Some frequently asked questions about the AWS certifications

While preparing for certifications, you may have several questions like where to start and how to finish. The following section will list frequently asked questions that often come to mind.

What is the best way to get certified?

Before we get to the best way to get certified, let’s look at the worst way. Amazon offers extremely comprehensive documentation. You can find this documentation here:https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWS docs are a great place to help you troubleshoot issues you may encounter when you are directly working with AWS services or perhaps to size the services you will be using correctly. However, it is not a good place to study for the exams. It will get overwhelming quickly, and much of the material you will learn about will not be covered in the exams.The better way to get certified is to use the training materials that AWS specifically provides for certification, starting with the roadmaps of what will be covered in each certificate. These roadmaps are a good first step to understanding the scope of each exam.You can begin to learn about all these roadmaps, or learning paths, as AWS likes to call them, here: https://aws.amazon.com/training/learning-paths/.You will find free online courses and paid intensive training sessions in these learning paths. While the paid classes may be helpful, those are not mandatory for you to pass the exam.Before you look at the learning paths, the first place to find out the scope of each certification is the study guides available for each certificate. In these study guides, you will learn at a high level what will and what won’t be covered for each exam. For example, the study guide for the AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification can be found here:https://d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-cloud-practitioner/AWS-Certified-Cloud-Practitioner_Exam-Guide.pdfNow, while the training provided by AWS may be sufficient to pass the exams, and I know plenty of folks that have passed the certifications using only those resources, there are plenty of third-party companies that specialize in training people with a special focus on the certifications. The choices are almost endless. Let’s look at a few more resources here.

Online courses

In addition to the course provided by AWS, other training organizations and independent content creators provide excellent courses to achieve AWS certification.