1. My Study Guide for AWS Solution Architect Associate

No	Course	Time	Status	Comments
1	A CLOUD GURU	2 months	Completed	It took a very long time as I made notes
2	Neal Davis on Udemy	1 month	Completed	Similarly took a very long time as I made notes
3	Stephane Maarek on Udemy		Skipped	Any two courses from #1-3 in this table is sufficient for the exam
4	Qwiklabs	1 day	Completed
5	Labs from A CLOUD GURU	1 day	Completed
6	Whizlabs	2 days	Completed	Any two labs from #4-6 in this table is sufficient for the exam
7	Whitepapers	7 days	Completed	A quick read of AWS Well-Architected webpage (various whitepapers linked) should be sufficient
8	FAQ's	2 months	Completed	This is optional as the EC2 FAQ is very long Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon VPC, Amazon Route 53, Amazon RDS, Amazon SQS
9	Neal Davis Cheatsheets	15 days	Completed	Highly recommend
10	AWS Certified Solutions Architect Official Study Guide	3 days	Completed	Highly recommend
11	Tutorial Dojo Practice Exams)	15 days	Completed	Highly recommend
12	Neal Davis practice exams	15 days	Completed	Highly recommend
13	Exam Readiness	2 hours	Completed	Highly recommend as it is important to know the difference between high availability and fault-tolerant systems. Preferably Find a webinar

Summary:

1. Watch at least two of the following courses from acloudguru, Neal Davis and Stephane Maarek

2. Complete at least two of the following labs from acloudguru, qwiklabs and Whizlabs

3. Read the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Study Guide

4. Try not to memorise the answers from Practice exams instead try to understand why the correct answer is correct and why the other answers were incorrect

5. Try to score close to 80% for Neal's Practice exams and close to 90% for Tutorial Dojo's exams

6. During the practise exams, if you find any areas that you seem to be weak in then read more about those services in AWS documentation

7. Note: Neal's exams are tougher when compared to Tutorial Dojo however, Tutorial Dojo's explanations are better when compared to Neal's. That is why it is important to do both.

2. AWS Solution Architect Associate Notes

3. Preparation Time

1. It took me about 5 - 6 months as I prepared mostly on the weekends

2. I spent more time as I got closer to the exam date (approximately 2-3 hours on weekdays and longer on the weekends)

3. I also took a week off from work just before the exam to focus on my final preparation

4. Exam Tips

1. During the exam, I marked the questions I was unsure of for review. I made sure that I didn't exceed 10 questions for review, as staying within this limit made me confident that I would pass.

2. I rarely changed the answers during the review mode unless I strongly believed that my previous answer was incorrect.

3. I made sure that I didn't leave any questions unanswered as there is no negative marking.

4. There is a myth that 50%-60% of the exam questions are related to Networking/VPC. However the exam seems to cover most of the services and in some cases the question/answer might refer to multiple services

5. If English is your second language, you can request for ESL+30 mins before booking the exam from certmetrics > Request Exam Accomodations and wait for the approval. It might take couple of days.

5. AWS Labs

AWS Labs/Workshops

1. This is a list of labs which you can use for practice, using your own AWS account. This is optional as some of these labs are quite advanced.