Guide and Tips for AWS Certifications
AWS Certification Path for Data Professionals
Sections
- Intro
- Certifications
- AWS Practitioner
- AWS Data Analytics Specialty
- AWS Machine Learning Specialty
- Others certifications
- Some Tips
Intro
Nowadays, many companies are migrating from their on-premise stations to the cloud. As such, AWS has become one of the main and most adopted cloud providers followed by Azure and GCP.
Therefore getting an AWS Certification can lead you to new and sometimes better job opportunities.
For the most part in AWS certifications, you don't need to follow a particular order. The exceptions are AWS Professional Architect and AWS Professional DevOps Engineer.
I had some experience taking AWS Certifications. I had gotten certifications in AWS Developer Associate and AWS Machine Learning Specialty nd plan to get more in the near future.
Here I will list some certifications that AWS offers related to Data Professionals are taking and later some tips that I think may help you during this journey.
Certifications
AWS Practitioner
Cloud Practitioner
About: This is a starter point for all AWS certifications, a more general certification. Although this isn't a certification focus in Data, it is important for those who want to know more about cloud fundamentals. This credential helps organizations identify and develop talent with critical knowledge related to implementing cloud initiatives. Earning AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner validates cloud fluency and foundational AWS knowledge.
Price: 100 USD
Sections:
| Domain | % of Exam |
|---|---|
| Domain 1: Cloud Concepts | 26% |
| Domain 2: Security and Compliance | 25% |
| Domain 3: Technology | 33% |
| Domain 4: Billing and Pricing | 16% |
| Total | 100% |
Main Services: EC2, IAM, RDS, Lambda, S3, Route 53
Courses:
[NEW] Ultimate AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - 2022
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Practice Exams
AWS Data Analytics Specialty
AWS Data Analytics Specialty
About: This certification is more suitable for Data Engineers. This credential helps organizations identify and develop talent with critical skills for implementing cloud initiatives. Earning AWS Certified Data Analytics - Specialty validates expertise in using AWS data lakes and analytics services to get insights from data.
Price: 300 USD
Sections
| Domain | % of Exam |
|---|---|
| 1. Collection | 18% |
| 2. Storage | 22% |
| 3. Processing | 24% |
| 4. Analysis and Visualization | 18% |
| 5. Security | 18% |
| Total | 100% |
Main Services: Kinesis, Athena, Redshift, EMR, Glue, Lambda, Step Functions, S3, DynamoDB, QuickSight
Courses
AWS Certified Data Analytics Specialty 2022 - Hands On!
AWS Certified Data Analytics Specialty Practice Exams
AWS Machine Learning Specialty
AWS Machine Learning Specialty
About: This certification is more suitable for Data Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers. This credential helps organizations identify and develop talent with critical skills for implementing cloud initiatives. Earning AWS Certified Machine Learning - Specialty validates expertise in building, training, tuning, and deploying machine learning (ML) models on AWS.
Price: 300 USD
Sections
| Domain | % of Exam |
|---|---|
| 1. Data Engineering | 20% |
| 2. Data Analysis | 24% |
| 3. Modelling | 36% |
| 4. Machine Learning Implementation and Operations | 20% |
| Total | 100% |
Some AWS Services for this exam are: Sagemaker, S3, Glue and EMR. Be aware that you need some previous knowledge how machine learning works (building, training, tuning, validation, deployment).
Courses
AWS Certified Machine Learning Specialty 2022 - Hands On!
AWS Certified Machine Learning Specialty Practice Exams
Others certifications:
Other certifications that I would recommend are AWS Developer and AWS Solutions Architecture.
AWS Developer is a certification that helps organizations identify and develop talent with critical skills for implementing cloud initiatives. Earning AWS Certified Developer - Associate validates the ability to write and deploy cloud-based applications
AWS Solutions Architeture is a certification that helps organizations identify and develop talent with critical skills for implementing cloud initiatives. Earning AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate validates the ability to design and implement distributed systems on AWS.
You can look more certification in AWS Certification Portal Page.
Some Tips
- Read the Certification Exam Guide.
- Watch and take notes from the Udemy courses. Other great source is AWS Training and reading AWS Whitepapers.
- Create a AWS Account.
- if it is first time using an AWS account look for free tiers and for services that you can use free in the first months.
- Pratice with some of AWS Services. Be careful with the time spent and computation it can become very expensive if you leave it running.
- Do some mock tests. Like from Dojo Test and AWS Samples Tests.
- Register your certification.
- You can do it online or in a registered center . There you can choose which exam you would like to do and also the date and time slot. In most of AWS Certifications exam you have more or less 3 hours to complete. And most of them are composed by 65 to 70 multiple choice questions.
- Create an AWS Account.
- If it is the first time using an AWS account , you should look for free tiers and services that you can use free in the first months.
- Practice with some of AWS Services. Be careful with the time spent and computation can become very expensive if you leave it running.
- Do and redo some mock tests. Like from Dojo Test and AWS Samples Tests. Some similar questions may be on your exam.
- Register your certification. You can do it online or in a registered center. There you can choose which exam you would like to take and the date and time slot.
- In most AWS Certifications exams you have more or less 3 hours to complete.
- And most of them are composed of 65 to 70 multiple-choice questions.
- To pass you should get a mark greater than 75%.
- If English isn't your first language, you can apply for an additional 30 min for your exam.
- If you already have an AWS certification, you can use a promotion code and pay 50% less for your next exam certification.
3 days previous exam date:
- Be sure that you know everything that will be in your exam test.
- It is a good idea to redo a Mock test. And check if the grade is good enough to pass the exam. If not, you should consider rescheduling it.
- Be careful that you cannot reschedule it if you have less than 48 hours before the exam.
- If you are doing it online, it's a good idea to test your connectivity and exam software. Make sure everything is properly fine.
- If you are doing it in a test center, you should check how to go there.
Before the exam:
- Review everything you need to know to be successful in this exam.
- Connect to your exam time slot early. Clean your workstation. There will be a proctor watching you. Make sure your computer notifications are off and your internet speed is good.
- Be calm and everything will be fine. Good Luck!!
You can follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andre-yai/
References
[NEW] Ultimate AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - 2022
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Practice Exams
AWS Certified Data Analytics Specialty 2022 - Hands On!
AWS Certified Data Analytics Specialty Practice Exams
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