Beginner's guide to AWS Solutions Architect Associate(SAA) certification.
Tags: aws, saa, beginners, architecture
Published: 2022-07-13 16:06:00

In this post, I would like to share a little bit of story about how I prepared for AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam from a *beginner*'s perspective.

> The exam that I took (SAA-C02) is retiring on August 29, 2022. 

### Preparing

This exam exists to verify your knowledge about general services provided by AWS, and how and when to use these services in various situations. As you can find many blog posts or videos explaining what kinds of questions appear in this exam, I will not discuss it here.

I prepared for this exam only using the suggested learning path provided by [CloudAcademy](https://cloudacademy.com/learning-paths/aws-solutions-architect-associate-certification-preparation-for-aws-2021-1-2977/). The lectures covered many services provided by AWS, mostly focused on the services that are most likely to appear in the exam. 

Going straightforward, I will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of preparing for this exam using CloudAcademy.

#### Benefits of preparing using CloudAcademy

1. All lectures cover one or more services provided by AWS, but also discuss enough, meaningful context. For example, if we have to learn about multi-tiered architecture, the lecture covers why we need it, various situations of when to implement it, and how to implement it using AWS services.

2. Each category(security, management, etc.) has hands on lab sessions, which allows you to actually use some of the services covered in the session, and having hands-on experience really helps you keep those services in mind much longer.

3. Each category has quizzes, which asks you about the services learned. It really helps to keep the knowledges in your mind.

4. The last and best is that at the very end, there are example questions provided by CloudAcademy team, which is really similar from questions that appear in the SAA exam. Also, there seems to be 300+ number of questions, so you can retake the exam as much as you want, and know your vulnerabilities.


#### Drawbacks of preparing using CloudAcademy

There was only one drawback of using CloudAcademy, and it was that the questions didn't cover some of the services that appeared in my exam. For example, the SAA exam I took had some questions about Step Functions, Rekognition, Transcribe, etc.

### Taking the exam

I took the exam from home, and there was a human test proctor for me, directing a lot of things such as "clean up all the things under your desk" and more. It took almost 30 minutes for me to get my environment ready to take the exam.

I got two warnings to not cover my mouth during the exam, and everything else went smooth. I didn't need extra 30 minutes for the exam, and I solved and submitted my answers in almost 90 minutes. 

I think the best factor that speeded up my time is that I took the exam questions provided by CloudAcademy for almost 10+ times.

### Wrapping up

All the processes of preparing for SAA really helped me a lot about expanding my knowledge of AWS, and how to reduce cost, design various systems while maintaining high availability.

The exam didn't require that much of memorization, I just needed to be fully aware about what each service provides, how it gives benefits to customers.