The Next Step — Going for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate Exam

6 min readJan 22, 2021

In my last post, I described how to pass the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam in a week (or less).

This one is about how I achieved the AWS Solutions Architect Associate certification. Which I started right after finishing the CCP. And yes, it took me more than a week.

As I wrote in the last post, my initial reasons for becoming AWS certified are connected to a job change. However, I also think learning something new is fun. Moreover, it is always good practice to maintain and develop your skills.

If you are new to AWS certifications, I recommend you do the Certificed Cloud Practitioner exam first. AWS has created quite a big ecosystem of services. Learning to distinguish them first before going deeper will make learning easier in the long run.

Exam Blueprint

The AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam (AWS SAA-C02) is Multiple Choice/Multiple Answer. The questions are scenario based. Have a look at the official example questions from AWS to get an idea what is expected of you in the exam.

As described in the official exam guide here are the facts:

65 Multiple Choice/Multiple Answer questions
Exam Duration: 130 minutes
Passing Score: 720 of 1000 points
Valid for 3 years
Cost: $150 (or 75$ if you already passed another AWS exam and still have the 50% voucher)
You can take an ungraded practice exam for $20
Testing is done via PSI or Pearson VUE (either in a test center or online)

Preparation

I started by going through the ACloudGuru course. This took me about two weeks (17th to 30th of December) or 52 hours. Mostly due to my habbit of taking extensive notes during the sessions. Plus I started to read through the Whitepapers.

After finishing the course, I took the practice exams both from the ACloudGuru course and Whizlabs. Working on those, researching my incorrect answers, and reading the FAQs took me another 35 hours in total.

So, all total I studied for about 90 hours for the exam. But it was worth it. I felt exam ready and booked the exam on New Year’s Eve.

Resources

To our benefit AWS and third-party vendors provide a ton of resources. Here are the ones I used and mentioned above.

AWS Solutions Architect Exam Webpage

This is the first stop you should make. AWS will give you a lot of info and learning material for free. You get the current exam blueprint, exam guide, and some sample questions, as I already mentioned above.

ACloudGuru SAA Course

The course covers most of the exam points and is worth taking especially because of Ryan’s hands-on mentality. However, in my opinion, the course alone is not enough if you want to pass he exam.
Besides watching the videos and doing all the labs, I also participated a lot in the forums. When I explain a topic to somebody else, my understanding improves and my knowledge deepens.
To my amusement, there are always people complaining about video content not being up-to-date with the latest version of the AWS console. Well, so what? If you want to become a Solutions Architect you should be willing to learn how to handle a change in the UI by yourself.

Whitepapers

AWS has lots and lots of Whitepapers to describe their infrastructure, services, best-practices et cetera.
For the Solutions Architect, they recommend you read at least a series of six Whitepapers surrounding the AWS Well-Architected Framework:

AWS built all of their infrastructure and services around the principles presented in the whitepapers. Understanding them will greatly help you pass the exam and understand why AWS is doing things the way they do.
Moreover, I recommend you also have a look at these two Whitepapers:

The Security Whitepaper has been archived, meaning that the information will no longer be updated. But again, the principles described there did not change. So, I still gained something from reading it. And if you want to go even deeper, use the AWS Best Practices for Security, Identity, & Compliance website as a starting point.
As with the CCP you could argue that reading this many Whitepapers is overkill for the exam. But AWS does publish them for a reason and the more I immerse myself in the material, the easier understanding AWS becomes.

AWS FAQs

Besides the Whitepapers, AWS recommends you read these prior to the exam. I did this after taking the ACloudGuru course and in parallel to the practice exams on ACloudGuru and Whizlabs. After I became familiar with the exam contents, reading the FAQS was a good way to solidify my knowledge and to rehearse the topics:

As with the Whitepapers, you could argue that this is a lot of stuff to read. And again, AWS expects you to know this stuff. Just check the sample questions against the FAQs.

Whizlabs Practice Exam

After finishing the ACloudGuru course, I started to do the Whizlabs Practice Exams to find knowledge gaps. The explanations to the answers are valueable resources and provide links to AWS documentation. This will save you time.

Expect to be frustrated at first, as they are definitly harder than the ACloudGuru ones. However, they are the same level as the acutal exam — maybe a little easier. If you understand the questions and can finish the exams with at least 80%-90%, you should be ready to take the exam. If you struggle with these, you should definitely study harder.

A little warning, do not do them too often if you have good memory. After two runs of an exam I could easily remember the correct answers without even reading most of the question. To a learning experience this is counter-productive as it will make you stop to think about why an answer is correct and just reflexively select the correct answer.

AWS Podcast

This is another great resource you can tap into. If you are into podcast you can learn quite a bit from these. And you can easily listen to them while driving or going for a walk.

Before Testing

As mentioned in my post about the CCP exam you can get 30 minutes extra time, if English is not your native language. This can easily be done through the AWS Certification Website. You can find more details here.
And you need to have this approved by AWS before you can book the exam or the extra time will not be added.

Well, in my case it was also not added despite going through all the steps in the correct order. I got approved for ESL around the 10th of December. However, for some technical issues at PSI I was not granted the ESL+30 while booking the exam. Neither for the CCP nor for the SAA exam. Consequently I only got the normal 130 minutes. I will write about this issue with PSI another time (Spoiler: The still have not fixed it).

Exam

I booked the exam with PSI and opted for the online proctoring variante. As with the CCP exam, it worked really well — besides the ESL+30 issue.

You can start the exam process 30 minutes before the scheduled time and should do so. It can take some time until a proctor is ready for you.

It took me about 100 minutes to finish the exam. However, I went go through all the questions twice. You get a PASSED/FAILED feedback right after finishing the exam. Do not stand up before seeing this, your exam is still running until then.

Detailed feedback with the score you achieved will be available to you in at most five days. Mine took about 24 hours to show up on the AWS Certification website.

Outcome

I passed the exam with a score of mere 821 despite all the work I put into preparation. Well, a Pass is a Pass, but I aimed for a score of 900 or better. Consequently, I will need to adjust my studying process for the next certificate.

The questions were more difficult than the sample questions provided by AWS, and in my opinion also a little harder than the ones provided by Whizlabs. However, as AWS samples the exams from a large pool of questions your mileage may vary.

The things I struggled most with included:

DirectConnect and how to make it more resilient
EBS and actually being able to do IO calculations based on volume size. For example, a gp2-volume does not always have the full 16,000 IOPS
The fine details of DynamoDB and the difference between Local and Global Secondary Indices
The differences of Route53 Geolocation and Geoproximity routing and which one to choose if both are an option

That’s it, I hope you enjoyed my summary. And in case you also decide to go down the AWS certification road: Good Luck with your exams!