David Hsu

    DevOps Engineering / AWS / Cloud Native

AWS Solutions Architect Associate (SAA) - [PASSED] 心得以及攻略

David

AWS Solutions Architect Associate (SAA) - [PASSED]

經過了幾週的準備，終於通過了SAA的考試 (82% PASS)。以此紀錄以及分享一下準備的過程。

With a few weeks of preparation, I passed the AWS SAA certificate exam with an 82% score. And I will step by step to introduce how I prepare it.


事前準備 Preparation

先自我介紹，我從2016年開始接觸AWS，有使用過的服務有：

The first time I use AWS was in 2016, those services below are I’ve been studying:

  • EC2 (EBS, EC2 RI), LB, ASG
  • VPC (subnet, Route Table, Peering connection)
  • ECS / OpsWorks / Beanstalk
  • S3
  • Lambda
  • Cloudwatch / CloudwatchLogs

其餘沒有列出來的服務都只有接觸過並沒有很深入了解。

一開始先閱讀 AWS 官方的考試指南是一定要的。 但我建議閱讀FAQ就好，因為白皮書太多東西了，有時間再看就好。

First of all, you need to read the AWS official whitpapers. But I do not really recommend the read this, that is too much to read. If you don’t wanna sepend too much time on it, you can read AWS FAQ is basically okay.

考試指南連結

裡面明確指出，你會需要閱讀白皮書(WhitePapers)以及了解何謂良好架構，講白話點就是你要知道每個服務的Best Practices以及多個常見的服務組合該怎麼使用，會有哪些限制。

考這些重要嗎？ 坦白說我覺得很重要。 不一定要把所有服務細節都記在腦海裡，但一定要知道哪些服務怎麼組合，使用情境為何，會遇到哪些限制，以及怎麼做規劃。

有這些知識之後再去做架構規劃會比每次都瞎Google一通好太多了。

那到底考試都考哪些？

I think those services below will be in the real exam, can be a reference. If you wanna know more detail, then you can scroll to the end of this page, I have a detail list for it.

我個人認為必考的如下

  • EC2 (RI, Placement Group, EBS)
  • ALB / ELB / NLB
  • IAM
  • VPC (NAT / IGW / Subnets / Endpoints / VPN)
  • S3 (大重點！) (Storage Gateway/S3各種種類/Lifecycle)
  • RDS (Aurora / RDS) / RedShift / DynamoDB
  • 如何與 On Premise 的叢集做混合雲架構

最後面會再細講到底考了哪些，以及懶人包。

講了這麼多廢話，下面開始介紹我如何準備這個考試。

OK – Let’s see how I prepare this exam.


Stage1. 線上課程 Online Course

我第一個使用的是 A Cloud Guru.

The first course I bought was A Cloud Guru and it was very helpful, but the mega tests might be a little bit difficult to a new guy on AWS. I will suggest you to purchase this course but don’t feel frustrating if you get a bad score. That’s pretty noraml. But I will recommend you to do the section tests, that will let you know what’s the point of the service.

A Cloud Guru - Udemy

Udemy 上常常會有優惠，或上網可以找到優惠代碼，如果有要購買的人可以稍微找一下，省點錢。畢竟考試很貴。

A Cloud Guru 好用嗎？

我覺得如果你從0開始學習AWS，那這將會是一堂不錯的入門課程，還附有隨堂測驗跟Lab。

但如果已經具備一些 AWS 基本知識，那可以直接去做每個項目的隨堂測驗 (e.g. RDS - quiz)。 做完基本就知道自己對這個服務掌握度到哪裡，不足的話，非常建議把整堂課重看一次。

最後會有 Mega Test，也就是 120min 模擬真實考試的60題測驗，A Cloud Guru 的難度比真實測驗要高得太多。 如果想挫挫自己銳氣或是想完整掌握知識，非常建議去做，但是會有點崩潰。

我第一次做 Mega Test 的時候拿到 46% 的分數而已，第二次 68% ， 但最後我還是 82% 通過了，可見這題庫有點太過難。

And I got a 46% when I first did the Mega Test, second time got 68%, that’s really bad but I passed the real exam with 82%. I think the Mega Test really might be difficult.


Stage2. AWS FAQ

之後我發現 A Cloud Guru 還是漏講了很多東西，也或許是 AWS 更新的太快。 我又跑去看所有會考的服務的FAQ。 獲益良多

這邊不多說，大家都知道哪些特別需要看。 請見上面前情提要。

AWS FAQ

As I said, A Cloud Guru doesn’t mention too much details on each services and the official whitpapers are really too much to read. So I read AWS FAQ to dig deeply on each services and I felt it was very helpful.


Stage3. WhizLabs

這是一個線上模擬題庫，我不得不說命中率有75%以上。 非常神準。

裡面包含 8-10 組題庫，還能針對錯誤的題目做客製化題庫，特別拉出來練習，是個考前幾週補強觀念的好地方。

非常推薦考前兩週開始做，到考試日期剛好差不多作完。

特別要說的是， Whizlabs 的題目詳解，真的寫得很好，清楚的告訴你正確觀念，以及你選的為什麼會是錯的。 我覺得大推！

我每次測驗分數大概落在 73 - 90 之間，最後通過正式考試是 82，可以當做個參考囉。

Whizlabs - AWS SAA C01

Whizlabs has 8-10 sets of exam mock and it was very close to the real exam, truly recommend this.

Not only this, it also provide very clear explaination with every single question. That’s very important because you will know why your answer is wrong without read too much AWS documents.

The score I got was between 73 to 90, and I got 82 in real exam, so it’s very close to real one. And Some questions were very similar to real exam's questions.


正式考試 Real Exam

正式考試不外乎難度比任何練習題都還要低一點，其實不難答題。

要掌握的觀念就跟題目做久了一樣，就會發現就是那些東西在重複而已。

OK – Let’s go to the real exam.

I have to say the real exam was simple than any practices I’ve done. So if you have already read FAQ and also bought some mock exams to did, I think you should be more confident to go in the real exam.

And I also have a list can help you to recall what you’ve learned and tell you what’s the point of exam. Let’s see.

  • EC2

    • Reserved Instances (RI)
    • Placement Group
    • AMI (Can it Cross Region？ No, you need to copy it to another Region.)
    • EIP Pricing (For Free if your EIP are attaching to an ENI.)
    • EBS (All kinds of types you all need to know)
    • ASG (Scaling Policies / Terminated Policy / ASG Config)
    • Use IAM Role instead of insert Access Key

  • VPC

    • Subnets & AZ (One Subnet, One AZ)
    • Security v.s. Network ACL (Stateful v.s. Stateless) (Service Level like RDS and EC2, you should use SG, because you will need to control PORTS which you wanna public)
    • Routing Table
    • Public Subnet v.s. Private Subnet (Attched IGW v.s. NAT)
    • NAT (Put it IN PUBLIC Subnet, but need to attach to PRIVATE Subnet.)(要放在Public Subnet, 但是Private Subnet Attach.，在Private Subnet內的都透過NAT跟外網溝通，NAT內的網路流量只出不進)
    • IGW (Public Subent Attach，直接與外網溝通，網路可進可出)
    • Peering Connection (Can Cross Account)
    • VPN (How to communicate with On Premise Networking)
    • VPC Endpoints

  • S3

    • S3 IA / Single IA / Glacier (Lifecycle)
    • S3 Policy & IAM
    • Cross Region Replication (CORS) & Versioning
    • VPC Endpoints for using internal networking

  • RDS

    • DynamoDB
    • RDS Engines
    • Aurora (MySQL / PSSQL)
    • Read-Replica & Mutil-AZ
    • Cross Region Read-Replica
    • Mantainence Window & Buckup
    • Redshift is a Data Warehouse

  • IAM

    • Organization
    • IAM User (Access Key & Password) & Group
    • Role & PPolicy
    • Cross Account & sts Roles

  • Others

    • For Compliance (VPC -> Flow logs / API Call -> CloudTrails)
    • AWS EMR
    • SSM Parameter Store & Secret Manager
    • Beanstalk & Opsworks
    • ECS
    • Lambda & APIGW
    • Cloudwatch & CloudwatchLogs


Conclusion 總結

洋洋灑灑列出了記憶中的考試重點以及必考的觀念跟資訊，如果有遺漏再麻煩留言或來信告知，謝謝。

雖說是考試，但在工作上不難發現用到的也都是這些。 有時候一個Bug解不出來也很可能是因為在某個服務的某個關鍵觀念不熟，所以說考試反映出的題目，跟工作上遇到的難題其實是很雷同的。

我在備考的時候，習慣把一直看到我又一直做錯的題目寫在筆記本裡，製作自己的cheat sheet。睡前看一下，每次寫題目前看一下，都是非常有幫助的，看久了也就記得了。

最後，祝福大家考試都能過關。

Feel so good to pass the exam and I will suggest you be more confidence to go in the real exam. It’s not that hard to do.

If you really don’t know how to prepare, you can follow my steps and I believe you will pass it. Remember to make some notes and read them when you are free, even if you are in toilet.

Also feel free to send me messages or reply this article if you got any problems.

Cheers.


References & Links

列出幾個有參考過以及覺得很棒的網站


2019-12-05 00:23 , David in Taipei







comments powered by Disqus

Categories

Recent posts