Over the past 2 years, I’ve been dealing with AWS from time to time, but that has increased significantly in the past 5 months When I started to do a lot of work-related to s3, lambda, and step-functions.

On December I’ve decided to take the architect exam to sharpen AWS/cloud skills. I prepared for it for less than a month. and took the exam in Mid January. I passed with a score of 939 out of 1000. so below are how I've prepared for it.

I’ve prepared for the exam from multiple resources, but I must say that the exam itself is harder than all the practice tests I’ve seen, there were some topics that never was mentioned in the materials I will mention below. but you just get them from your experience.

So first I’ve started with a monthly subscription in acloud.guru (opens new window) course: AWS certified solutions architect associate (opens new window)

One month subscription was enough to prepare for the exam, This is a great course, it goes through almost all the topics in the exam, the labs are very important to do by hand, especially the VPC one. If you can’t do it from memory, don’t do the exam.

Then I’ve purchased the practice tests from whizlabs: AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (opens new window)

The explanation of the answers in whizlabs (opens new window) will help you a lot understand what is the best solution for the scenario in the questions, Most of the time there is more than one correct solution, but one of them is the right answer because of a certain requirement in the question. like cost, availability, or disaster recovery.

I’ve also gone to Jayendra Patil blog (opens new window) and read a lot of the pages in the AWS solutions architect associate exam learning path

Lastly, I purchased the practise exam from AWS, which I’ve seen most of the questions in it in acloud.guru (opens new window) exam simulator, and whizlabs (opens new window) tests.

In summary, I think obtaining the certificate is a good addition for engineers who interact with AWS services in their day to day work.