I haven't posted anything in a while due to end of year deadlines and the holiday season but I decided to make a quick post regarding my recent experience with the AWS certification process. I had been doing some training at work and on personal time with various AWS topics. I mostly listened to videos in the background of my normal work, completed some QwickLabs and did some personal exploration with my own AWS account (mainly staying in the AWS Free Tier). However I'd say what prepared me best was actually taking the practice exams on various learning websites. The hands on experience and video learning helped with using AWS but the practice exams gave me a much better scope of how difficult the exam would be. Once I felt prepared I registered for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate exam, using the Pearson VUE virtual testing option. The associate level exams cost $150, but after taking at least one exam, you get a discount code for 50% off your next exam!
The last true exam I'd taken was back in college, so it had been some time since I had done testing like this. As the exam was virtual I had to clear out extra monitors and devices from my office. I also had to clear off my desk and the surrounding area so the proctor could verify I wasn't getting extra help. Before starting the exam I had to take pictures of my office (the exam space) and send them in. Then I got connected to a proctor and had to pan my laptop's camera around so they could verify once more the room was ready. Then I began and the 140 minute timer started ticking down. Prior to starting the exam I had to agree to an NDA so I can't share any specific information on the exam questions but I will say it was more difficult than I had expected. A lot of the questions had answer choices (the exam is multiple choice, with some requiring selecting multiple answers for one question) that were all correct for the question but I had to determine which one is the most correct. For instance, the question may ask what is the most cost effective solution that solves the problem and all the answer choices are solutions that solve the problem but only one is the cheapest. I ended up having a decent amount of time to spare at the end of the exam so I was able to go back and review my answers. When taking the exam there is an option to flag a question so that you can go back to it. Some question have important information in the question itself that can help with answering other questions so it was nice to have a way to flag questions I wasn't sure about so I could go back and review them. The proctor only ever talked to me via the chat option in Pearson VUE so I wasn't sure how closely they were monitoring me at first but then I unconsciously covered my mouth a couple of times with my hand and the proctor immediately sent me a message to not do that. So, they were watching quite closely as I took the exam.
I passed!. I wasn't aware I would get the results immediately after submitting and verifying I was done. The results popped up on the screen right after I verified I was done. It was good to have the feedback so I wasn't anxious about how I had done until I got the results. I didn't get the actual score of my exam until a few days later when I also got the Acclaim certification badge. They have a sliding scale scoring for the exam (similar to the SATs) between 100 - 1000 where you have to get a minimum score of 720 to pass. My personal public badge can be seen here and is also linked in my LinkedIn. For the next three years I'll be considered a Certified Solution Architect for AWS, which is pretty neat. I am considering taking the more specialized exams in the future when I have more time to prepare.