Disclaimer: I’m preparing for the exam, exam scheduled on October’s last week.

Welcome to my journey of preparing for the AWS Solution Architect Associate SAA-CO3 exam! In this blog series, I’ll be sharing my experiences and insights as I embark on this certification journey.

A little about me: I come with a background of 4 years in backend development, with a basic understanding of DevOps practices, fueled by my curiosity. While I’ve had some exposure to AWS, particularly with ECS, I haven’t delved deeply into it. I’m currently employed and fortunate to be working from home. With my new job, I’ve committed to dedicating 7-8 hours to work and, simultaneously, 3-4 hours to my AWS exam preparation.

This marks Day 1 of my AWS Solution Architect Associate exam preparation, and the date is August 31st 2023. Today, I spent a total of 3 hours on this journey.

The initial hour was dedicated to understanding what this exam is all about. I found the AWS official exam guide and sample questions to be invaluable resources. Reading through them, I realized that this exam is going to put my skills to the test, and it’s imperative that I prepare thoroughly.

Now, the next step was to identify the resources I need for my study. After some research, I came across two popular choices: Adrian Cantrill’s course on https://learn.cantrill.io/ and Stephane Maarek’s Udemy Course on https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c03. Both options have their pros and cons, but the consensus is that either of them is sufficient to succeed in the exam. Here’s a brief comparison based on student feedback and insights from various forums.

Ultimately, I decided to go with Stephane Maarek’s Udemy Course. The main factors influencing my decision were its comprehensive content, positive ratings, structured and concise format, affordability (I had purchased this course previously for just $4), and the belief that it would provide ample preparation.

As an important step to keep myself on track, I installed a Reverse Day Counter Google Plugin. This plugin serves as a constant reminder of the time I have left until the exam, motivating me to stay focused and make the most of my study hours.

As of 10th September

Note: I had to reschedule my exam because of some renovation at AWS exam center at the very last moment and I’m working with to get refund.

Notes

1. AWS History and Global Infrastructure
2. How to choose an AWS Region
3. AWS IAM Services
4. Detailed Overview of EC2
5. Auto Scaling Group
6. Security Group Introduction
7. Elastic IPs & ENI
8. AWS Storages – EBS, Instance Store and EFS
9. Load Balancers in AWS
10. Amazon S3
11. A Quick Overview of AWS VPC
12. Summary AWS Security and Encryption
13. AWS Monitoring, Audit and Performance
14. CloudFront and Global Accelerator
15. AWS Route53

Stay tuned as I continue to document my journey towards cracking the AWS Solution Architect Associate exam. There’s much more to learn and explore