Clear the AWS Certified Data Analytics Specialty exam
By: Ankit Agrawal
Tags: AWS, Amazon Web Services, Accenture, Data Analytics, Data

Build a foundation, Before taking this certification, I had completed 3 AWS Cloud Certifications (cloud practitioner, Solution Architect Associate, and Developer Associate) exams. Data Analytics Specialty Certification was the logical next step as it marries the worlds of Cloud and Big Data technologies.

Get on with it, I was to compare both these exams, I would rate the specialty way higher in terms of difficulty and complexity. It took me two months to prepare for the exam and to be honest, I could not call out a win until I saw the results, point I am making is this exam is hard but not impossible.

Let’s get into the details of the preparation

The official Exam Guide, please do not skip this, if you do. you may regret 2. The official Sample Questions to give you a fair idea of what kind of questions to expect.

3. The official Data Analytics Fundamental training, free course on AWS training & certification site.

4. The official Exam Readiness course, available on the AWS training & certification site.

5. A Cloud Guru’s course on Data Analytics Specialty is a very good start, you can rush this course on 1.5x to get a feel of the topics you’re dealing with.

6. I cannot stress enough but Stéphane Marek’s course on Udemy is a must to get you going into the depth of each of the topics that this exam expects you to quiz on, The part covered by Frank Kane is a bit disappointing ( a lot of attention needed as slides are limited but packed with a lot of content ), if you are very fresh to the AWS and Data world then you’ll need to repeat this course at least twice.

7. **Next stop the exam provided in Udemy’s course is just great to pick up as the litmus test, try it at least twice. In my experience, 65 questions is a lot to handle

8. ** move on to the Whizlabs practice exams after you have covered (7), trust me three test papers will give you a solid ground for the real exam

9. Caution **: Do not get disappointed if you’re the ace’ing the above exams, rather use them as tools to understand the scenario’s, and mostly focus on reasons for incorrect choices, 7 & 8 are supposed to consume a lot of time and possibly bring in some monotony but its needed.

10. TRY IT OUT, go to the console and just spend some time trying to configure and review options, you don’t have to create any service but go through the navigation and hints on each of the fields to create some photographic memory and relate to the theory you’ve studied.

11. AWS FAQ’s — this is a great source of collecting important pieces of information about each of the services in relatively less amount of time, please google “AWS FAQ” and head on two the data analytics section, save a weekend before the exam to read them — they have a lot of required depth.

12. AWS BIG Data Blog — this is a perfect place to find use cases for data services, relate them to the questions you’ve seen in the practice exams, by now you’d know how much time you’d need to spend on these blogs.

13. Unlike other AWS exam where you would see a weightage on some particular services, here in this exam I felt all the service under the AWS data Analytics banner( check out the console) — Kinesis family, Redshift, EMR, Glue, Quick sight, Athena, AWS data pipeline, etc. did show up in the exam with EVEN distribution.

Exam Experience:

It may sound weird, but I booked my exam at 5:30 AM CT to get me a peaceful 3 hrs., trust me you’ll need every single minute to stay focused throughout the duration. There were 65 questions, most of which were lengthy, and scenario-based.

Typically, 2 out of the 4 choices could be eliminated as they are distractors or make no sense if you’re familiar with those services.

The other 2 choices would be possible answers to the question, and we have to choose the best one among them, please pay special attention to words such as cost-effective, performance, minimal maintenance, latency, throughput, performant to choose the best solution among all the possible solutions.

It took me 170 minutes to answer all the questions. I had flagged many of the questions that I was not fully confident about.

GET EXTRA TIME, if you’re not a native English speaker then you can avail yourself an extra 30 minutes to all your AWS exams, you’ll need to request exam accommodation before booking your exam, details on how can be easily found over the internet.

WRAP UP:

It is true that during this journey you may feel that you’re not ready based on the practice test performance but if you’ve spent time understanding the concepts for each of the services in scope and can recollect the facts you’ve studied when reading the answers of the practice test, I personally feel you should be ready for the exam, it is difficult but manageable with due efforts.

All the best for your exam!!

Ankit Agrawal |Certified AWS cloud practitioner, Soln’s Arch, Dev Assoc, Data Analytics

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