Beginning of a new dawn at Gaditek
Engineering is a collaborative profession in many ways, but with the rapid advancement of technology, it’s reasonable to expect that nobody will have all the answers all the time. Constant learning and development have become essential in the industry because if your product isn’t ahead of the game, it’s probably not even in the game.
During an annual talent day this year, Gaditek had announced its new benefit’s for all its employees. Out of the other benefits, the most intriguing benefit for me was to get access to 100’s of premium paid courses for free. Not only that, the expenses of the exam were to be reimbursed by the company.
While the company had always encouraged its employees to learn new technologies and explore the unexplored path to keep in sync with evolving technologies, getting the company resources to help us achieve it was unprecedented. Indeed, a new dawn was beginning.
I had a long desire to get the AWS certificate for my personal and professional growth, and being a strong advocate of mastering a skill, I decided to take on the challenge. Being working on the AWS environment for over a year, this exam became the default exam for me to begin. I took the calculator and calculated my overall expense.
150$ * 165 = 25000 pkr.
The 25k was there, but three main factors motivated me.
- I was mentally prepared to take on the challenge because I had recently completed my Master’s degree.
- I had like-minded colleagues who had agreed to push each other.
- And lastly, being an experienced guy, I wanted to take the lead so my peers can envy me and can ask for guidance.
My Experience of Solutions Architect Associate Certification:
I started studying on 26-June-2021, created a group so that I can share and motivate my fellows.
I took an A Cloud guru course which is the epitome of teaching cloud courses. The study material focused on exam-related topics, so it is imperative to comprehend all of them. I completed the course in 7 days and made a workbook of the essential getaways to revise later. I shared my learning time by time with my peers, which helped me to remember the topics.
The easy part was over. Now, I had to prepare for the exam pattern. The pattern consisted of 65 scenario-based MCQs with a time limit of 130 mins. This might sound easy, but I am attaching a sample question to share the nightmare I had to face.
Reading all the questions like this is a daunting task, and if you are ill-prepared for this task, you will fall prey to the AWS exam.
I had used online practice material. I started from 30 mins to 120 mins daily for four weeks to get prepared for the exam. After the fourth week, I was confident to take on the challenge. I booked the exam; the registration process is at the end.
From the beginning of the exam, I had a constant reminder of “doob gaye paise” in my mind, but I knew that I had to keep myself motivated and fight till the last question. The exam lasted for 2 hours and 10 mins. There were mixed questions. Some were easy, and some had given me ordeal. The key was to have the concepts in mind, which helped to eliminate the options of questions.
Finally, after concluding my exam, the result had arrived after some time, and I was relieved to pass my exam. Words can not justify the happiness of that moment.
Achieving certification is never easy when you have a full-time job and part-time co-curricular hobbies, but persistence and perseverance can help accomplish a difficult task. Special thanks to my company, manager, and friends, who encouraged and supported me throughout the process.
Registration Process:
The Registration Process would have been easy if I knew the right way. However, I have learned the hard way. To ease your process, click on the link below to request a 50% exam voucher from AWS. You will receive a voucher within one week.
https://pages.awscloud.com/GLOBAL_TRAINCERT_ADHOC_SAA-Challenge_11223344556677_voucher.html
Now, create your AWS certification account by clicking on the given link in the email. Once you create your account, you will be entitled to a Candidate id.
Now come to the tricky part. Pearson Vue doesn’t support payments from Pakistan. So you will need to go to the exam centre. By going through the above process, you already have the available date and time. Just schedule your exam by giving your candidate id, discount voucher, and date/time, and you are good to go.
Some technical insights:
- Difference between kinesis streams vs firehose vs analytics.
- Difference between Aurora vs DynamoDB.
- Difference between SQS standard vs dead letter queue.
- In-depth understanding of AWS storage gateway and its type (File gateway vs Volume gateway vs Stored volume vs Cached volume vs Tape gateway)
- When to use EFS vs FSx for windows vs FSx for Lustre.
- Understanding of Amazon CloudFront, S3, and its classes, kms, elastic cache, data sync, cost-effective storage solution, reduce data transfer charges etc.
