My AWS Certification Journey from 1 to 11

How did I first get into Technology and AWS?

As a child I always loved playing computer games back in the days when you had to load games via tape cassettes on the Amstrad CPC-464.

I was never particularly academic at school. After completing my GCSE's and quitting my A-Levels after a year; I went to college where I did a BTEC National Diploma in Computer Studies where I found my passion for IT.

After completing college, I got my first full-time job doing Desktop Support just prior to the dotcom era in the late 90’s. Following several internal moves within the company I found myself working more with Internet Technologies but in those days, virtualization was unheard of.

Having worked in the IT Industry since 1998, one thing that has been inevitable is that technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace. I’ve always taken a proactive approach to learning modern technologies as I believe you must continuously keep learning or you become stale and you’re no longer relevant within the industry.

One of those learning curves was the adoption of Cloud Technologies. Fast forward around 10 years, and I then started getting experience with a few different hypervisors such as Virtual Server, Hyper-V and VMware. The majority of my working career has been in the Managed Services arena and a key component of that is helping Clients deliver there strategic outcomes with technology being an enabler.

I’d read a lot about AWS but had never really learnt about it nor had I even used the platform since the company where I was working at the time hadn’t started adopting Public Cloud Services. However, I noticed that the pace of innovation on the AWS platform was gaining significant momentum year on year and thought about how my current role was going to evolve over the next few years. I took the decision to start focusing on the formal AWS Certifications in 2016.

What order did I tackle the exams?

Initially when I began studying for the certifications, there were only 5 in existence and they were the 3 Associates (Architect, Developer & SysOps Administrator) and the 2 Professionals (Architect & DevOps Engineer).

I began with Solution Architect Associate and actually failed the exam by probably a single question. At that stage there was no defined pass mark and AWS also used a bell curve to determine the pass/fail. E.g. 1 Day someone may score 70% and pass and the following day 70% may have been a fail. That being said, I resat the exam 2 weeks later and passed. Following that I then took the SysOps Administrator Associate and the Developer Associate with the next 4 weeks so had completed all 3 associate level exams within the space of a month.

Next I progressed on to the Solution Architect Professional which I spent approximately 6 months studying for by watching hours of AWS re:Invent videos on YouTube, reading the AWS Whitepapers and FAQ's for alot of the AWS Services. I successfully passed that exam on the last day of re:Invent in Las Vegas back in 2017.

AWS then released the Cloud Practitioner exam so I decided to go back and pick that one up which in my personal opinion is more suited to individuals that want to understand the AWS terminology and at a high level the different types of services offered within the platform. Around the same sort of timeline, AWS also began releasing the Specialty track for Certifications.

Following on from the release of the Specialty exams I tackled the Advanced Networking Specialty. I’d read a lot of blog posts around it being the toughest exam behind the Solution Architect Professional so saw it as a bit of challenge given I came from an Infrastructure background and not a Networking one.

Not long after passing the Advanced Networking exam I received an email from AWS Training & Certification advising that my SysOps Administrator and Developer Associate certifications were due to expire in 6 months and rather than have to re-sit both of those I decided to focus on the DevOps Engineer Professional next as to recertify those at the same time. This was at the time when the certifications had to be recertified every 2 years.

After successfully passing the DevOps Engineer Professional, I realised that there were only 2 more specialty exams left that I could take and so decided to pursue the Security Specialty. Security is always top of mind when I’m speaking with Clients and therefore thought this would provide more value in my role.

I did attempt the Big Data Specialty but in no uncertain terms, I crashed and burned on the result and stayed at 8 of the 9 available certifications for a several years. I never tried to reattempt the Big Data Specialty or even consider the Alexa Skill Specialty (both of which have subsequently been retired by AWS).

Moving forward to 2020, I recertified my Solution Architect Professional that then recertified the Solution Architect Associate and the Cloud Practitioner for another 3 years as the renewal requirements had been subsequently changed.

Then last year was renewal year for the rest of my certifications I had. Firstly, I renewed the Advanced Networking Specialty, followed by the DevOps Engineer Professional and then the Security Specialty but also renewing the SysOps Administrator Associate and Developer Associate as a result of the DevOps pass.

I was then due to work on a Client Project relating to Data Lakes and as my AWS knowledge and hands-on experience had increased massively from when I did the Big Data exam, I decided to study for the Data Analytics Specialty that was the sucessor for the Big Data Specialty in order to be more effective on my upcoming project. Again, I sucessfully passed the exam and from speaking with a few colleagues I was advised that there was a lot of overlap with the Database Specialty and therefore studied the varying material to brush up on my knowledge gaps and passed the exam at the first attempt.

Finally, with there only being a single exam left out of the available certifications I tackled the Machine Learning Specialty. Personally I found it the hardest of the lot as I have zero experience of Machine Learning or Data Science but at a high level knew the varying AWS Services relating to Machine Learning. One thing that is significantly different about that exam in comparison to the others was that it more about Machine Learning in the Industry, the different types of algorithms and there use cases.

Has getting Certifications helped advance my career?

Yes. Whilst certifications aren’t the be all and end all, they provide a level of differentiation especially when looking at changing roles be that internally or externally. THat being said though, experience is just as important.

I started in the industry at the bottom in IT and have worked my way up. When I first started back my first full time job back in 1998, I’d obtained my Microsoft MCSE on Windows NT 4 within 6 months, and that allowed me to progress through the varying support functions as I was seen as a Subject Matter Expert and this has continued throughout my career.

What resources did I use to study for those exams?

One thing that I'm an advocate for is to learn by doing although I appreciate thats not always possible. I’ve utilised a number of different resources across the years since starting on the AWS certification path but my current recommendations are:

• Cloud Practioner: AAWS Skill builder
• Solution Architect - Associate: Adrian Cantrill's Course on Teachable
• SysOps Administrator - Associate: Adrian Cantrill's Course on Teachable
• Developer - Associate: Adrian Cantrill's Course on Teachable
• Solution Architect - Professional: Adrian Cantrill's Course on Teachable
• DevOps Engineer - Professional: Adrian Cantrill's Course on Teachable
• Advanced Networing - Specialty: Adrian Cantrill's Course on Teachable
• Security - Specialty: Adrian Cantrill's Course on Teachable
• Data Analytics - Specialty: Stephane Maarek & Frank Kane's Course on Udemy
• Database - Specialty: Stephane Maarek & Riyaz Sayyad's Course on Udemy
• Machine Learning - Specialty: Mike Chambers (AWS Hero) Course on Teachable

Also there are a number of other great resources such as the AWS and AWS Events Channels on YouTube, AWS Stash, AWS Whitepapers, the AWS Documentation & FAQ's and last but not least Tutorials Dojo for some really good practice exams.

How do I balance work, training, and my personal life?

It can certainly be challenging to try and balance the three, but it requires discipline to come home after a long day at work and then focus on the study without watching any television or socialising. I also have an extremely understanding wife and an impressive set of noise cancelling headphones for when she’s not quite as understanding (only joking!) that block out any noise and distractions.

What is the best advice you have for someone else who is preparing for an AWS certification?

1. Understand what your objective is and create a plan to achieve it. Learn and understand the material as it'll be more valuable in your career than the certification itself.
2. Practice exams are invaluable as give you a good indication as to where your weak areas are as well as whether you can handle the time allowance. If you’re not sure about something, research the subject until you feel confident about it and practice playing around with it until it becomes second nature.
3. Don't be afraid to ask questions if you're unsure on something or don't understand a specific area. There are no stupid questions in my opinion as at some point in our career we've all been in a similar position of starting from no knowledge. TechStudySlack is a great place to ask questions and is completely free as is the AWS Certified Global Community.
4. For Professional and Specialty exams, a key skill is question technique. What I mean is being able to pick out the key points from the both the questions and the answers to understand what is being asked.
5. This one may not be applicable to everyone, but its an approach I've used throughout the years not just with AWS exams but others vendors too. I look to understand the total number of questions in the exam and the passing score e.g., 75 Questions and 75% pass mark. In that case I work on the basis of aiming for a minimum of an 80% pass mark so that there is some flexibility. Doing some simple maths 80% of 75 Questions means I'd need to get 60 questions correct to achieve that 80% pass mark. If I've marked more than 15 questions during the exam process, I spend significantly more time reviewing those questions than I would if I'd marked less for review. Note: I only do that because there are no bonuses for getting 100% on an exam over an exact passing score.

What certification am I planning next?

Well as AWS released the SAP on AWS Specialty earlier in the year, I'm going to be aiming for that. I've not seen much available training for it other than on Cloud Academy so am planning on utilising that. Other than that, I need to recertify the Solution Architect Associate and Professional exams both in 2023.

I hope this helps anyone else on there journey. Happy Learning!