Top five free AWS resources for Certification (An Indian Jugad)
Yeas all these resources are free. Of course, good things are never free as they say but in India, there is one term called “JUGAD” . It basically brings out the smartest persona of an Indian and it goes a long way.
How Jugad will work ( The best way to use the resources)
I am writing about the resources that I have used for my AWS Certification preparation. These are written in no particular order but for preparation we should use the below timeline
- Go through official AWS Certification guides
- Do simultaneous hands-on with Knowledge India videos (Prepares cheatsheet like tutorial dojo)
- Give practice exam form tehcloudonline and don’t see the explanation
- Go through different flashcards and find out the write answers on your own ( Look into AWS documentation, Knowledge India videos)
- Retake the tests until you reach 90% for the last three attempts
- Go through Reddit, cloud guru blogs to see the latest trends and read about those areas
- Don’t hope for the best, because you know you will pass
Resources
AcloudGuru discussion forums, Reddit, Tutorialdojo Cheatsheet
Acloudguru forum
We all know about acloudguru course and off course it costs money. But hey the forums are free and is undoubtedly one of the hidden gold mines for latest certification talks.
Acloudguru discussion forums helps to know the latest (updated till yeasterday) trends areas of questions asked in the actual certification exam
Pros:
- The forums access is fress even if you are out of a trial period
- You will see the lastest and best questions mentioned in the discussion
- Any new areas touched in the exam is mention in the forums
- You will see how successful students have used different materials and their learning path
- Most detailed answers and explanations provided
The subreddits and discussion around that will give you real kicks about how aws is changing the exam pattern. Search for the experience (look for the most recent ones) in the subreddits
Pros:
- Real-time experience shared by the users
- Failure experience in also shared which showcased common mistakes
Different failure experiences written and then the comments given by fellow redditers can teach you what not to concetrate on , avoiding reading white paper for example
Totorialdojo cheatsheet
Thanks to Udemy and Jonsbonso tutorialdojo is a well-known name in the AWS certification world. Of course, the practice questions are paid and worth every penny but again Jugad will come in picture cheatsheets are free. These cheat sheets are really useful for cracking the actual AWS exam. A suggestion is
you prepare your own cheatsheet like this on pen and paper with every time you give any practice test. Service comparison is real key
knowledge India youtube (60 hours of AWS live demonstrations)
knowledge India youtube channel
Pros:-
- Extremely well-articulated step by step live demonstration (No theory)
- A detailed playlist of 69 videos (More than 20 hours of content) which covers most of AWS Solution Architect certification syllabus
- Clarifies doubts in a different area of AWS which are most confusing (ex: NaCl, subnet, security group)
- Real-time implementation and the instructor is really selfless to help the students and make them understand true AWS
- Different Long exhaustive playlist ( Interview tricks, CVs career talks), Automation using AWS, Lambdas, AWS Pricing tricks are goldmines
Cons :
- No text equivalent instructions
- No codebase or CFT template given
- No practice test
- No sandbox lab
Techcloudonline (3 full length updated CSA 2019 practice test)
This is a relatively new site where we can get some good updated practice question tests for free.
Pros :-
- All the questions are updated comes the same as per the exams (All situational)
- Time-bound with the exact number of questions
- The questions are having detailed explanations
- No limit based questions
- You can give the tests as many times as you can
- Reach out to the instructors for any clarification
Cons:
- No analytical dashboard to compare the progress
- The exam history is not stored
- Some times too difficult
EDX AWS Developer Series
EDX provides comprehensive training on different aws services. Which can be used as AWS tutorials for passing the Solution architect certification.
Pros
- EDX standard of delivery and vetted instructors
- End to end solution deployment
- Use different services to come with own application building
- Supported quiz test (Basic)
- Possible certificate (Not free)
- Forums
Cons:
- Starts on a specific date
- Slow-paced and not geared to any certification track
- Too long and time-consuming for a fast learner
Quizlet Flash Cards
Flashcards play a very important part of the preparation. Quizlet flashcards are very updated as it is created by the certification takers. These are often the most relevant tutorial material for aws learning and certification.
- Pros:
Updated by realtime users - Quick notes for different services
- A lot of updated questions (Not close to the actual kind of questions)
- Can be shared across
Cons:
- It’s better to create your own flashcard which helps in memorization
- Cheatsheet and flashcards may not helpful for situational questions
- There are many flashcards which can be overwhelming for a particular exam
Special mentions
1.Jayendra patil blog http://jayendrapatil.com/ (The person who inspired me to take on AWS)
2. youtube channel technical guftagu ( in Hindi) [ it spans from ipv6 in AWS to Hub, brigde configuration
Conclusion
I understand these are not sufficient to pass the exam and most importantly passing exams are only one of the criteria for a job change pay raise. This statement may be a bit shallow and “JUGAD” sounds a bit dishonest. But I know how “JUGAD” can lead to innovation and few samples of that I will be posting in my subsequent post where I will be sharing the code of some real AWS implementation rather than the only certification.
The post above mostly mentions Indian content creators who inspite of their language barrier are creating some grate values in a very selfless manner which makes me proud as an Indian.
This blog was originally posted in https://www.techcloudonline.com/2019/09/25/five-free-aws-resources-for-certification/
