Category Archives: Certification

Amazon,AWS,Security,Certification

Passed AWS Certified Security - Specialty

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It’s been a heck of three weeks—actually, a month. I started studying on June 15th for the Network and AWS Solution Architect Professional, as the networking was expiring first. I decided I focus on one exam at a time. So I did the Professional Architect June 28th, Networking July 6th, and Security on July 16th. All of this while working full time. It reminded me of the effort required to get my Master’s Degree in Computer Science. I’m relieved, as I have my DevOps in November, but at least now there is a break.

Without violating the NDA, let’s talk about the security exam. I took the exam Friday and passed. I did the exam on Pearson Vue. For the exam, I used about 95 minutes, which is half the allocated time. Some questions were real struggles. Hopefully, I’ll remember some of the contexts and research them later for my knowledge. 

The last time I took the security exam in July 2018, I decided on a Friday to take it the following Wednesday. Last time I wrote, “It’s the hardest exam I’ve taken to date. I think it is harder than the Solution Architect - Professional exam.” In 3 weeks, taking the Solution Architect - Professional, Networking Specialist, and Security Speciality. Oh wait, this is the second time I’ve done this. I guess I haven’t learned. I would confirm it’s hard. Is it harder than the Solution Architect Professional in its current form? I don’t know. It’s a more nuisance exam focused on security. AWS has 100,000s pages of documentation on services, Well-Architected, Mitigation strategies, and this exam pulls from those documents. I’m not going to go into details about the questions. But that’s a ton of information to know and understand to achieve this certification. I guess this is why they’re hard, and few people have 11.  

Now the part I will talk about is my preparation. Security is fundamental to AWS. Every service integrates with IAM, most with KMS, and there are many other services like SCPs, Security Hub, Guard Duty, Shield, etc., designed to help protect workloads in AWS and their integration to other services. Last time I probably put 24 hours into studying for the exam. This time it was maybe 18 hours in total. I don’t think I did the preparation justice either time. I think I fell back on my 12 years of AWS experience and the past three weeks of studying for the other exams. Although I knew going into the exam areas like KMS Key Grants, Private CA on ACM, HSM, Secrets Manager were weaknesses, the more I tried to read up and watch videos, the more learning I felt I needed imposter syndrome at work. 

I watched the 96% of acloud.guru security course did watch it at 1.75x- 2x speed. I didn’t slow down. If I didn’t understand a topic, I read or watched something in the resources section below. Again these are resources collected before the exam that I used. 

Resources

It’s been a heck of three weeks—actually, a month. I started studying on June 15th for the Network and AWS Solution Architect Professional, as the networking was expiring first. I decided I focus on one exam at a time. So I did the Professional Architect June 28th, Networking July 6th,...

Amazon,AWS,Certification,Networking

Passed the AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty Exam

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I needed to recertify the Advanced Networking specialty. Technically it expired on 6/20. So I decided to focus on the Professional as it would include Networking and Security topics. I need to recertify Security Speciality later this month.

I took the AWS Advanced Networking Speciality on Tuesday and passed.

I took this exam with Pearson VUE. The exam opens 30 minutes before to get checked out. The process with the same as PSI, only there wasn’t a long wait. Personally, the interface in PSI is a little nicer than Pearson VUE. However, the experience of the otherwise of taking the exam is the same as it’s from the comfort of home.

I’m not going to talk about the exam, as that would violate the NDA. There are three observations. First, the exam requires deep AWS networking knowledge. Make sure you get in the console and get hands-on. The exam, as advertised, requires deep understanding and experience, which can only come thru practical hands-on experience. The other observation I would make is that the exam requires knowledge of services touched by networking, which is why acloud.guru course recommends associate level certification. The last comment on this exam has the most deficient written questions and answers of the certification exams I’ve taken. The questions and answers lack clarity found on the other exams.

I took the exam in about 90 minutes, which is half the allocated time. There were enough questions that I struggled to know the correct answer. I had no sense if I had no sense during the exam of a pass or fail.

Now the parts I can talk about, which was my preparation for the exam. In studying, the number of new networking specific services, including Transit Gateway announced Re:Invent 2018, Firewall Manager introduced April 2018 to name a few. The changes in networking services like AWS Shield, VPC FLow Logs, WAF between studying back in 2018 and studying three years later is incredible. Probably the reason, these certifications have to be re-certified every three years. The first time for the exam, I put about 50 hours of preparation into studying for the exam. This time I put maybe 16 hours into studying.

I watched about 80% of the acloud.guru course. I did watch most of it in 1.75x speed. I would slow down if I didn’t understand a topic or wanted more. I also read many whitepapers and FAQs and watched Youtube videos (2x) and linked below.

Resources:

I needed to recertify the Advanced Networking specialty. Technically it expired on 6/20. So I decided to focus on the Professional as it would include Networking and Security topics. I need to recertify Security Speciality later this month.

I took the AWS Advanced Networking Speciality on Tuesday and passed.

I...

Amazon,AWS,Certification

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional

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I sat the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional exam last Monday.  This was to recertify my expiring AWS Professional Certification, which recertified my Cloud Practioner and Associate Architect.

The exam is challenging. Probably the most time I spent taking an AWS exam, 2 hours and 21 minutes. My original certification came with what was the famous reading comprehension exam, which retired in 2019. This exam didn’t require that level of reading but was harder. Also, I finished the old exam faster than this one.

Let provide three observations on the exam that won’t violate any NDA. First, it feels more SysOps than Architect because the scenarios aren’t as drawn out in the exam, which retired in 2019. Secondly, it tests both the breadth and depth of AWS services. Lastly, back in 2018, I said, “The entire exam is a challenge to pick the more correct answer based on the scenario and question with a driving factor of one more or more of the following, scalability, cost, recovery time, performance, or security.” That statement holds true on this exam.

For preparation, I watched about 50% of the acloud.guru course. I skipped the sections thru comfortable sections. I also read a bunch of whitepapers, FAQs and watched Youtube videos and linked below.

I took the exam with PSI. First, PSI doesn’t start the check till the exam slot, which takes 20-30 minutes. Secondly, the app will suck battery power. Given the requirements, I couldn’t use my regular desk, so be prepared.

Last comment, not that the team at AWS is trying to, but the exam is about getting you stuck on a question, so you run out of time or rush thru and miss core context. I’ve been on the platform a long time and work for AWS, it took me 78% of the allocated time on a Monday night to do the exam, and I read fast. The main takeaway is to develop an exam strategy that works for you and is practiced on the associate level exams before sitting this exam.

List of resources:

I sat the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional exam last Monday.  This was to recertify my expiring AWS Professional Certification, which recertified my Cloud Practioner and Associate Architect.

The exam is challenging. Probably the most time I spent taking an AWS exam, 2 hours and 21 minutes. My original...

Technology,Google Cloud,Certification

Passed Google Associate Cloud Engineer

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I passed the Google ACE Exam. The course while it doesn’t provide all the content covered on the exam, it points out all the topics which are required to pass the exam. Before studying for this exam, I had limited GCP experience but extensive AWS experience.

In addition to what is covered in the Acloud.guru course, I found these following topics extremely helpful.

https://cloud.google.com/docs/compare/aws/

IAM

https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/service-account https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/access/service-accounts#compute_engine_default_service_account https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/understanding-roles https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/understanding-roles#primitive_roles https://cloud.google.com/iam/reference/rest/v1/Policy

Compute

https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/config/set https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/startupscript https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/storing-retrieving-metadata https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/machine-types https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/disks/scheduled-snapshots https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instance-groups/#autohealing

Storage

https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/storage-classes

Analytics

https://cloud.google.com/bigtable/ https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/export-data-file https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/export-data-bigquery

App Engine

https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/app/deploy https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/deployment-manager/deployments/list https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/php/an-overview-of-app-engine#limits

Networking

https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/using-vpc https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/firewalls https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/ip-addresses/ https://cloud.google.com/load-balancing/ https://cloud.google.com/load-balancing/docs/choosing-load-balancer https://cloud.google.com/router/docs/

Kubernetes

https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/controllers/replicaset/ https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/concepts/statefulset https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/concepts/pod https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/concepts/daemonset https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/container/clusters/create https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/container/clusters/resize https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/quickstart https://kubernetes.io/docs/tutorials/kubernetes-basics/explore/explore-intro/ https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/quotas https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/troubleshooting

Billing

https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/budgets

DB

https://cloud.google.com/sql/ https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/mysql/backup-recovery/restore https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/binary-log.html https://cloud.google.com/db-migration/ https://cloud.google.com/spanner/ https://cloud.google.com/datastore/

Functions

https://cloud.google.com/functions/docs/concepts/overview

Stackdriver

https://cloud.google.com/error-reporting/ https://cloud.google.com/logging/ https://cloud.google.com/profiler/ https://cloud.google.com/debugger/ https://cloud.google.com/trace/ https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/audit/

Several people in the forums and the Internet have made comments comparing the GCP ACE to AWS. I found that difficult of the exam compares to the AWS Solution Architect Associate combined with the AWS SysOps Associate exam.

Thank you Mattias Anderson for putting together an excellent course on acloud guru.

I am thinking about pursuing the Google Cloud Professional Architect, before diving into some other certifications.

I passed the Google ACE Exam. The course while it doesn’t provide all the content covered on the exam, it points out all the topics which are required to pass the exam. Before studying for this exam, I had limited GCP experience but extensive AWS experience.

In addition to what...

Technology,AWS,Certification

Big Data Certification

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Image of AWS Big Data Speciality Certification

I passed the AWS Certified Big Data Speciality Exam on Saturday. That makes my 9th AWS certification in the last 10 months. For a moment I’ll have 9/9 certifications. Machine Learning opens this month, so come tomorrow I’ll have 9/10 Certifications. Machine learning recommended training is Big Data on AWS and Deep Learning on AWS. Given I just completed Big Data, probably schedule this exam for sometime in May.

Big Data Certification Exam is similar to the other specialty exams. While not necessarily as hard as the Professional level exams it does require a detailed level of knowledge. Also unlike the other specialty exams, Big Data requires a breadth and depth of knowledge consistent with the Professional Level exams. I prepared using acloud.guru’s AWS Certified Big Data - Speciality which provides somewhere between 50% - 60% of the required topics around Kinesis, IoT, S3, DynamoDB, EMR, Redshift, and Quicksight. I did review some topics in Linux Academy to reinforce the concepts. The rest of the experience is hands-on or lab learnings. AWS doesn’t offer a practice exam, so I tried the Whizlab practice exams. Whizlab’s typically have issues and provide a false level of confidence as the practice exams are always easier than the actual certification exam.

Acloud.guru covers much information, and it also provides a set of links to critical whitepapers and blog articles. As always without, violating the NDA, they do an excellent job in pointing you to the topics to study. Aside from that material, I read a whole bunch of AWS links, which will be posted at the end of this blog article. Also, there was a great youtube playlist John Creecy put together at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlp-qT09uTBcoMpiQkpO-G8GsHOVWyfV0.

I am relatively little experience with Kinesis, EMR, Redshift, and Quicksight, before studying for the exam. I found Kinesis, Redshift, and Elasticsearch fascinating, and will be looking for projects in this space to continue my learning.

Kinesis
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/streams/latest/dev/key-concepts.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/streams/latest/dev/introduction-to-enhanced-consumers.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/streams/latest/dev/kinesis-record-processor-ddb.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/streams/latest/dev/kinesis-using-sdk-java-resharding-split.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/streams/latest/dev/developing-producers-with-kpl.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/streams/latest/dev/building-consumers.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/streams/latest/dev/creating-using-sse-master-keys.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/streams/latest/dev/kinesis-kpl-concepts.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/streams/latest/dev/kinesis-producer-adv-retries-rate-limiting.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/streams/latest/dev/service-sizes-and-limits.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/streams/latest/dev/monitoring-with-kcl.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/streams/latest/dev/agent-health.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/streams/latest/dev/kinesis-using-sdk-java-resharding-merge.html

Kinesis Firehose
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/firehose/latest/dev/what-is-this-service.html#data-flow-diagrams https://docs.aws.amazon.com/firehose/latest/dev/data-transformation.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/firehose/latest/dev/create-configure.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/firehose/latest/dev/record-format-conversion.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/firehose/latest/dev/data-transformation.html#lambda-blueprints https://docs.aws.amazon.com/firehose/latest/dev/encryption.html

Kinesis Data Analytics
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kinesisanalytics/latest/dev/what-is.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kinesisanalytics/latest/dev/streams-pumps.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kinesisanalytics/latest/dev/authentication-and-access-control.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kinesisanalytics/latest/dev/stagger-window-concepts.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kinesisanalytics/latest/dev/tumbling-window-concepts.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kinesisanalytics/latest/dev/sliding-window-concepts.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kinesisanalytics/latest/dev/continuous-queries-concepts.html

IoT
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/iot/latest/developerguide/what-is-aws-iot.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/iot/latest/developerguide/policy-actions.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/iot/latest/developerguide/iam-policies.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/iot/latest/developerguide/iot-provision.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/iot/latest/developerguide/iot-device-shadows.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/iot/latest/developerguide/iot-rule-actions.html

ElasticSearch
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticsearch-service/latest/developerguide/what-is-amazon-elasticsearch-service.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticsearch-service/latest/developerguide/aes-bp.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticsearch-service/latest/developerguide/es-aws-integrations.html

CloudSearch
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/latest/developerguide/what-is-cloudsearch.html

EMR
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emr/latest/ManagementGuide/emr-overview.html#emr-overview-clusters https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emr/latest/ManagementGuide/emr-plan-file-systems.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emr/latest/ManagementGuide/emr-plan-consistent-view.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emr/latest/ManagementGuide/emr-encryption-enable.html#emr-awskms-keys https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emr/latest/ManagementGuide/emr-data-encryption-options.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emr/latest/ManagementGuide/emrfs-configure-sqs-cw.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emr/latest/ReleaseGuide/emr-hive.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emr/latest/ReleaseGuide/emr-flink.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emr/latest/ReleaseGuide/emr-tez.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emr/latest/ReleaseGuide/emr-hbase.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emr/latest/ReleaseGuide/emr-hcatalog.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emr/latest/ReleaseGuide/emr-zookeeper.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emr/latest/ReleaseGuide/emr-phoenix.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emr/latest/ReleaseGuide/emr-sqoop.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emr/latest/ReleaseGuide/emr-presto.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emr/latest/ReleaseGuide/emr-jupyter-emr-managed-notebooks.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emr/latest/ReleaseGuide/emr-jupyterhub.html

QuickSight
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/quicksight/latest/user/welcome.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/quicksight/latest/user/refreshing-imported-data.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/quicksight/latest/user/joining-tables.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/quicksight/latest/user/bar-charts.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/quicksight/latest/user/combo-charts.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/quicksight/latest/user/heat-map.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/quicksight/latest/user/line-charts.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/quicksight/latest/user/kpi.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/quicksight/latest/user/restrict-access-to-a-data-set-using-row-level-security.html#create-row-level-security https://docs.aws.amazon.com/quicksight/latest/user/tabular.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/quicksight/latest/user/supported-data-sources.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/quicksight/latest/user/scatter-plot.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/quicksight/latest/user/geospatial-data-prep.html

Redshift
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/tutorial-tuning-tables-distribution.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/c_best-practices-best-dist-key.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/mgmt/working-with-clusters.html#rs-about-clusters-and-nodes https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/mgmt/enhanced-vpc-working-with-endpoints.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/c_designing-queries-best-practices.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/c_best-practices-use-copy.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/c_intro_STL_tables.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/c_intro_STV_tables.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/cm-c-implementing-workload-management.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/wlm-short-query-acceleration.html

DynamoDB
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/bp-partition-key-design.html#bp-partition-key-partitions-adaptive https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/globaltables_monitoring.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/bp-partition-key-data-upload.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/globaltables_reqs_bestpractices.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/bp-gsi-aggregation.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/bp-gsi-overloading.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/bp-indexes-gsi-sharding.html

Machine Learning
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/latest/dg/types-of-ml-models.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/latest/dg/binary-model-insights.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/latest/dg/regression-model-insights.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/latest/dg/multiclass-model-insights.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/latest/dg/ml-model-insights.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/latest/dg/cross-validation.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/latest/dg/creating-and-using-datasources.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/latest/dg/creating-a-data-schema-for-amazon-ml.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/latest/dg/amazon-machine-learning-key-concepts.html

Pipeline
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/datapipeline/latest/DeveloperGuide/dp-how-tasks-scheduled.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/datapipeline/latest/DeveloperGuide/dp-concepts-datanodes.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/datapipeline/latest/DeveloperGuide/dp-concepts-databases.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/datapipeline/latest/DeveloperGuide/dp-importexport-ddb-part1.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/datapipeline/latest/DeveloperGuide/datapipeline-related-services.html

Data Movement
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/SchemaConversionTool/latest/userguide/CHAP_Welcome.html

Athena
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/athena/latest/ug/access.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/athena/latest/ug/encryption.html#encryption-options-S3-and-Athena https://docs.aws.amazon.com/athena/latest/ug/athena-aws-service-integrations.html

Glue
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/glue/latest/dg/components-overview.html

Image of AWS Big Data Speciality Certification

I passed the AWS Certified Big Data Speciality Exam on Saturday. That makes my 9th AWS certification in the last 10 months. For a moment I’ll have 9/9 certifications. Machine Learning opens this month, so come tomorrow I’ll have 9/10...

Technology,AWS,Certification

Advanced Architecting on AWS

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I took Advanced Architecting on AWS for the last three days. The course is part of the learning process for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional. I already have the certification based on the older version of the exam. The new version of the certification exam went live on February 4th. The course seems to follow the newer certification guide. Overall the course is good as it covers all the services required, the labs were a little disappointing as they lacked complexity. To become proficient and attempt the certification, one would need to a lot more learning and deep diving on the topics covered in this course. It reviews probably 35% of the material required to sit the exam.

Here is my summary by day of the course.

Day One

The morning was spent covering Account Management and multiple accounts, leading to AWS Organizations with service control policies. It finished on billing. The next two discussions where around Advanced Networking Architectures, then VPN and DirectConnect. The afternoon finished with a discussion on Deployments on AWS which was an abbreviation of material covered in the DevOps Course.

Day Two

The morning started with data specifically discussing S3 and Elasticache. Next, it was all about data import into AWS with Snowball, Snowmobile, S3 Transfer Acceleration, Storage Gateways(Tape Gateway, Volume Gateway, and File Gateway), and fished with Data Sync, and Database Migration,

The afternoon was spent on Big Data Architecture and Designing Large Scale Applications and finished with a lab on Blue-Green Deployments on Elastic BeanStalk.

Day Three

The last day was spent on Building Resilient Architectures, and encryption and Data Security. The day ended early with a Lab on KMS. The lab provided some basic KMS and OpenSSL encryption steps.

I thought the course, missed an opportunity to talk about DR architectures.

It’s an interesting course and worth taking if you’re interested in learning more or planning to take the certifications.

I took Advanced Architecting on AWS for the last three days. The course is part of the learning process for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional. I already have the certification based on the older version of the exam. The new version of the certification exam went...

AWS,Certification,Big Data,Technology

Using Athena to Query ALB Logs

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One of the more interesting AWS Big Data Services is Amazon Athena. Athena can process S3 data in a few seconds. One of the ways I like using it is to look for patterns in ALB access logs.

AWS provides a detailed instruction on how to setup Athena on how to setup ALB access logs. I’m not going to recap the configuration in this blog article, but share 3 of my favorite queries.

What is the most visited page by the client and total traffic on my website:

SELECT sum(received_bytes) as total_received, sum(sent_bytes) as total_sent, client_ip, 
count(client_ip) as client_requests, request_url  
FROM alb_logs 
GROUP BY client_ip, request_url  
ORDER BY total_sent  desc;

How long does it take to process requests on average?

SELECT sum(request_processing_time) as request_pt, sum(target_processing_time) as target_pt,
sum (response_processing_time) respone_pt, 
sum(request_processing_time + target_processing_time + response_processing_time) as total_pt, 
count(request_processing_time) as total_requests,
sum(request_processing_time + target_processing_time + response_processing_time) / count(request_processing_time) as avg_pt,
request_url, target_ip
FROM alb_logs WHERE target_ip <> ''
GROUP BY request_url, target_ip 
HAVING COUNT (request_processing_time) > 4 
ORDER BY avg_pt desc;

This last one is looking for requests the site doesn’t process. It’s usually some person trying to find some vulnerable PHP code.

SELECT count(client_ip) as client_requests, client_ip, target_ip, request_url, 
target_status_code 
FROM alb_logs 
WHERE target_status_code not in ('200','301','302','304') 
GROUP BY client_ip, target_ip, request_url, target_status_code
ORDER BY client_requests desc;

Athena is a serverless tool, and it sets up in seconds and the charges based on TB scanned with a 10MB minimum for the query.

One of the more interesting AWS Big Data Services is Amazon Athena. Athena can process S3 data in a few seconds. One of the ways I like using it is to look for patterns in ALB access logs.

AWS provides a detailed instruction on how to setup Athena on...

Technology,AWS,Certification

DevOps Engineering on AWS

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I took DevOps Engineering on AWS for the last three days. The course is part of the learning process for the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Overall the course is excellent it covers substantial material, and the labs are ok. To become proficient, one should do the labs from scratch and build the CloudFormation templates. It reviews 45-50% of the material for the on the DevOps Exam, so each topic requires a deeper dive before sitting the exam.

Here is my summary by day of the course.

Day One

The class started with an introduction to DevOps and the AWS tools which support Devops:

It’s interesting as CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, and CodePipeline are required to replace Jenkins. Their advantage is that it directly integrate with AWS. One question I have is why isn’t there a service like Jfrog Artifactory

One of my favorite topics was DevSecOps which talks about adding security into the DevOps process. There should be a separate certification and course for DevSecOps or SecDevOps.

There was a minimum discussion on Elastic Beanstalk, which was a big part of the old acloud.guru course and had several questions on the old exam.

Lastly, the day focused on various methods for updating applications. In-place updates Rolling updates Blue/Green Deployments Red/Black Deployments

Day Two

The class started with a lab on CloudFormation. The lab was flawed as it had a code deployment via the cfn-init and cfn-hup. The rest of the morning was a deeper dive on the tools discussed throughout Day 1.

Afternoon lab focused on a pipeline, CodeBuild, and CodeDeploy. After the lab, we spent time discussing various testing, CloudWatch Logs, and Opsworks. Most of the discussion was theoretical.

Day Three

The first part of the morning was a 2-hour lab on AWS Opsworks setting up a Chef recipe and scaling out the environment. The rest of the class was devoted to containers, primary ECS, with a lab that deployed an application on containers.

It’s an interesting course and worth taking if you’re doing AWS DevOps or planning to take the certifications.

I took DevOps Engineering on AWS for the last three days. The course is part of the learning process for the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Overall the course is excellent it covers substantial material, and the labs are ok. To become proficient, one should do the...

Amazon,AWS,Certification

Cloud Practioner

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Passed the AWS Cloud Partitioner Certification Exam. Given I have 7 of the 9 certifications before sitting this exam, I didn’t study. The goal before taking the exam was 100% in 20 minutes. I missed 3 questions and took 16 minutes. I took the exam at some point I am going to complete the Big Data Speciality, which will give me all the AWS certifications for a brief moment. The Machine Learning AI beta completed last month and the Alexa Skill Builder just completed its beta. This means by March there could be 10 or 11 AWS Certifications.

Passed the AWS Cloud Partitioner Certification Exam. Given I have 7 of the 9 certifications before sitting this exam, I didn’t study. The goal before taking the exam was 100% in 20 minutes. I missed 3 questions and took 16 minutes. I took the exam at some point I...

Amazon,AWS,Certification

DevOps Pro Links

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I posted to Github a list of links I found valuble when studying for the AWS DevOps Pro certification exam.

The original blog article about passing the test can be found here AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional

I posted to Github a list of links I found valuble when studying for the AWS DevOps Pro certification exam.

The original blog article about passing the test can be found here AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional

Amazon,AWS,Certification

AWS Certification SME

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AWS Certification SME program helps AWS Certification team, develop the certification exams. It’s a complicated process which as many steps, but I won’t get into now. However, I have now done two workshops on two different steps, one an item writing workshop back in November and now a Standard setting workshop.

The most interesting aspect is fellow partitioners create the exams with certifications, there are people to facilitate, validate and review the information.

The questions are designed to have you apply AWS experience and knowledge of situations. Someone asked if labs would be a replacement, maybe running thru a hundred labs would be the equivalent of real-world experience.

Doing the course, reading all the FAQs and whitepapers and watching all the 400 reinvent videos would be the minimum.

AWS Certification SME program helps AWS Certification team, develop the certification exams. It’s a complicated process which as many steps, but I won’t get into now. However, I have now done two workshops on two different steps, one an item writing workshop back in November and now a Standard...

AWS,Certification,DevOps

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional

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Sat the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional Exam last this afternoon.  The exam is hard, as it scenario based.   Most of the exam questions were to pick the best solution for deployments which comprised CloudFormation, Elastic Beanstalk and OpsWorks.   Every one of those questions had 2 good answers, it came down to which was more correct based on the keywords cost, speed, redundancy, roll back capabilities.  

I did the course on acloud.guru and a lot of AWS pages. At some point I will make a page of all the links I collected when studying for this exam.

The exam took me about two-thirds of the allowed time, I read fast and have a tendency to flag questions I don’t know the answer to and come back later and work thru them. This exam, I flagged 20 questions. Most of them I could figure out, once I thought about them for a while. But flagging questions and going back helps manage the time.

Upon submission, I got the “Congratulations! You have successfully completed the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional…”

I got my score email very quickly:

Overall Score: 82%

Topic Level Scoring:

1.0 Continuous Delivery and Process Automation: 79%
2.0 Monitoring, Metrics, and Logging:  87%
3.0 Security, Governance, and Validation:  75%
4.0 High Availability and Elasticity:  91%

That now makes my 7th AWS Certification.

Sat the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional Exam last this afternoon.  The exam is hard, as it scenario based.   Most of the exam questions were to pick the best solution for deployments which comprised CloudFormation, Elastic Beanstalk and OpsWorks.   Every one of those questions had 2...

Amazon,Certification

Amazon Certification

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Last week, I got the privilege to attend an Item Development Workshop for the Associate Architect Exam.   I participated as a Subject Matter Expert as the certification program pulls both Amazonians and industry professionals together to develop questions.   I’m not going to go into details about the workshop or share any content, because of the NDA.  I do want to share 3 observations I found during my time in the in the workshop:

  1. AWS takes certification, the validity of certification and the value of certifications with immense regard.   The program is designed to recognize those who have AWS knowledge.  As the certification is not about memorization but the ability to learn, understand and apply.
  2. The AWS certification team is amazing.
  3. AWS people are very intelligent and have a deep understand of both AWS and technology.  

The experience was a learning fascinating experience and hope to continue to participate as an SME for other workshops.  

Last week, I got the privilege to attend an Item Development Workshop for the Associate Architect Exam.   I participated as a Subject Matter Expert as the certification program pulls both Amazonians and industry professionals together to develop questions.   I’m not going to go into details about the workshop or share...

Certification,Cisco,Networking

Cisco Press CCNP Route Books not aligned with CCNP Route Exam Blueprint

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To my disappointment having completely read the CCNP Routing and Switching ROUTE 300-101 Official Cert Guide and the Implementing Cisco IP Routing (ROUTE) Foundation Learning Guide (CCNP ROUTE 300-101) for the CCNP Route Exam, these books are not aligned with the exam blueprint.

Looking at the exam blueprint, topics like CHAPv2 and Frame-Relay are still covered but are not used as much.   CHAPv2 is not mentioned in either book.   Secondly, technologies like IPSec VPN and MPLS get little coverage in the books but are prevalent in deployments today.   Additionally there no real configuration examples for DMVPN.

Cisco Press claims to be the official certification guides for the exams, it gives me great concern that the exam blueprint and the official certification guide are not in sync.  Wendell Odom [https://www.certskills.com/]. who wrote a number of the original certification guides always did a great job in matching the book to the exam blueprint and providing exercises to reinforce learning.  He no longer the author on the CCNP certification guides as Wendell focuses on the CCNA Routing and Switching.

The last time I went thru CCNP certification I used the Cisco Press Exam Certification Guides and Sybex CCNP books which included exercises.   Sybex no longer publishes CCNP books.

Before taking the test, I think I’ll find a lab workbook and execute the exercises on VIRL.

To my disappointment having completely read the CCNP Routing and Switching ROUTE 300-101 Official Cert Guide and the Implementing Cisco IP Routing (ROUTE) Foundation Learning Guide (CCNP ROUTE 300-101) for the CCNP Route Exam, these books are not aligned with the exam blueprint.

Looking at the exam blueprint, topics like CHAPv2...

Certification,Cisco,Technology

BGP Route Reflectors

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Studying for the CCNP Route 300-101 Route exam, there is no discussion of Border Gateway Protocol(BGP) Route Reflectors.    It doesn’t even make the exam blueprint.  BGP Route Reflectors are one of the most important elements for multi-home, multi-location BGP.    This blog post is not going to be a lesson in BGP, as there are plenty of resources do a great job explaining the topic.   Within an Autonomous system(AS) if there are multiple BGP routers, an iBGP full mesh is required.   Its a fancy way of saying all the BGP routers need to be connected within an AS.  Let’s take an example of a large company which has Internet peering in New York, Atlanta and San Francisco.   If the large company is the same AS number, that means it has at least 3 BGP routers, and for business reasons, the routers are dual and dual homed.   That makes 6 BGP routers.  Remember the formula for a full mesh is: N(N-1)/2.   Based on the formula, it would require 15 iBGP peering connections.  iBGP makes a logical connection over TCP, but it still needs 15 configurations.   This is a small example, but it doesn’t scale if we increased to 10 routers, that means 45 iBGP connections and configurations.

What does a route reflector do?

A Route Reflector readvertise routes learn from internal peers to other internal peers.   Only the route reflector needs a full mesh with its internal routers.  The elegance of this solution is that it is a way of making iBGP hierarchical.

The previous example of 6 routers, there are many ways to organize the network with Router Reflectors.   One Cluster with two route reflectors, two clusters with two route reflectors, etc.

 The astonishing part is something so fundamental to leveraging BGP is not cover on the CCNP Routing Exam according to the exam blueprint.

Studying for the CCNP Route 300-101 Route exam, there is no discussion of Border Gateway Protocol(BGP) Route Reflectors.    It doesn’t even make the exam blueprint.  BGP Route Reflectors are one of the most important elements for multi-home, multi-location BGP.    This blog post is not going to be...

Amazon,AWS,Certification

AWS Certified Security – Specialty

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Sat the AWS Certified Security - Speciality Exam this morning.  The exam is hard, as it scenario based.   Most of the exam questions were to pick the best security scenario.   It could be renamed the Certified Architect - Security.    Every one of those questions had 2 good answers, it came down to which was more correct and more secure.       It’s the hardest exam I’ve taken to date.   I think it is harder than the Solution Architect - Professional exam. The majority of the exam questions where on KMS, IAM, securing S3, CloudTrail, CloudWatch, multiple AWS account access, Config, VPC, security groups, NACLs, and WAF.

I did the course on acloud.guru and I think the whitepapers and links really helped me in the studying for this exam:

The exam took me about half the allocated time, I read fast and have a tendency to flag questions I don’t know the answer to and come back later and work thru them.    This exam, I flagged 20 questions, highest of any AWS exam taken to date.     Most of them I could figure out, once I thought about them for a while.      Thru the exam, I was unsure of my success or failure.

Upon submission, I got the “Congratulations! You have successfully completed the AWS Certified Security - Specialty exam…”

Unfortunately, I didn’t get my score, I got the email, which says, “Thank you for taking the  AWS Certified Security - Specialty exam. Within 5 business days of completing your exam,”

That now makes my 6th AWS Certification.


Sat the AWS Certified Security - Speciality Exam this morning.  The exam is hard, as it scenario based.   Most of the exam questions were to pick the best security scenario.   It could be renamed the Certified Architect - Security.    Every one of those questions...

Certification,Cisco

CCNA Certificate

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Got my CCNA certificate today via email.   Far from the day of getting a beautiful package in the mail.       The best is how Cisco lets you recertify after a long hiatus.

Got my CCNA certificate today via email.   Far from the day of getting a beautiful package in the mail.       The best is how Cisco lets you recertify after a long hiatus.

Certification

Certification Logos

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I think Certification logos are interesting, I would not include them in emails, but some do.   Also,  I would probably not include certifications in an email signature anymore.

Here are the ones I’ve collected in the last few weeks.     I think moving forward, I’ll update the site header to include logos.

I think Certification logos are interesting, I would not include them in emails, but some do.   Also,  I would probably not include certifications in an email signature anymore.

Here are the ones I’ve collected in the last few weeks.     I think moving forward, I’ll update the site header to...

Certification,Cisco

Passed Cisco 200-301 Designing for Cisco Internetwork Solutions

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This morning I sat and passed Cisco 200-301 Designing for Cisco Internetwork Solutions.    The exam is not easy, it required an 860 to pass the exam.   17 years ago when I took it only required a 755.    I got 844 17 years ago.    This time I got an 884.    It’s a tough exam as it requires deep and broad networking knowledge across all domains routing, switching, unified communications, WLANs and how to use them in network designs.

That exam officially gives me a CCDA.   That officially makes 7 certifications (5 AWS and 2 Cisco) in 5 weeks.

Next up is the Cisco Exam for 300-101 ROUTE.

This morning I sat and passed Cisco 200-301 Designing for Cisco Internetwork Solutions.    The exam is not easy, it required an 860 to pass the exam.   17 years ago when I took it only required a 755.    I got 844 17 years ago.    This time I...

Certification,Cisco

CCNA Exam

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I passed the 200-125 CCNA exam today.   Actually scored higher than I did 17 years ago.     However the old CCNA covered much more material.   Technically per Cisco guidelines it’s 3 - 5 days  before I become officially certified.

Primarily I used VIRL to get the necessary hands-on experience and Ciscopress CCNA study guide.   Wendell Odom always does a good job and his blog is beneficial in studying.   The practice tests from MeasureUp are ok, but I wouldn’t get them again.

Next up the 200-310 DESGN.

I passed the 200-125 CCNA exam today.   Actually scored higher than I did 17 years ago.     However the old CCNA covered much more material.   Technically per Cisco guidelines it’s 3 - 5 days  before I become officially certified.

Primarily I used VIRL to get the necessary...

Certification,Cisco

CISCO Certifications

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Last time,  I started studying for Cisco Certifications, I built a 6 router one switch lab on my desk.   One router had console ports for all the other routers, and the management port was connected to my home network so I could telnet into each of the routers via their console ports.     It was exciting and a great way to learn and stimulate complex configurations.     The routers had just enough power to run BGP and IPSec tunnels.

This time, I found VIRL, which is interesting as you build a network inside an Eclipse environment.   On the backend, the simulator creates a  network of multiple VMs.

So far,  I built a simple switch network.   I’m using it with the Cloud service Packet as the memory and CPU requirements exceed my laptop.    Packet provides a bare-metal server which is required for how VIRL does a pxe-boot.   I wish there was a bare-metal option on AWS.

I’m still trying to figure out how to upload complex configurations and troubleshoot them.

The product is very interesting as it provides a learning environment for a few hundred dollars vs. the couple thousand which I spent last time to build my lab.

Last time,  I started studying for Cisco Certifications, I built a 6 router one switch lab on my desk.   One router had console ports for all the other routers, and the management port was connected to my home network so I could telnet into each of the routers via their...

Certification,Technology

AWS Certifications done, What's next?

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I had a goal 4 weeks ago, to pass 5 AWS certifications in 4 weeks.      I completed this goal:

  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

  • AWS Certified Developer – Associate

  • AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate

  • AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty

  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional

For the time being,  I’m going to be done with AWS certifications, unless I get a position which leverages AWS.      This week I made a list of the certifications that I will look at over the coming year with a goal to complete all of them by August of 2019.    I still have a fall semester to finish, so I’ll stop certifications at the end of August until December to focus on finishing my masters.

The list of Certifications I made.

  • Azure

  • GCP

  • CISSP

  • CISM

  • Cisco

    • CCNA

    • CCDA

    • CCNP

    • CCDP

  • TOGAF

  • ITIL

  • Linux Certification

Anyone know of any other ones to pursue?    Think it’s a good list for a Solution Architect as it has a broad range of cloud technologies, networking, and security.

I have decided, that my next challenge will be 2 Cisco Certifications in the next 2 weeks.     After that, we’ll see what is next on the list.

I had a goal 4 weeks ago, to pass 5 AWS certifications in 4 weeks.      I completed this goal:

  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

  • AWS Certified Developer – Associate

  • AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate

  • AWS Certified Advanced Networking...

Amazon,AWS,Certification

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional

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I sat the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional exam this morning.   This exam is hard, probably the hardest of the AWS exams I have taken to date.    I did it in about half the allowed time.   Generally, the test is challenging as it covers a lot of topics and each answer always had two correct choices.   The entire exam is a challenge to pick the more correct answer based on the scenario and question with a driving factor of one more or more of the following,  scalability, cost, recovery time, performance or security.

I felt like I passed the exam while doing it, but its always a relief to see:

Congratulations! You have successfully completed the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional exam and you are now AWS Certified.

Here is my score breakdown from the exam.

Topic Level Scoring:
1.0 High Availability and Business Continuity: 81%
2.0 Costing: 75%
3.0 Deployment Management: 85%
4.0 Network Design: 85%
5.0 Data Storage: 81%
6.0 Security: 85%
7.0 Scalability & Elasticity: 63%
8.0 Cloud Migration & Hybrid Architecture: 57%

I sat the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional exam this morning.   This exam is hard, probably the hardest of the AWS exams I have taken to date.    I did it in about half the allowed time.   Generally, the test is challenging as it covers a lot of topics and...

AWS,Certification

AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate

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I sat the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate this morning.   That makes two exams this week in 3 days.

The exam was a little bit harder than the two other Associate exams as it went a level deeper.   It focused on CloudFormation, CloudWatch, and deployment strategies.      There were nine questions I struggled with the right answer, as all nine had two good answers.     There were about 35 questions I knew cold.    There were three questions duplicated on the other associate exams.   All of the network questions I was over-thinking, probably based on the networking exam this week.    Given this, I wasn’t worried when I ended the test.   However,  it’s always a relief when you get the Congratulations! You have successfully completed the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate.

Within 10 minutes I got my score email:

Congratulations again on your achievement!

Overall Score: 84%
Topic Level Scoring:
1.0 Monitoring and Metrics: 80%
2.0 High Availability: 83%
3.0 Analysis: 100%
4.0 Deployment and Provisioning: 100%
5.0 Data Management: 83%
6.0 Security: 100%
7.0 Networking: 42%

The score reflected over thinking the networking questions.    I wouldn’t recommend sitting two different exams in the same few days.

That make 4 AWS certifications in 3 weeks:

  • AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate
  • AWS Certified Advanced Networking - Specialty
  • AWS Certified Developer - Associate
  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (Released February 2018)

Guess now it’s time to focus on the last of the Amazon Certifications I’ll work on for now which is the  AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional.

I sat the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate this morning.   That makes two exams this week in 3 days.

The exam was a little bit harder than the two other Associate exams as it went a level deeper.   It focused on CloudFormation, CloudWatch, and deployment strategies.      There were...

AWS,Certification

Studying for the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate

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The material for the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate seems to be a lot of the material cover under the Associate Architect and Associate Developer.   I would have thought the material more focus on setting up and troubleshooting issues with EC2, RDS, ELB, VPC etc.    It also spends a lot of time looking at CloudWatch, but doesn’t really provide strategies for leveraging the logs.  Studying was a combination of the acloud.guru and the official study guide, and the Amazon Whitepapers.

I took the AWS supplied practice test using a free test voucher and score the following:

Congratulations! You have successfully completed the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate - Practice Exam
Overall Score: 90%
Topic Level Scoring: 1.0 Monitoring and Metrics: 100% 2.0 High Availability: 100% 3.0 Analysis: 66% 4.0 Deployment and Provisioning: 100% 5.0 Data Management: 100% 6.0 Security: 100% 7.0 Networking: 66%

It interesting the networking score was so low as I just passed the Network Speciality.

This is the last Associate exam to pass for me.    If I successfully pass it, I will begin the process of studying for the Certified Solution Architect - Professional.    That will probably be my last AWS certification as I’ll look at either starting on something like  TOGAF certification,  Redhat or Linux Institute, Cisco, GCP  or Azure, depending on where my interest lies in a few weeks.

The material for the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate seems to be a lot of the material cover under the Associate Architect and Associate Developer.   I would have thought the material more focus on setting up and troubleshooting issues with EC2, RDS, ELB, VPC etc.    It also spends a...

AWS,Certification

Passed the AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty Exam

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I passed the AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty Exam this morning.    The exam is hard.   My career started with a  networking as I had multiple Nortel and Cisco Certifications and was studying to the CCIE Lab back then.  But over the last 12 years,  I got away from networking.    Doing this exam was going back to something I loved for a long time, as  BGP, Networking, Load Balancers, WAF makes me excited.

My exam results

Topic Level Scoring:
1.0  Design and implement hybrid IT network architectures at scale: 75%
2.0  Design and implement AWS networks: 57%
3.0  Automate AWS tasks: 100%
4.0  Configure network integration with application services: 85%
5.0  Design and implement for security and compliance: 83%
6.0  Manage, optimize, and troubleshoot the network: 57%

I have limited experience with AWS networking prior to this exam.   I had the standard things likes load balancers, VPCs, Elastic IPs and Route 53.   This exam tests your knowledge of these areas and more.      To prepare I used the acloud.guru course, also the book  AWS Certified Advanced Networking Official Study Guide: Specialty Exam and the Udemy Practice Tests.    With the course and book, I set up VPC peers, Endpoints, nat instances, gateways, CloudFront distributions.    I put about 50 hours into doing the course, reading the book, doing various exercise, and studying etc.

Based on my experience the acloud.guru course is lacking the details on the ELBs, the WAF, private DNS, and implementation within CloudFormation.     The book comes closer to the exam, but also doesn’t cover CloudFormation, WAF or ELBs as deep as the exam.   The Udemy practice tests were close to the exam, but lack some of the more complex scenario questions.

I plan to sit the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate exam later this week.

I passed the AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty Exam this morning.    The exam is hard.   My career started with a  networking as I had multiple Nortel and Cisco Certifications and was studying to the CCIE Lab back then.  But over the last 12 years,  I got away from networking.   ...

AWS,Certification

Finally got my AWS Certified Solution Architect - Associate Results

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The pdf provided this:

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (Released February 2018) (SAA-C01) has a scaled score between 100 and 1,000. The scaled score needed to pass the exam is 720.

I got a 932….

The pdf provided this:

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (Released February 2018) (SAA-C01) has a scaled score between 100 and 1,000. The scaled score needed to pass the exam is 720.

I got a 932….

AWS,Certification

Exam For AWS Certified Developer – Associate

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I sat the exam for the AWS Certified Developer - Associate this morning.     I felt lucky as the system kept asking questions I knew in depth.   There were only 4 questions I didn’t know the answer to and took an educated guess.

I did the exam in 20 minutes for 55 questions.    I only review questions I flag, and I only flagged about 8 questions.    I felt really lucky as the exam was playing to my knowledge of DynamoDB, S3, EC2, and IAM.   There were other questions about Lambda, CloudFormation, CloudFront, and API calls.   But the majority of the questions focused on 4 areas of AWS, I knew really well.

At the end of the exam, I got the Congratulations have successfully completed the AWS Certified Developer  – Associate exam.

Also within 15 minutes, I got the email confirming my score:

Congratulations again on your achievement!

Overall Score: 90%
1.0 AWS Fundamentals: 100%
2.0 Designing and Developing: 85%
3.0 Deployment and Security: 87%
4.0 Debugging: 100%

I’m still waiting on my score from my Solution Architect - Associate Exam.    In the meantime, I’ll get back to studying my AWS Networking Speciality.

I sat the exam for the AWS Certified Developer - Associate this morning.     I felt lucky as the system kept asking questions I knew in depth.   There were only 4 questions I didn’t know the answer to and took an educated guess.

I did the exam in 20 minutes...

AWS,Certification

AWS Practice Test for Certified Developer – Associate

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AWS offers practices emails through PSI exams.   Cost $20 and gives you 20 questions for practice.    I did the exam today.   Here is the results email.

Congratulations! You have successfully completed the AWS Certified Developer Associate - Practice Exam
Overall Score: 95%
Topic Level Scoring: 1.0  AWS Fundamentals: 100% 2.0  Designing and Developing: 87% 3.0  Deployment and Security: 100% 4.0  Debugging: 100%

That’s a confidence builder going into the exam tomorrow morning.

AWS offers practices emails through PSI exams.   Cost $20 and gives you 20 questions for practice.    I did the exam today.   Here is the results email.

...
AWS,Certification

Back to Studying for my Developer Exam

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I had scheduled the test for June 14 for AWS Certified Developer – Associate.   I need to stop studying the Network information and finish studying for the developer exam.    I had completed the   https://acloud.guru/ course on Sunday.      I decided to purchase  AWS Certified Developer - Associate Guide: Your one-stop solution to passing the AWS developer’s certification

The book was good, it covers all the major topics for the associate developer certification, but it lacks hands-on lab and there are several errors in the mock exams.

I had scheduled the test for June 14 for AWS Certified Developer – Associate.   I need to stop studying the Network information and finish studying for the developer exam.    I had completed the   https://acloud.guru/ course on Sunday.      I decided to purchase  AWS Certified Developer - Associate Guide: Your...

AWS,Certification

Waiting for Score Email

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Still waiting on the score from the AWS Certified Solution Architect – Associate exam.

However, I started also studying for the AWS Certified Advanced Network - Speciality.

I love networks and networking, especially VPNs and BGP.     So I felt it was a good challenge as well as something I enjoyed doing.    12 years ago, I had multiple Cisco routers on my desk and would run BGP configurations, OSPF and EIGRP configurations.       Maybe I need an AWS DirectConnect…..

Still waiting on the score from the AWS Certified Solution Architect – Associate exam.

However, I started also studying for the AWS Certified Advanced Network - Speciality.

I love networks and networking, especially VPNs and BGP.     So I felt it was a good challenge as well as something I enjoyed...

AWS,Certification

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

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I sat the AWS Certified Solution Architect - Associate exam.    It was challenging as it covers a broad set of AWS services.   I sat the February 2018 version which is the new one.

At the end of the exam, I got a Congratulations have successfully completed the AWS Certified Solution Architect - Associate exam.

I decided that I would complete the AWS Certified Developer - Associate next.

I sat the AWS Certified Solution Architect - Associate exam.    It was challenging as it covers a broad set of AWS services.   I sat the February 2018 version which is the new one.

At the end of the exam, I got a Congratulations have successfully completed the AWS Certified Solution...

Congratulations! You have successfully completed the AWS Certified Developer Associate - Practice Exam
Overall Score: 95%
Thank you for taking the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate - Practice (Released February 2018) exam. Please examine the following information to determine which topics may require additional preparation.
Overall Score: 80%
Topic Level Scoring: 1.0 Design Resilient Architectures: 100% 2.0 Define Performant Architectures: 71% 3.0 Specify Secure Applications and Architectures: 66% 4.0 Design Cost-Optimized Architectures: 50% 5.0 Define Operationally-Excellent Architectures: 100%

I was a little concerned after the practice exam.   I spent the rest of the evening studying.    There various blogs which talk about the exam, but it seems depending on the day, exam, the location you could need anywhere from a 65% to a 72% to pass the exam.    Based on the practice I didn’t have a lot of room for error.

AWS offers practices emails through PSI exams.   Cost $20 and gives you 20 questions for practice.    I did the practice exam today.   Here is the results email.

Thank you for taking the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate - Practice (Released February 2018) exam. Please examine the...
Certification

Feeling Sorry

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I spent 24 hours feeling sorry for myself.   I had already started studying the AWS Certified Solution Architect - Associate as I wanted to be prepared if I got an offer from Amazon.       Now was their no reason to continue the preparation for the exam?

What was I going to do?     I decided to continue to study for the exam, and credential myself.   Possible with the end goal of either going back to work for Amazon or working somewhere else.    Certification couldn’t hurt me.

It had been over a decade since I was last certified.    At one point, I had multiple networking certifications from Nortel, my CCNA, CCDA, CCNP and was studying for a CCIE.     The process is always hard, but I love learning.    So I decided to push forward with my AWS certification.

I spent 24 hours feeling sorry for myself.   I had already started studying the AWS Certified Solution Architect - Associate as I wanted to be prepared if I got an offer from Amazon.       Now was their no reason to continue the preparation for the exam?

What was I going...