AWS certifications: why would you need them, how "Data Reply" employees achieved 40 certs in 18 months

1. AWS
CERTIFICATIONS
WHY AND HOW

2. Natalia Strelkova
Big Data Engineer
n.strelkova@reply.de
Elena Jianu
Big Data Engineer
e.jianu@reply.de
Who are we?

3. 1. Introduction
2. Why
3. Tips and tricks
4. Conclusion
AGENDA

4. INTRODUCTION

5. 40 AWS exams in 18 months

6. BUT WHY?

7. BUT WHY?
AWS Global Infrastructure

8. BUT WHY?
AWS = MARKET LEADER
 The Standard in Cloud
technology
 Fast, continuous growth
 Bigger than its competitors
combined (53.7% market share)
 Past, present and future

9. BUT WHY?
PERSONAL GROWTH
 Challenge yourself
 Master the theory
 Practice hands on
 Test your acquired skills

11. BUT WHY?
 AWS events
 Certified SWAG 
 Certified lounge

12. BUT WHY?
AWS SKILLS ARE IN HIGH-DEMAND AND THEY PAY OFF
 Over 1 mil. Enterprise customers in 190 countries around the world
 Unofficial estimations of worldwide certifications (Apr. 2017)
30000
9000
4000 2000
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
35000
SA-A D-A SA-P DE-P
+1!
+us!

13. BUT WHY?
AWS SKILLS ARE IN HIGH-DEMAND AND THEY PAY OFF
AWS IT devs $79,796 +27.5% $101,755
AWS IT management $112,52 +13.7% $127,942

14. TIPS AND TRICKS

15. WHICH CERTIFICATIONS WE DID
 Cloud Practitioner
 Solutions Architect Associate + Professional
 Developer Associate
 SysOps Administrator
 Big Data Specialty
 we tried Alexa Skill Builder Speciality - beta, pending

16. GENERAL TIPS
 Get an account on ACloudGuru, another alternative is CloudAcademy.
Maybe your company can provide an account?
 Book your appointment long beforehand (just one center in Munich)
 Start preparing beforehand;)
 Hack: if you are not a native english speaker, you can request for additional
30 minutes for the exam (in advance)
 Be careful not to burn-out
 Real experience with AWS always helps!

17. CLOUD PRACTITIONER
 Easiest and high-level, but you still have to study;)
 Material:
 Official AWS course (course link)
 ACloudGuru course + forum
 Sample questions
 Recommended whitepapers
 https://aws.amazon.com/de/premiumsupport/compare-plans/
 Summary of video lectures
 PSI offers a test exam
 Example preparation time: 4 rather relaxed days, 4 * 6-8 hours roughly

18. SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT -
ASSOCIATE
 Design and implement AWS systems that are:
• Highly available
• Fault tolerant
• Scalable
• Secure
• Cost efficient
 Understand use case requirements
 Follow architectural best practices
 Troubleshoot
 Scope: EC2, EBS, S3, VPC, RDS, ElasticBeanstalk, Cloudwatch, SQS, …

19. SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT -
ASSOCIATE
 ACloudGuru
 Prepare for scenario-based questions (can be long and tricky)
 Hands-on configuration (VPC) - requires hands-on practice
 Recommended white papers and FAQ
 Are you ready?
 Tests on Cloud Guru
 Tests on WhizLabs
 Are you though??
 Do the official exam simulation!

20. DEVELOPER - ASSOCIATE
 Very similar to the Solutions Architect
 Requires knowledge of less services but a little more detail
 ACloudGuru. Do the labs there as well!
 Read the FAQs for the services
 Most important services: EC2, S3, IAM, EBS, DynamoDB, VPC. SNS +
SQS + ELB = very little

21. SYSOPS ADMINISTRATOR
 Maintaining and troubleshooting workloads
 Security (IAM, policy)
 Performance problems
 DynamoDB RCU-WCU (read-write capacity units)
 CI/CD (Code Pipeline, Deploy, Commit + non-AWS specific)
 ELBs (load balancers)
 S3, CloudFront
 Resources:
 ACloudGuru course
 Performance whitepapers

22. BIG DATA SPECIALTY
 Closer to professional level
 You will need to say which architecture is either most performant or cost
efficient
 Material:
 ACloudGuru course + discussion page for it
 CloudAcademy course
 LinkedIn blog posts and discussions around the Internet (useful)
 Free sample questions from AWS
 Resources:
 Recommended whitepapers and https://aws.amazon.com/big-data/use-
cases/
 Having more real experience with AWS helps a lot!
 Example preparation time: 6 dense days, i.e. 4 * 10-12 hours roughly

23. SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT
PROFESSIONAL
 Much harder and a lot longer (210 minutes, ~80 questions)
 Associate level certification not required
 Scenario-based questions (longer)
 Focus on architecting solutions that cover multiple technologies
 Know instance types!
 Resources:
 ACloudGuru, CloudAcademy, LinuxAcademy (do not cover everything)
 Recommended whitepapers
 Real experience is invaluable!
 Preparation bootcamp (on demand)

24. ALEXA SKILL BUILDER (BETA)
 Gavin tried
 Go ask him 

25. THANK YOU
www.reply.com

26. QUESTIONS?
www.reply.com