AWS Solution Architect Associate Exam Tips

I started studying for the AWS CSA Associate exam in December 2019, and booked the exam for the first week of January. I came across this awesome article of how he prepared for the exam, and this one,  so I thought I will list the resources I used:

• At work we arranged 3 days of AWS training (from AWS directly) which was quite useful.
• The year before I had bought the A Cloud Guru training from Udemy, but did not eventually end up using it. I would have, if it as not for the above 3 days official classroom based AWS training.
• I also bought Ryans A Cloud Gurus practice tests: 3 tests, 65 questions each. I thought they were OK, not brilliant.
• I then used the 6 x Jon Bonso Practice Exams which was brilliant, with really good explanations to help understanding.
• Tutorial Dojo Cheat Sheets

Other suggested material, which others have found usefull:

• AWS free Exam Readiness: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate online videos
• A Cloud Guru videos - Ryan Kroonenburg - Sign up for 7 days free trial
• Go through all the material on the ramp up guide - most of this is free
• AWS Self-paced labs
• Check out these Tips and Cheat Sheets:
• S3 Durability and Availability
• EC2 Instance Types
• RDS Multi-AZ and Read Replicas
• RDS monitoring metrics, RDS Cloudwatch Enhanced Monitoring, and Lambda Metrics

In total, I studied for 11 days, 8 hours per day, starting from the 1st day of the 3 day course on 17th December, until I wrote the exam on Monday morning 9am.

I booked the exam online, and chose a nearby Pearson Vue testing centre. I also booked the Cloud Practitioner exam and chose it write it from home, but never managed to successfully complete it. The online proctors could not seem to get it working, and overall the restrictions were too much - you have to take pictures of the room, and they keep on telling you what to do - so I eventually cancelled and got refunded.