Introduction
AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a comprehensive, evolving cloud computing platform provided by Amazon that includes a mixture of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and packaged software as a service (SaaS) offerings.
AWS Certification helps learners build credibility and confidence by validating their cloud expertise with an industry-recognized credential and helps organizations identify skilled professionals to lead cloud initiatives using AWS.
While certifications don’t always equate to competence, an AWS Certification can correlate to a higher salary and career opportunities
So if you’re wondering if AWS certifications are worth it (and “worth it” to you means “may help advance your career or earn more money”) then yes, AWS certifications are worth it.
- More than 80% of people identified a higher salary as a direct result of cloud certification.
- 52% said cloud certifications expanded their career opportunities.
Exam Information:
Level: Associate
Length: 130 minutes to complete the exam, if English is your second language then you could request additional 30 minutes (how to request)
Cost: 150 USD
To schedule an exam: https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certification-prep/testing/
Preparation for the exam:
At the moment there are a lot of free and paid courses. But I strongly recommend you a couple of them:
- Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate 2022 by Stephane Maarek
Price: 13.99$ (if your price is higher than 13.99$ then try to open that link in incognito mode of your browser)
- AcloudGuru
I also recommend you get a subscription to acloudguru. Where you can find a lot of useful courses and videos for yourself, as well as Sandbox, which allows you to explore all AWS resources for free. It is very important to understand how all AWS services work, you need to deep-dive headlong into AWS and try until you understand how it works. You can’t learn everything. It is necessary to understand how it works, and it is possible to understand only through constant practice. Therefore, I think that acloudguru is a very necessary resource for obtaining the necessary practice knowledge.
- Whitepapers
The official documentation is also very good, and easy to read.
Conclusion:
After you will gain 85–90% on practice exams, I advise you to pass the real exam.
Remember Certificate is just a paper, but preparation for it is where you gain everything.
