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Weder Sousa
Weder Sousa

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How to pass AWS Certifications, an approach to creating a base of studies

When I started studying for AWS certification, it was a strange and new moment, as most of the times we start a new study to understand something within our training area, but at that moment I found several materials and also some tips on several websites and also reading the AWS documentation which is excellent, but as we know, knowing what each service does is a start, but knowing how to do it is what really matters.

So I started to study to find out which services AWS has, and you are faced with hundreds that still talk to each other, making the understanding process even a little more complex, and you need something to interconnect all these services within one specific architecture, then when you are familiarizing yourself with the gallery (aws services), a cloudformation and another external one called terraform appears and gives you other ways to create services and which is super cool.

So I decided to invest in taking the first AWS certification, as I like to develop, I went straight to the AWS Certified Developer Associate (DVA-C01), and I passed on the first attempt, but I am one of those people who really like to learn, not just take a certification by memorizing the issues, and this takes time and willingness.

At that moment I understood another point that everything in the certification and how much each service will be deepened, so I started to create repositories with all the services I needed, for the certification, at that moment I was looking for skills in each one, so I created my first repository https: //github.com/weder96/AWS-Certified-Cloud-Practitioner-Foundational, the idea was to unite all the content I found on internet and tips to make my learning faster and easier.

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Then, when I saw it, I had already created the second an aggregator, with the function of having all the contents, separated by areas that are defined by AWS, so I created https://github.com/weder96/aws-certification-learning.

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It is divided by modules.

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Each module, by session where it has its divisions within the modules,definitions, Cheat Sheets, References, Videos and Hands On, with studied links for each subject.

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But something was standard in all of them, evaluating the Exam Guide, which I left added to each github repository that was for that certification, another was studying with Stephane Maarek's, on Udemy, the cost benefit is scary, with it you develop skills, and also read the contents of Tutorials Dojo's with Jon Bonso and Digtal Cloud with Neal Davis, remembering here that the practical questions with Neal Davis and Jon Bonson and Stephane Maarek's, already raises your level up there.

There are also AWS trainings that can be explored, which is explore.skillbuilder.aws, and it has excellent free courses, to help you, aws also has workshops.aws , which has several labs that help you as a tutorial to develop something, in addition to having the difficulty levels of each lab.

Another point was getting skills doing concept tests or labs, whizlabs, which helps you a lot to understand how the services relate, with monitoring, and integrations, but the skills it has to be added to understanding how the questions are collected, how each subject falls into the exam, then you have to answer questionnaires until you reach between 80% and 90%, or until you feel that you are ready to try to take the exam, that you are studying.

I am currently working on 3 Repositories for the exams:

AWS-Certified-Cloud-Practitioner-Foundational

AWS-Certified-Developer-Associate-DVA-C01

AWS-Certified-Solutions-Architect-Associate-SAA-C03

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In the latter, which is the AWS Certified Solutions Architect-Associate (SAA-C03), which I am currently studying, there is already a lot of content being added, and it is being evolved every day until it meets 100% of the exam content

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The three are linked to the first one which is aws-certification-learning.

But why do it this way?

The idea is to create a study repositories with links and materials, blogs that when you start studying will serve as a basis for studies and helped you today, may help someone in the future who will also walk this path.

And like the content, it's always the same but with a higher charge at each level of the Certification:

  • Foundational (AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner)
  • Associate(AWS Certified Solutions Architect, AWS Certified Developer, AWS Certified SysOps Administrator)
  • Professional(AWS Certified Solutions Architect, AWS Certified DevOps Engineer)
  • Specialty(AWS Certified Advanced Networking, AWS Certified Data Analytics, AWS Certified Database, AWS Certified Machine Learning, AWS Certified Security, AWS Certified: SAP on AWS)

Because we know that companies in the market are demanding that you take cloud certifications (AWS, Azure and Google).

So creating a study base can help a lot to everyone who doesn't know where to start.

Conclusion

This then and my contribution, I started the same, but if we get together and start to create, evolve and then share, everyone wins, each one can start their journey, a little ahead and with more guidance than when we started.

Certifications have a huge weight when a company hires you and if you have skills, they even pay for the entire study and certification process, in addition to paying extra after you pass the exam.

So let's help each other, because knowledge is something that, if shared, only makes us grow, and soon we will be able to do incredible things within the cloud, paying an amount that is worth the cost benefit.

Hope this method is of help to you in some way. I would love to hear from you and what other questions you might have for me. Good luck on your journey to the cloud!

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