I recently completed the AWS Solution Architect - Associate exam, which was a medium degree of effort - I watched 40 hours or so of Linux Academy classes, tried some things in their lab and my own AWS environment (finally redeeming my $100 credit from attending last years re:invent), and passed the exam first time in about an hour flat.
There were a lot of database questions, which were my weakest area, so where I concentrated my study.
I debated going directly to the Professional SA cert, but why struggle with all those DB (and many other product) questions in greater depth, when I could instead do the Advanced Networking exam to get an equivalent (in the partner qualification sense) level certification. In theory this is right in my wheelhouse as a long time CCIE etc. In practice it's a harder exam than I was expecting - partially because it's more niche than the sysadmin ones so there's much less preparation material available, and what there is can be dated; AWS is an ever evolving beast where old limitations are eliminated and new features add frequently. The official prep guide will quote a restriction or state a 3rd party product is needed to do something for which AWS introduced a native product for several months ago. As usual it would help if AWS (and other vendors) had a clear message at the beginning of the test giving a date when it was last revised.
Davis' notes are helpful, and I'll reiterate his point that this is a tougher exam than you may expect. You really need to know Direct Connect well, which is hard as it's not something you can lab.
Interconnecting multiple VPCs, instantiating them with CloudFormation, lots and lots of questions to ensure you know transitive routing isn't a thing usually. Route53 and load balancing and when to use which functions of each. The example questions from the AWS site are as expected highly representative of the exam. The Linux Academy and Udemy practice tests are pretty good but the questions are fairly wordy so it takes time to run through them - I ran through them many times with an open book (Google) on another screen until I was getting 90% odd reliably. I can't speak to the SA Pro exam but the distractors on the Networking exam are much more plausible than the ones at associate level where a lot of questions could be answered by applying common sense.
There were a lot of database questions, which were my weakest area, so where I concentrated my study.
I debated going directly to the Professional SA cert, but why struggle with all those DB (and many other product) questions in greater depth, when I could instead do the Advanced Networking exam to get an equivalent (in the partner qualification sense) level certification. In theory this is right in my wheelhouse as a long time CCIE etc. In practice it's a harder exam than I was expecting - partially because it's more niche than the sysadmin ones so there's much less preparation material available, and what there is can be dated; AWS is an ever evolving beast where old limitations are eliminated and new features add frequently. The official prep guide will quote a restriction or state a 3rd party product is needed to do something for which AWS introduced a native product for several months ago. As usual it would help if AWS (and other vendors) had a clear message at the beginning of the test giving a date when it was last revised.
Davis' notes are helpful, and I'll reiterate his point that this is a tougher exam than you may expect. You really need to know Direct Connect well, which is hard as it's not something you can lab.
Interconnecting multiple VPCs, instantiating them with CloudFormation, lots and lots of questions to ensure you know transitive routing isn't a thing usually. Route53 and load balancing and when to use which functions of each. The example questions from the AWS site are as expected highly representative of the exam. The Linux Academy and Udemy practice tests are pretty good but the questions are fairly wordy so it takes time to run through them - I ran through them many times with an open book (Google) on another screen until I was getting 90% odd reliably. I can't speak to the SA Pro exam but the distractors on the Networking exam are much more plausible than the ones at associate level where a lot of questions could be answered by applying common sense.
