🤩How I prepared for AWS Solutions Architect Professional (SAP-C02) Exam

Passing the AWS Solutions Architect Professional exam was one of the most challenging yet rewarding experiences in my cloud journey ✈️ ☁️ . This truly pushed me to deepen my understanding of AWS services and architectures. Throughout this journey, I leveraged a variety of resources and hands-on experiences that helped me succeed. I’ll share here the study materials, strategies, and tips that helped me pass the exam, along with my thoughts on why real-world experience is crucial for success 😉.

Why Take the AWS Solutions Architect Professional Exam❓

The AWS Solutions Architect Professional exam is a highly valued certification in the cloud industry, and here are several reasons why pursuing this certification can be beneficial:

1. Validates Advanced AWS Knowledge 🧑‍🔧

This certification is an excellent way to showcase your deep expertise in designing scalable, fault-tolerant, and cost-efficient systems on AWS. It goes beyond the fundamentals, testing your ability to solve complex architectural challenges using multiple AWS services.

2. Distinguishes You as a Cloud Expert 👩‍🔬

For those seeking a career in cloud architecture, this certification demonstrates to employers that you possess both broad and in-depth knowledge of the AWS ecosystem, making you a valuable asset for architecting solutions for enterprises. You'll feel more confident working on enterprise-level architectures, designing solutions that incorporate multiple services, high availability, disaster recovery, and security best practices.

3. Prepares You for Real-World Scenarios 🏃‍♀️

The exam focuses on solving use-case-based scenarios that mirror the challenges you might face in the real world. You’re not just tested on individual services but rather on how to combine services effectively to meet specific business needs.

4. Opens Up Career Opportunities 🧑‍🚀

As cloud adoption grows, so does the demand for cloud architects with advanced knowledge. Earning this certification can help unlock career growth opportunities and tt is especially relevant for senior-level positions like Cloud Architect, DevOps Engineer, and Cloud Solutions Consultant.

5. Proves Mastery of AWS Best Practices 🏋️

AWS puts a strong emphasis on best practices, scalability, cost optimization, and security in its exam questions. This certification validates that you understand not just how to use services, but how to design architectures that are in line with AWS best practices.

6. Endless Learning Opportunity 🚴

Pursuing this certification also exposes you to new services and features that AWS continuously rolls out. In my preparation, I encountered services and use cases I hadn’t worked with before, which expanded my knowledge base and prepared me to design better solutions for future projects.

So now that you already aware the benefits of taking this exam, I will now give you a deeper insight to my study resources.

My Study Resources 📚

To prepare for the exam, I used a combination of online courses, practice exams, AWS whitepapers, and hands-on experience. I invested my time around 10 hr/week and did 2 month preparation for the exam.
Here’s a breakdown of the resources I used:

1. Stephane Maarek’s Course (Udemy)
Stephane’s course was my main guide for preparing specifically for the exam. His content is structured to mirror the domains of the AWS Solutions Architect Professional certification. His course and practice exams gives you excellent coverage of the required topics.

2. Adrian Cantrill’s Course
While Stephane’s course is great for exam-focused preparation, Adrian Cantrill’s course provided deeper insights into AWS services. Adrian’s content goes beyond exam requirements, explaining the architecture and intricacies of AWS services, giving you an edge in understanding how AWS services work.

3. Jon Bonso’s Practice Exams (Tutorials Dojo)
Jon Bonso’s practice exams are invaluable. They are extremely similar to the actual AWS exam in terms of question style, difficulty, and structure. I used both Jon’s and Stephane’s practice exams, which helped build my confidence for exam day.

4. AWS Skill Builder
AWS offers its own set of practice exams through AWS Skill Builder, which gave me the chance to validate whether I was ready. The questions are similar to what you can expect in the actual exam and give a good feel for how well-prepared you are.

5. AWS Whitepapers
AWS whitepapers were a key resource for best practices. They helped me deepen my understanding of AWS architectural frameworks and gave insight into cost optimization, security, and scalability strategies. The whitepapers that I found particularly useful included the Well-Architected Framework, Security Best Practices, and High Availability Architectures.

6. Do some hands-on project
The more you work on real projects, the easier it will be to understand the scenarios and architectural challenges presented in the exam. Spin up your own projects on AWS Account or participate in client projects if possible.

AWS Services Covered in the Exam ⏳

The AWS Solutions Architect Professional exam covers a vast array of services, with questions that typically combine at least three services in one use case. The exam tests not only your knowledge of services but also your ability to apply them in various real-world scenarios.

Many of the exam questions present real-world scenarios where you need to identify the best architecture or AWS service to meet the specific requirements (e.g., scalability, cost-efficiency, security, or disaster recovery). For instance, a question might ask how to implement a highly available and fault-tolerant architecture across multiple AWS regions using services like S3, Route 53, and CloudFront.

Here’s an overview of some of the key services that appeared in the exam:

1. Compute:
EC2 ,Lambda, Elastic Beanstalk

2. Containers & Orchestration:
ECS, EKS, AWS Fargate, ECR

3. Storage:
S3, EFS, EBS, Amazon FSx, Amazon Glacier

4. Networking:
VPC, AWS Transit Gateway, Direct Connect and VPN, API Gateway (how to secure these resources).

5. Security & Identity:
IAM, AWS Organizations, Service Control Policies (SCPs), AWS SSO, Cross-Account Roles, AWS Managed AD, KMS (key policy), System Manager (Parameter Store, Session Manager, Automation, Run Command), ACM

6. DevOps Tools:
CodeBuild, CodePipeline ,CodeDeploy

7. Data Services:
Amazon RDS, DynamoDB, Redshift, Athena, Amazon ElastiCache (Redis), Amazon Neptune

8. Content Delivery & Analytics:
CloudFront, QuickSight, Amazon WorkSpaces

9.Monitoring and Notification Services:
Cloudwatch, CloudTrail (Organization), SNS, Eventbridge Rules, AWS Config

10. High Availability & Disaster Recovery:
Route 53, Elastic Load Balancers (Application Load Balancer and Network Load Balancer), Auto Scaling, AWS Backup

Hands-On Experience is a must and critical

While courses and practice exams are important, the most valuable part of my preparation came from hands-on experience.

Here’s why hands-on experience matters: 🏅 🏅

• Context & Problem-Solving: In the exam, most questions revolve around real-world scenarios. Having worked on AWS implementations, I was able to draw from my experience to solve complex questions on topics like hybrid architectures, scalability, and high availability.

• Service Limitations: Some AWS services have limitations that aren’t obvious from reading the documentation. Only by using these services in real-world projects do you truly understand how they behave under different conditions.

• Design Trade-offs: Working on projects helped me better understand how to make trade-offs in architectural designs. The exam often presents several valid solutions, and your experience helps you choose the best one based on performance, cost, and scalability considerations.

Final Tips for Preparing for the AWS Solutions Architect Professional Exam

1. Start with Courses, But Don’t Rely Only on Them: Courses like Stephane Maarek’s will give you a strong foundation, but don’t stop there. Dive deeper into services and AWS best practices.

2. Do More Hands-On Labs: The more you work on real projects, the easier it will be to understand the scenarios and architectural challenges presented in the exam. Spin up your own projects on AWS or participate in client projects if possible.

3. Take Practice Exams: Jon Bonso’s and Stephane’s practice exams are fantastic for testing your knowledge. Don’t just take them once—review your mistakes and learn from them. AWS’s official practice exams are also a great way to measure your readiness.

4. Focus on Domain Mastery: The AWS Solutions Architect Professional exam covers a wide range of topics. The exam domains include:

   • Design for Organizational Complexity
   • Design for New Solutions
   • Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions
   • Accelerate Workload Migration and Modernization

5. Review Exam Readiness on AWS Skill Builder: AWS’s Skill Builder platform offers exam readiness courses and practice exams that are valuable in fine-tuning your understanding and confidence before the actual test.

My Final Thoughts 🎯

Getting certified is not just about passing an exam—it’s about taking a leap in your cloud journey and gaining a deep understanding of how to design complex, scalable, and secure architectures using AWS.

However, remember that certifications are just one part of the equation. Hands-on experience is what truly pushes your learning curve. Working on real-world projects not only prepares you for the exam but also gives you insights into how AWS services behave, their limitations, and best use cases. Through hands-on experience, you’ll develop a deeper understanding of architectural trade-offs, service integrations, and how to meet the needs of diverse business scenarios.

So, I encourage you to take on this certification challenge, but don’t stop there. Get your hands dirty, dive into projects, and continuously apply what you’ve learned. Have fun and good luck on your cloud journey! 👍 👍 👏