My 6-Year Journey to Passing the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional Exam

Brief Introduction about myself

I have around 17 years of experience in software development. Mostly working on the backend with .NET and Java. It was around 8 years back when I started working on some cloud related stuff, mostly on AWS. That time I was awed by the sheer power and brilliance of cloud.

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I completed my first associate certificate six years back, in fact I completed all associate level exams . And I was quite determined that I will write AWS Certified solutions architect professional exam as well.

I was aware that it’s going to take some considerable amount time to complete the next challenge.

But it did not happen. There were multiple reasons for that.

• I was not actively working on any of the AWS of the cloud technologies at that point of time, And that is true today as well. Since I wanted to know more about AWS and it gives me a sense of achievement when I finish any exam. I started preparing for the exam but due to personal and professional commitments it took a back seat.

• The change I did this time was I was quite determined to complete, I did not let any other commitments to come in between. The biggest lesson I learned was that, whenever you want to focus on anything and due to some reason if you break the momentum, just don’t leave it completely. Come back to it. That way even the rhythm is broken, you make sure to pick it up from where you left.

• Earlier my attention got diverted to some other course or learning. This time I did not let that happen and devoted my complete focus for completion of this certification.

About the Exam - AWS Certified Solutions Architect

The exam had 75 questions in 3 hours. The questions were quite lengthy and could even have couple of paragraphs. And same with the answers as well. To clear the exam we need to have the good understanding of the AWS services and a great comprehension skill as well.

The questions covered the topics from from cloud cost optimization, hybrid architecture, fault tolerance, disaster recovery to name a few topics.

Though we have 3 hours to finish the exam. I thought that would be enough to complete it. But once you start the exam and start going through questions, the time looks to be less.

There would be easy questions as well, and the trick here is to identify the easy questions and finish them as soon as possible. Once you have tackled the easier ones, you can move on to the hard questions.

What’s next?

I have some interest in Machine learning and AWS security as well. I want to complete AWS machine learning practitioner and AWS security specialty.

Meanwhile I have setup this blog to share my learnings as well as preparation guides to build strong cloud and architecture concepts.