Passing the AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam
Tags: aws, serverless, career
Published: 2020-09-20 19:44:58

**My Background**  
First a bit about me and my background. I currently work full-time as a Fabrication Engineer. I have a degree in Computer Info. Systems and have some programming experience, dont worry the Dev Associate exam does not expect you to write any code. I do also currently have an [AWS Solutions Architect Associate cert](https://www.youracclaim.com/badges/61c7fbbc-08a5-4d04-836d-fbe036c25c40/public_url). You can visit [My resume site](www.ordeproject.com) if you would like to know more about me and view projects. 

**EXAM**
First if this is your first AWS cert I would recommend getting the AWS-SAA or the Cloud Practitioner certification, they lay a strong foundation for AWS. 
Anyways on to the exam this past Friday night, (who takes a test on a Friday night?! :nerd_face:) I work full-time and the proctor administering the test was scheduled to undergo server maintenance this weekend. Anyways got my score report this morning and scored an 862/1000. 
I felt confident going in but there was still some questions that tripped me up or I was just simply way overthinking them. Some questions just seemed vague, but I had to slow down and eliminate some of the options. I finished the exam with about an hour to spare so went back through some of the questions that I had flagged which were about 15 or so just to take my time on them. 


**Things You Must Know**
* DynamobDB
  - Know about DAX, GSI/LSI, WCU/RCU's, and Streams
  - Got many questions on the exam regarding these
* API Gateway
  - Know about Authorizers, Integration Types, Caching, Usage 
  plans, throttling, and CORS
  - Not surprising API Gateway came up quite a bit.
* Lambda
  - Know this inside and out. Know how it gets invoked, event 
  source mappings, Sync/Async, Lambda@Edge, How to use w/ VPC,
  performance and security, environment variables, and know 
  concurrency limits.
  - Lots of questions on Lambda, not just about Lambda but many of the other services that it interacts with.  
* Elastic Beanstalk
  - Know your deployment options for updates and the best use case for them given a scenario.
  - Migration step to decouple RDS
* Codebuild/CodeCommit/CodePipeLine/CodeStar
  - Got some questions on CodeCommit, couple on CodePipeline, couple on Codebuild, and one on CodeStar.
* Docker/ECS/ECR
  - Know how containers work, Dockerfiles, How to push/pull from ECR or Docker Hub
  - Know Task Definitions, Placement strategies, ECS w/ Load Balancing
  - Know the CLI commands for V1 and V2 to authenticate into ECR and the push/pull commands
* Cognito
  - Know User Pools and Identity pools and when to use which. 
  - Its use w/ API Gateway
* Elasticache
  - Know the caching strategies write-through, lazy-loading, and when to use which
  - Know differences between Redis and Memcached.
* Encryption / Decryption
  - Know all the S3 types of encryption
  - KMS, CMK's, and envelope encryption
  - Also know about the encryption headers
* SQS/SNS/SWF/Step functions
  - Know when to use which, know the differences between them. 
  - Know how they work with Lambda. 
* SSM Parameter Store/Secrets Manager
  - Know the differences and when to use given a scenario
* CloudWatch/CloudTrail
  - Know what these do and their limitations
  - Know which one to use given a scenario
  - Alarms and Events
* Random Services that I got one or two questions on but are generally good to know not only for the exam but in your AWS career
  - X-Ray
  - S3
  - Kinesis and its different types
  - AWS Certificate Manager
  - Cloudfront
  - Cloudformation
  - SAM
  - STS
  - Git, Github, Gitlab etc etc
  - Thats all I can think of for now. Hope this helps someone!

**Exam Prep**
To prep for the exam, I used [@Stephane Maarek's](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanemaarek/) and [@Neal Davis'](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nealkdavis/) udemy courses also did [Jon Bonso's](https://portal.tutorialsdojo.com/shop/) practice exams, to make sure I was ready. With these resources you'll have plenty of material to learn and pass the exam. 

**Follow Me**
If you want to follow me on my cloud journey or have any questions Im always glad to help. You can follow me on 
[ORDEProject.com](www.ordeproject.com)
[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedro-oliva/)
[Twitter](https://twitter.com/Ordep81)