AWS Certification Trifecta

 

 

When the dust settled here’s what I was left with 😛

Date: Monday 05/04/2020 – 1800 hrs
Thoughts: “You should be embarrassed at how severely deficient you are in practical cloud knowledge.”

Background

This is exactly how all my journeys begin (inside my head) typically being judgmental and unfairly harsh on myself. That evening I started to research the cloud market share of Amazon, Azure and Google. It confirmed what I suspected with AWS leading (~34%) Azure having roughly half of AWS (~17%), Google (~6%) and the “others” accounting for the rest. Note: Although Azure owns half of AWS in market share percentage, their annual growth is double that (62%) of AWS (33%). I would start with AWS.

Now where do I begin? I reviewed their site listing all the certifications and proposed paths to achieve. Obviously the infosec in my veins wanted to go directly for the AWS Security Specialty but I decided not do that. Why? Figured I would be cheating myself. I would start at the foundational level and progressively work towards the Security Specialty. To appreciate the view so-to-speak. Security Specialty would be my end goal.

I fumbled my way through deploying AWS workloads previously. I used EC2 before (didn’t know what it stood for or anything beyond that – a VM in the cloud was the depth of my understanding), S3 was cloud storage (that I constantly read about being misconfigured leading to data exposure).

As always, there’s absolutely zero pressure on me. Only the pressure of myself 😅 which is probably magnitudes worse and more intense than what anyone from the outside could inflict on me.

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AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C01

The next day I began researching Cloud Practicioner. This involves a ton of sophisticated research better known as Google 🤣 in addition to, trolling all related Reddit threads that I can find. This is how I narrow down what are the best materials to prepare and what to avoid. 99% of my questions have already been answered.

After the scavenger hunt I felt like I could probably pass this one without doing any studying at all. Sometime I have to get outside of my own head. Not sure why I have all the confidence but it’s there (for no reason  in this case) and sometimes it burns me (keep reading).

I sped through the Linux Academy Practitioner course in 3 days. It was mostly review and everything you would expect for a foundational course. Some of the topics:

• • What is the cloud & what they’re made of
  • IAM Users, Groups, Roles
  • VPCs
  • EC2
  • S3
  • Cloudfront & DNS
  • AWS Billing

Date: Monday 05/09/2020 – 0800 hrs

From initial thought, it’s 5 days later. Exam scheduled for 1800 hrs I’m excited but nervous, unsure what to expect. The course prepared me well and the exam felt easy. I knew by the last question I had definitely gotten enough points to pass. I click next on the last question to end exam. AWS in a horrible play forces you to answer a survey before providing you the result.

I PASSED! You have to wait for a day or two to get the official notice that has a numeric score.

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AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate SAA-C01

I clapped for myself but didn’t feel like I had done much. Practitioner is labeled foundational for a reason. Now it’s time to aim for a bigger target. Solutions Architect wouldn’t be easy it would take a whole heap of studying to clear it. I followed a similar approach going through the Linux Academy Solutions Architect Associate course.

Funny how the brain works because although Practitioner was easy it still gave me a chip on my shoulder going into this. Pick a post on Solutions Architect Associate and you’ll hear the pain, how tough it was, how it was most challenging cert of folks lives. I know from CISSP not to listen to this. I’m not sure if folks don’t fully prepare or just feel better about themselves exaggerating the complexity after passing to continue the horror stories. Maybe impose some of the fear they had onto others who are coming behind them?  One thing about me, I get tired of studying for the same thing quick. There’s no way I would/could ever study for a cert for 5 months, 6 months, a year. Yeah-Freaking-Right.

The cool thing about AWS is that all the certifications are built upon the foundation. No matter which one  you go for it’s pretty much going deeper into the usage, capabilities of appropriate related services. I chose to sit for C01 although C02 was recently released I wasn’t going to risk being a live beta tester. I was concerned with the newer exams’ stability. As I write this C01 is officially dead in 3 days, July 1 2020 then all candidates will only have C02 good luck 🤣.

Date: Monday 05/014/2020 – 0800 hrs

5 days later after Practitioner (10 days total elapsed time from initial thought)

Okay I told you to keep reading 😂 I wish somebody would have stopped me. Since no one did the universe had to step in. In a cocky rage I take the exam after studying for only 5 days. Clicking through the survey I was heartbroken I had FAILED and I really deserved it. Who the hell did I think I was?

This is typically the time where you punch yourself and call yourself stupid. This hurt me more than it should have. I was pissed at myself. For not taking enough time to study, sure but the real hurt was because I couldn’t will myself to pass even with minimal studying. LMAO. (WTF Bro) Here’s what I woke up to the next day.

What 🤬 I only missed it by 20 points FML that made it worse.

You BIG Dummy!

Okay. I picked myself up and scheduled my retake for exactly 2 weeks out. After seeing that score I felt like if I could have retook it the next day I would have passed (again idk why, maybe that’s my way of dealing with failure, going even further balls to the wall 🤣) The mandatory 2 weeks felt like forever. I was studying at least 6 hrs a day on weekdays and sun-up to sun-down on weekends. Nothing or anyone could get any of my time. Besides this, the only other cert I ever had to retake was CRTP. It humbled and fueled me more.

I figured I needed to learn from an alternative source – I went to AcloudGuru’s course which I felt was really lite compared to Linux Academy. The last week I found this Udemy course. Stephane Maarek the instructor is the 🐐 Thank You sir! In hindsight I could have used this alone to pass the exam. It was that good. Here’s another review I found useful while preparing for my retake. Thank you Jayendra 💗

Date: Monday 05/28/2020 – 0800 hrs

14 days later after 1st Solutions Architect Associate attempt (24 days total elapsed time from initial thought)

I felt pretty confident this time (it’s justified this time). I realized how much I didn’t know  after this go around and how I maybe didn’t deserve the 700 the first time. I definitely was gunning for a perfect exam 😂. And I forgot to mention when you pass any AWS cert you get 50% off the next, so me failing the first one totally screwed up the financial efficiency I had to pay full price for this one. I PASSED. But did you get the perfect score 🤔 I definitely didn’t feel like there was ANY question I didn’t know the answer for. Here’s what I woke up to the next day

God knew not to give me a perfect score! Probably would have done more harm than good 😂 I was very proud of my score. I ASSAULTED/CRUSHED/ANNIHILATED THAT EXAM. TEACH YOU WHO YOU DEALING WITH 👊🏾 This is how I was feeling at the moment!

via GIPHY

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Amazon AWS Certified Security SCS C01

I needed a break so I took a weekend off. Come Monday I was right back in the grind 💪🏾 I wished Stephane had created a course for the Security Specialty but he didn’t 😞 I went through Linux Academy course. After that, I brought John Bonso course at tutorialsdojo.

Listen. LISTEN. 🗣🔊 LISTEN  The length of these questions are in-freaking-sane. I remember one night losing track of time, completing only like 20 questions but over 2 hours had elapsed. It quickly negged me out. I love reading but my gosh these were monsters and the scenarios were ridiculous. I was like bump this I’m not sure I really even want this thing that bad.

via GIPHY

I took like 2 weeks off and came back to it! I wondered if I forgot all the things I had learned from the course, I hadn’t. Mentally I needed to prepare myself for those questions. Ultimately it’s discipline, will, and patience. Eliminated all distractions once again – nobody can get a hold of me and every ounce of free time is devoted to the task at hand. After completing all the questions there I used my free AWS practice exam. It stinks because they don’t even give you the answers. Like WTF is that about? I found any practice questions I could on on the internet for 3 days straight.

Date: Monday 06/26/2020 – 0800 hrs

Now my birthday is 7/8 so I was going to schedule the exam for 7/7 to wake up to the pass on my birthday. I quickly decided not to do that in case i failed 🤣🤞🏾 so I scheduled it 4 days out on Monday 6/29.

Told you guys I don’t like studying for long. Later on that day at about 1400 hrs I don’t know why but I went back to the exam scheduling and saw they had a exam slot for the same day at 1545 hrs 😲 Forget it! I rescheduled it and confirmed it. As soon as I did that I thought, “why the hell did you do that”?

If it was one thing I knew it was this. I was going to be even more disappointed than I was when I came up short for Solutions Architect for the first time. I imagine it would have been something like this after failing.

via GIPHY

Exam was TOUGH. No other way to put it and guess what? Every single question was a monster just like the Bonso questions. 2 paragraphs minimal sometimes like four, tough scenario involving 3-4 services and baking security into it. All the choices are basically the same and differ slightly by the last 2 or 3 words. By the end you’ll be able to read 2-3 choices at the same time, scanning for the differences and then selecting your answer based on that.

All my exams were taken remotely and one thing I think could have pushed me over the bridge for Solutions Architect that’s UNDERRATED is the “Whiteboard” feature on Pearson exams. I used that thing for mostly every question for Security Specialty. Unless you’re a Jedi it’s really tough to have a good understanding of what the monster is asking you without a visualization. You aren’t allowed to use pen and paper. Use the Whiteboard!

Time wise I breezed through Practitioner in ~35 minutes, Solutions Architect ~55 minutes, and this thing #bruh I remember looking up thinking sheesh you’re two hours deep. I had finally finished all 65 questions. Enter second guessing yourself:

I’m not clicking next or ending exam this time! There was maybe 20 questions I was unsure on. You don’t have to be a mathematician to realize 20 wrong answers out of 65 equals a fail. Listen – reviewing your answers when you’re confident is a cursory thing; when you’re not confident it’s like play Russian roulette. I changed about 9 answers total each one filled with a thought, “You’re probably on the borderline right now, you’re going to change an answer that’s correct, make it wrong and that’s going to be your demise”. It’s worth mentioning that only say 50% of the questions are single choice. The others are select the best 2, 3 out of 6,7 selections. The questions are random from a bank like most of the exams so I’m not sure if same will apply to you, but I did notice at least 2 instances where future questions cleared up previous ones. Example

• • Q3   – Which of the following bucket policies allows users from account xyz123 to put resources inside of it?
  • Q17 – Based on the following bucket policy that allows users from account abc456 to put resources inside of it, what of the following accounts wouldn’t be able to access objects?

Flag questions that seem similar so when you review you can easily identify, compare, contrast you may get a bone thrown your way.

Majority of the exam was exactly that reading, understanding policies – IAM, KMS, Bucket policies you better be able to read and understand them as if they were plain English. There was a ton of KMS related things, make SURE you know the nitty gritty like imported key material, all the different type of KMS encryption types when, where, rotation ect.

Clicked next, through the survey and I had PASSED!

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I think I’ve paid my dues this year guys. I stepped outside of my comfort zone entirely & I’m very proud of that. This year’s timeline looks like the following:

• CISSP 4/9
• Cloud Practitioner 5/9
• Solutions Architect 5/14
• Security Specialty 6/26

Because of Covid-19 this will be the first year since I’ve not been poor 😂 (after graduating ~5 years) that I won’t be on an island celebrating. Such is life. I brought myself AWAE as a birthday gift I’m going to dig into that starting July 11.

If you need advice, support or just want to talk I’m always around. Stay safe and definitely stay thirsty (for knowledge).