current work activities
          • only relates in a general way to your current employment – such as undertaking a full-time fashion photography course and working as a casual sales assistant on the weekends
          • enables you to get new employment or change employment – such as moving from employment as a nurse to employment as a doctor.
          • +1

            @moar bargains: Yep thought so, thanks for that!

            • +2

              @mangobango: No worries :) I looked into this stuff extensively over the last few years, so always nice to have someone give an easy answer :)

  • +1

    Good Post, Good Man!

  • amazon logo?

    • +3

      Yes, what was the question?

      • -1

        Is that the Amazon logo?

        [ ] yes
        [ ] no

    • +4

      Do you reckon cause its Amazon Web Services?

  • Great, I was thinking of doing something like this! Thanks!

  • +1

    thanks OP, no brainer bargain if you are in IT.

  • Thanks OP, always wanted to get into programming (used to do some game making courses on Udemy), and this seems like a great opportunity.

  • Thanks for this! Gives me more motivation to start studying for the certification since I'll be aiming to do the exam before December 4th (with 50% off).

  • Thanks OP

  • solid first post, registered thank you!

  • Thanks, great timing. I'm currently doing the Udemy AWC CSA Associate & have queued up Professional from this deal: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/634241

  • +2

    That's some really good one. Anyone thinking creating a discord for this as a study group would be some good idea? I'm based in Sydney.

    • +3

      Try this one https://techstudyslack.com/

      Run by one of the more popular aws training course providers

      Relatively active but not massively so considering there's 20k people in there. Generally get an answer from the course provider or someone else

      Would be keen to hear of any others people have tried

  • Was just about to book. Nice 50% discount. Thanks, OP!

    • I booked mine a week before I saw the deal. Talk about spewing!

      Still registered in case I don't pass first time tho

      • +1

        Make sure you pass the first time. $150 USD is still way better than $150 USD + $75 USD (i.e. $225 USD).

        • Yeah 100%, fingers crossed

  • Just a heads up, you got to register for the course first then the voucher.

    Voucher apparently takes 3-5 days to arrive but some including me haven't received the voucher well after that. Apparently support can send them straight away but I haven't contacted them yet

  • Out of curiosity, how many people actually use the course and then get certified after having enrolled in such courses.

  • thanks, OP

  • For AWS certification exams, you are watched by someone (through a webcam) for the entire exam. Hands above the table so that person can see them. No toilet break allowed. 1 piece of blank paper and a pen is allowed (like all other cert exams). You know whether you passed or failed at the end of the exam, but the full detail report won't be available until a few days later.

    • +1

      I would visit an exam centre for peace of mind.

  • +1

    you also get 50% IF you have passed an exam so in this case the cloud practioner

  • can we just register for "EXAM VOUCHER:" ?

  • Has anyone done this? What is the level of effort needed to get this cert credential? Been working with AWS on the periphery and have used S3 often.

    Also I see that AWS has "tiers" to their certs. Is this like an entry level cert or is it a stand-alone one? Cheers.

    • +2

      AWS certification path diagram:
      https://reviewnprep.com/assets/web/assets/images/AWS%20Certi…

      There is Cloud Practitioner certification. However, you don't have to do that one in order to take this certification.

      Have a look at the sample questions for this cert to get a feel:
      https://d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-sa-…

      Like I mentioned earlier, the actual exam is slightly harder than the sample questions. Having AWS work experience definitely helps a lot. This exam has the breadth, but doesn't really test you each topic in depth. However, you probably will see a question or two which are actually quite in depth (just to remind you that this is an associate exam, so they are not testing you with the hard questions).

      It does help you get a good general understanding of key AWS products (as most people don't get to work on all the products listed in the exam). In your case, S3, CloudFront part should be a walk in the park for you.

      • Thanks will check it out.

  • +7

    I recently did this cert. Some comments:
    • I've 25 years experience in IT, and have been using AWS since its inception. Even so, doing this will require some preparation.
    • The cert is mainly about familiarity with what AWS services are and how they fit together, focusing on price and performance tradeoffs. AWS has 200 services; the exam doesn't cover them all but it covers a hell of a lot of them.
    • My background is in software development. There's bugger-all of that in this cert. They want you to know about all their storage and database products, VPN, VPC, snowball, glacier, lifecycles and so on. Not how to use them, but know all about what they are for and what they can do. But it's not going to harm your job prospects at all.
    • When I posted on LinkedIn that I'd got my certification, I immediately received job offers, but they were from people I already knew (i.e. probably based less on this cert and more on their familiarity with me).
    • 50% off the exam on its own is a good deal. This sounds great, (disclaimer: I'm not familiar with this training provider at all)
    • Doing the course and exam should be useful if you will be architecting a full solution on AWS. But to get it all running you'll need much more besides.

    • +2

      They want you to know about all their storage and database products, VPN, VPC, snowball, glacier, lifecycles and so on. Not how to use them, but know all about what they are for and what they can do. But it's not going to harm your job prospects at all.

      From the way you phrased it, it sounds like I'm paying to be their salesman? Even with Microsoft products, I learn how to use it, and not just about it.

      • +1

        For this certification, there is a bit of that. If you are an AWS "architect", you need to know how to sell AWS to your client / company. Architects don't need to know the full implementation, but needs to have all round knowledge of what are available and how to glue them together.

        There is a different path for developers:

        https://reviewnprep.com/assets/web/assets/images/AWS%20Certi…

        The role of the developers is evolving though. As a dev, I am finding that I need to do a lot more AWS setup and with Fargate, ECS and EKS, there is more than just pure dev nowadays. I know a lot of organisations don't use Beanstalk and my org has moved away from Beanstalk long time ago. However, knowing the full picture is very helpful. It also depends on the organisations. For example, in mine, EKS, ECS (Fargate), VPC, subnets, Route53, EC2, LB, KMS are all considered fundamentals. Developers are now doing CDK (though we still use CloudFormation a lot) so you do need to have the all round knowledge.

        The exam I had asked me how to do Beanstalk autoscaling with CPU % reaching a certain level, that is not a superficial question. Honestly, this exam isn't that hard but AWS certainly throws in a couple of question in there to remind you that this is only an associate exam.

        • This is the reason why i refuse to do this cert. I don't want to be in the same bucket as those "Architects". I have way too many of these architects in my current role, all they do is talking and making diagram. And their "designs" can be googled in few keystrokes. Call me stubborn, but i rather specialise in a particular stack

          • @od810: Don't underestimate those "architects". Some of them were ex-tech leads. The good ones are very switched on and they design solutions and review documents really fast. Some review code from developers and even do some actual development (new patterns / templates). Yes, I know some average ones as well.

            I know some developers find the developer associate easier. Obviously, do the ones which are useful to you first. Honestly, these associate exams aren't hard.

            • @netsurfer: Oh don't get me wrong, there are good ones and I really appreciate working with good ones. I feel very underwhelmed by most of the architects i have met.

  • +2

    3 years back we had one folk with 8x AWS certs (pro included) joined our team. My impression was either this guy is bookish (not much useful tbh) or really is very talented. Turns out he had some really good experience and THE best I can ever vouch for. He gained through real experience.

    (Kind of) now a days, I have been actively recruiting within cloud space. Over 1000s of resumes from across globe. Most have certs but not good exposure. To me, that’s a wasted opportunity. I am not saying certs don’t add value. However be prepared to justify during interviews what those cloud things mean.
    While I personally felt these guys were not upto their own resumes, thus rejected many.

    The ones I offered, I made sure they are getting worth their values. Often offering several grands more than what they asked.

    So getting certified is good. Getting real exposure (or to the deep level of understanding of services) would be the deciding factor. For ur next job or how many grands more you get from anywhere.

    • +4

      I'm all about those grands.

      When recruiting and processing 1000's of candidates, do you ever consider basic English skills?

  • +1

    This is great as I'm currently preparing for the exam.
    There's an excellent youtube video for studying this. https://youtu.be/Ia-UEYYR44s Free is the best thing for ozbargin!

    I'm preparing with Neal's practice exam. I've already used it for AWS practitioner exam and I found it really useful.
    https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/634241
    (Discount is already expired but watch out. it is sometimes discounted. Otherwise, singing up with an India IP address gives cheaper price on udemy. )

    • Nice tips regarding youtube video and Indian IP.

    • You can take official practice exams here:
      https://www.aws.training/certification?src=cert-prep

      Link to the official (free) course:
      https://www.aws.training/Details/Curriculum?id=20685

    • +2

      Bear in mind that you are looking at the training video for the 2020 exam. There are additional topics in the 2021 exam.
      Furthermore, there is luck involved when it comes to Beanstalk questions. You might get 0 or 1. I had 3, with one of them asking how to setup auto scaling on Beanstalk when CPU usage on instances go above 80%. So, it is a gamble you need to take, if you simply do the bear minimum for topics which most people think won't appear in the exam. Using training videos for older versions of the exam means you would skip / miss out on some newer topics.

      You probably can still pass with that, but don't be surprised when Fargate, ECS and EKS questions pop up and harder Beanstalk questions you simply have not prepared.

      • I am actually going to give the exam next month, I was going to give the exam lasy year but kept on rescheduling because I was lazy. I am listening to 2020 course from acloudguru and I am worried that some things might have changed in the exam now.

        • @BuyOrNot https://youtu.be/ioxDbQ755fI This youtube might help to catch up with the latest exam information. In my case, I'm practicing with the latest version of practice exams on udemy.

    • I clicked one of them and it said it's $14.99 at the moment, I assume the rest/most of them are also on sale too.

      $4 more than that deal but still the usual udemy discount :)

  • +1

    How long did this take for those that have done it before?

  • +1

    I hold CLF-C01, CSA-C02, and SOA-C01. If you don't have previous experience with the AWS ecosystem and try to do the CSA exam, you will struggle. It expects a pretty deep understanding of the services, and how they interconnect. The professional level version of CSA is actually one of the hardest in the industry.

    I did a 4 day cram sesh, and smashed all three exams, however I've also been working in AWS for ~5 years or so.

    • What would you recommend as a step lower than this?

      • There is generally not much point doing a certification where you don't have the work experience or won't be working on it. The only exception is that you are really interested in AWS and really want to get into this area.

        What you want to get out of this certification is how all these AWS products work together. If you ended up understanding them as individual silos, then you don't actually get that much out of it. Generally, a good solution architect have good holistic understanding of various technologies. Some architects were senior developers or leads who have really solid understanding of technologies.

        The certification itself doesn't mean much. Without real experience, it is just an icon you could put in your CV or a piece of certificate you could print out. If you are good at AWS, people know, you don't need certificate(s) to prove it.

        AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner is the base level. However, for that one, it is best that your company funds you to go to a course, which will likely include a voucher to do that exam. If you are a techie, best to skip that one and go for this one.

      • the CLF-C01 exam/certification is designed to teach/prove basic concepts and overall knowledge of what AWS is, what the benefits are, and some of the services available. It's designed as a fundamental level cert. Recommend if you want some exposure.

    • +1

      It's much easier if you have real AWS work experience. It's the same for all certifications (if you have real work experience, then exams are easy). The difference is that with experience, you actually understand the exam topics or have done them before so you don't need to memorise them.

      Non-AWS experience can help too. For example, if you are a network admin, then VPC, subnets, Internet gateway, NAT gateways, NACLs, DNS (Route53) are all basics to you - because you setup those on physical networks before. No matter how the questions are worded, you simply know Internet gateway and NAT gateway so well that you won't get confused. The network scenarios the exam asks you are not complicated. DevOps engineers have an even bigger advantage in this exam.

  • Thank you Op!

  • +1

    All the Live sessions are happening midnight. Any kind soul can advise if these recorded sessions can be seen in Melbourne time ?

    Thanks

    • +1

      For each session there are two times: Choose the Twitch episode - 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm PT
      (the one on the right, and that translates to 9:00am sydney time.

      Note the date, usually 5 days or so after the first midnight session.

    • +2

      hey mate, you can watch the replays after. First episode was here:

      https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1084364641?filter=archives&sort…

      • +1

        Many thanks for that

  • AWS is the past, Snowflake is the future. Don’t sign up the wrong course😂

    • Do you even understand what Snowflake it? It is a multicloud data cloud platform (including cloud data warehouse) solution that works with any major cloud provider like AWS or Azure. A better comparison would have been Snowflake vs Google BigQuery vs AWS Redshift, although they are not exactly the same.
      What I am saying is, that each has its place, as AWS is the IaaS on which you can host Snowflake.

  • There is free practice exam from AWS official site.
    https://pages.awscloud.com/Globa_traincert_Get_AWS_Certified…
    I remember that usually costs $20 or so.

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