Just before we begin, let’s discover what it means to be certified as SysOps. This posts very long so I would like to summarize topics:
- Most Important FAQs: AWS FAQs
- Online Course: acloudguru
- Offline Course
- Practice Exam: https://awslagi.com/practice-questions/
- Exam Dumps: AWS SysOps Administrator Guarantee Part.
The AWS Certified SysOps Administrator — Associate exam validates technical expertise in deployment, management, and operations on the AWS platform. Exam concepts you should understand for this exam include:
- Deploying, managing, and operating scalable, highly available, and fault tolerant systems on AWS.
- Migrating an existing on-premises application to AWS.
- Implementing and controlling the flow of data to and from AWS.
- Selecting the appropriate AWS service based on compute, data, or security requirements.
- Identifying appropriate use of AWS operational best practices.
- Estimating AWS usage costs and identifying operational cost control mechanisms.
Want some general tips for the learning process?
- Write down notes. It will help you to remember the material.
- Repeat if you do not understand — a so called “deliberate practice” can go a long way. (Check Learning how to learn online class available on Coursera to know more.)
- Read. You can’t skip this part, sorry. Watching an online course won’t be enough. You will need to read and understand quite a bit of technical documents. No shortcuts, no cheating: just stay focused and read.
Alright, keep these in mind while we dive into the details.
Get all that you need to become a AWS SysOps
You may be wondering where to look for the knowledge. Don’t worry, we have gathered it for you already. Curious?
Most important FAQs
Amazon has a broad range of FAQ documents available. You should refer to them whenever learning about a new area. In general, for this course we would recommend going through FAQs as follow:
- EC2
- RDS
- S3
- VPC
Hands-on experience
Remember about including hands-on experience to your learning process. AWS certification is aimed towards engineers familiar with Amazon ecosystem. As certifications requirements say, the ideal candidate should have:
- One or more years of hands-on experience operating AWS-based applications
- Experience provisioning, operating and maintaining systems running on AWS
- Ability to identify and gather requirements to define a solution to be built and operated on AWS
- Capabilities to provide AWS operations and deployment guidance and best practices throughout the lifecycle of a project
It is, of course, possible to pass this exam as a complete novice by the power of pure disciplined learning. We saw many people without any prior cloud experience approaching and passing tests. If it’s you, just keep in mind it might be slightly harder for you than for others.
Online course
Video course from acloud.guru will present you with around 50% of the required material. It is highly recommended by most of our fellow learners who tried it. It’s close to 9 hours longs meaning a one decent day of learning.
Offline course
There is a possibility to book classes and workshops taught in real life. We did not follow this course of action and thus we cannot vouch for its usefulness. If you prefer to meet with instructors in real life, keep in mind that:
- You must live nearby or be able to get to the location of the workshop.
- While you can pause video class at any time, it may be considerably harder to keep up with a real-life training.
- Many people learn better while reading documents (see our list below) and might not gain much from listening, even to experts.
- It requires more time and scheduling than an online course.
- It costs more.
Having said that, each person learns differently so if you feel like it’s that’s your cup of tea then go ahead and book yourself a trainer.
Whitepapers
Amazon published a library of official white papers available to everyone. Documents range from basic overviews to deep analysis of security compliance. Consider reading related papers if you are starting using a new product from AWS. Yet, we list the most useful resources for AWS SysOps certification below. Introduction to AWS, a good refresher for well-versed veterans as well:
- Overview of Amazon Web Services.
- AWS Storage Services Overview.
- AWS Well-Architected Framework.
- AWS Security Best Practices.
Cloud Computing Economics as they are several questions on the topic of TCO:
- The Total Cost of (Non) Ownership of Web Applications in the Cloud.
Backup & Recovery with a focus on pilot light, warm standby, multi-site RTO and RPO:
- Backup and Recovery Approaches Using AWS
Migration as there are many scenarios about a company wanting to make a move to AWS:
- Migrating Your Existing Applications to the AWS Cloud
Sample questions
There is a free sample of exam questions available. Yet we have already realised their limited usefulness. Keep in mind they represent lower difficulty group of questions used during a real exam.
https://awslagi.com/practice-questions/
Exam Dumps
I choose AWS SysOps Administrator Guarantee Part. This part include 100% actual exam questions and it’s very helpful and ensure you can pass the exam. I saved a lot of time feeling confident when join the exam. Highly recommended.
Ready for the exam?
For your convenience, here’s the overview of the exam from the day this guide was published:
- Multiple choice and multiple answer questions.
- 80 minutes to complete the exam.
- Available in English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Brazilian Portuguese.
- Practice Exam Registration fee is USD 20.
- Exam Registration fee is USD 150.
Congratulations! Now you know everything there’s to know about the exam. If you have followed our guidelines, it should not be a problem for you to pass it. Yet, we have a bonus for you! See below our ultimate tips:
- Make sure to eliminate obviously wrong answers first.
- Associate level exam have only one answer that is correct (unlike Professional level, where you choose the optimal solution amongst multiple correct answers).
- Remember there’s a difference between an or and an and.
- Given two similar in effect solutions make sure to choose the cheaper or easier to maintain one.
- It’s okay to skip a question and check back later if you don’t know the answer immediately.
- If you have study enough, you should not be stressed out about the time limit. In practice, half of the time is sufficient if you did this entire guide.
- Stay cautious of CIDR blocks, make sure they are correct before choosing an answer based on them.
- If you are unsure of your answer to any specific question, mark it for review later. At the last screen, you’ll see a list of marked questions and be able to go back to them.
- Keep in mind different tiers of services: S3 has Glacier for cheap storage, EC2 can run g2.8xlarge machines if you need graphical power and data migration options range from simple Storage Gateways to hiring trucks with hard-drives aka AWS Snowmobile.
Source: Medium
