Another year another re:Invent. This year at re:Invent 2017, because my associate was up for renewal again, I decided to sit for the AWS Solutions Architect Professional Exam. The exam is in beta phase where questions are being tested, refined and the exam pass line is being set. I won't find out if I passed until March 2017 and I can't share actual exam questions but I can share advice for others that are interested in the exam in the future. Note that as of Jan 2017 the beta is currently closed as it's proved to be very popular.
Preparation:
I entered the exam cold, drawing only on my working knowledge of AWS and its services so my perspective should be an unbiased view of the exam. There is an exam blueprint but it's been pulled from the AWS website.
Format:
- ~3hr Exam Time
- > 100 Questions
- Reading Comprehension Questions
- Question Nuances Where Important
- Heavy Focus on Services and Service Components with Security Relationship:
- IAM
- WAF
- CloudFront
- ACM
- Security Groups
- NACLs
- VPC
- etc.
My Exam Perspective:
I found the questions to be very long, requiring significant reading and reading comprehension in order to answer questions. I also found the possible answers to be long and requiring reading comprehension. I had to read a number of questions at least twice to pickup on all of their nuances and be able to differentiate answer validity. The questions for the exam had some substantial parallels to security related questions on other exams.