How to prepare for AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate Certification exam?

In this article, we will explore how to prepare for the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate certification exam. This is the toughest exam in the associate level exam. If you are preparing for the AWS certification, I would suggest you start with the Developer Associate Exam which is the easiest exam. Then you can prepare for the Solutions Architect Associate exam. But, if you are directly writing the SysOps exam, you will learn most of the things that are not covered in other associate level AWS exams.

Let’s focus on how to prepare for the AWS sysops administrator certification exam. This article would explain you step-by-step on what are the required resources for preparing this exam. There is no official study guide for this exam. Just reading the AWS website and documents would be enough for the exam.

Official Website

Of course, this is the first place to start your certification journey. You have to visit the official link for the certification details. You will get all the details like a blueprint, sample questions, exam information, video tutorials, etc.

Exam BluePrint

The exam blueprint is the official syllabus for the exam. This blueprint explains what are the concepts that are covered in the exam and break up of the sections and marks that are expected from each section. This should be the first document one should read for preparing for the exam.

Whitepapers

These are the important details that are documented for each service and features that are uploaded by AWS team. This whitepaper contains very useful information about the services. The following are the important whitepapers that are a must-read for the exam:

Please read these documents multiple times to get a good understanding of the concepts. That is essential for answering the questions in the exam. Note that SysOps exam would expect you to answer the more scenario based questions and deployment related questions.

Practice Questions

Once you have gone through the required study materials, FAQs, and white papers, then it is the time to take the practice questions. AWS provides few samples questions in the website. But, that is not sufficient for the exam. You have to purchase a good quality practice questions in the market to pass the exam. Whizlabs is one of the most popular practice questions for the AWS certification exam. You can buy their 420 questions and practice well.

Hands-on practice

Hands-on experience is definitely the best and efficient way to learn AWS concepts. Nothing can give you more confidence in picking the right answer like having done it yourself. This is one of the most

Unfortunately, this also highlights one of the drawbacks of this kind of certification – sometimes the exams lag behind the real world. There are some things that the AWS services now do things that aren’t reflected in the certification exam.

If you don’t have the benefit of using AWS at work, create a new AWS account (i.e. using a new email address) and make the most of the free usage tier. Just set up a billing alarm to send you an email when you are in danger of being charged too much, and you can’t go to wrong.

Person taking an online exam — Photo credit to US News & World Report

Getting to Know the Exam

The exam will have 55 multiple choice questions with an 80-minute time limit. Most questions would be single-answer responses, but some are multiple-answer responses. The exact pass mark does change without notice, according to statistical analysis (see the FAQ). Als,o you have to sign an NDA agreement before taking the exam. You are not allowed to write or talk about the exam details. It is against the policy. So, the practice questions offered by various training are based on the syllabus topics that is shared by Amazon.

Additional Resources

Here is some useful information that would be helpful for you to prepare for this certification exam:

I hope this article is very informative to understand the basic details that are required to prepare for the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate certification exam. If you have any questions, please write it in the comments section.