Kick-starting the new year with AWS.
AWS Solutions Architect Associate Exam Experience
SAA-C02 is the new version of the exam that includes updated content across all domains as well as new objectives aligned with AWS platform innovations like EC2 Hibernate, Elastic File System, Aurora, AWS Single Sign-On (SSO), Key Management Service (KMS), Elastic Container Service (ECS) and more.
I passed this exam three years ago, so this was a recertification. I took a remote exam, and it was great. I had no problems at all. Scheduling the exam with Pearson Vue was a breeze, plenty of time slots available, even re-scheduling the exam was a 5-minute job. By the way, you can re-schedule twice. I did have to find a spare laptop that I could install Windows on though. The exam software is not available on Linux.
In terms of scoring, I’ve received 795/1000 which I’m pleased with. It was a tricky exam, and I think I could have gotten more had I spent more time preparing for it (well, that’s obvious).
Exam Preparation
I used the same study material that I relied on three years ago: “AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate” online video course by Ryan Kroonenburg (it’s available on Udemy). They’ve done a great job updating the course material to match the new version of the exam, meaning that I did not have to purchase a new course this time.
I also used “AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Practice Exams” by Jon Bonso (available on Udemy too). These practice tests are patterned after the latest exam format and they helped me a lot.