Learn AWS


Hi guys, welcome to blueguard.ng, today I'm going to tell you how you can become an AWS Solutions Architect.

Now the main role of an AWS Solutions Architect is to help you deploy your applications on the AWS platform. AWS platform is nothing but a cloud computing platform. So it's not that you can't deploy your applications on the cloud computing platform yourself, it's just that when it comes to organizations, the applications that you need to deploy become a whole lot more complex. That's where an AWS Solutions Architect can help. Ever since cloud computing became a thing, companies around the world have started migrating their physical infrastructure onto the cloud. That's what an AWS Solutions Architect does. They help you migrate your physical infrastructure onto the AWS cloud. 

Companies around the world work on a budget and an AWS Solutions Architect will help design a cloud infrastructure based on the organization's budget. Before that can be done however, an AWS Solutions Architect has to create a design with an intricate and detailed blueprint of the cloud infrastructure that they plan to set up. Now AWS Solutions Architects also have to focus mainly on non-functional requirements like usability, reliability, scalability and performance of the cloud infrastructure. They're also responsible when it comes to minimizing risks that an organization can face when it comes to cloud computing platforms.

 They could face risks like security leaks, calculation mistakes and application down times. An AWS Solutions Architect has to ensure that these don't happen. 

 How Can You Become AWS Solution Architect 

To become an AWS Certified Solutions Architect, you need to clear the AWS Certified Solutions Architect associate level examination. Now here's some details about it. The exam score ranges from 100 to 1000 marks and the minimum passing score is 720. However, there's a catch. The passing marks are actually set using statistical analysis. So they can be changed based on how difficult the examination actually is. The exam fee is $150 and you can also take a practice examination which costs $20. Now regardless of the examination you take, be it Solutions Architect, SysOps Administrator or Developer, any associate level examination costs $150. For the professional level examination, it's $300. 

The exam duration is of 130 minutes and you have two types of questions. Multiple choice and multiple answer.

Now the multiple choice questions have four options out of which one of them is right and you have multiple answer where you have five options out of which two of them are correct. You can take the examination in English, Japanese, Korean and Simplified Chinese.

 Now let's talk about how you can schedule an examination. First let's go to Google and search for AWS Certifications.

Click on the first link. So on this page, you can go to the bottom and find the different certifications AWS provides. Click on Architect and select the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate certification. Click on Register Now. And there you need to click on the AWS certification account. You can sign in with your Amazon account or create a new one. In case you don't have one, you can click on the create your Amazon account button there and create an account for yourself. 

Now after that is done, you can schedule a new examination. And you can scroll down to the bottom there, AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Level Certification. Click on Schedule Exam. Press Continue. And there you need to select your language, which I'm assuming is English.  You can change your country or time zone and other details based on your requirement and select your preferred month.E.g I want to do it in October. Now select Search for Exam Center and select the one that's closest to you,  and there you can select the day that you want to take your test and the time available and press continue. 

Now you can go through all the details here change them if you want to, otherwise you can press continue after this is done close and Here we have the final step which is the fees. You can enter your details there and press pay now to finish the process. 

Now, let's look at an outline of the exam content. What you're going to see in the exam are five major domains and here you have each of the domains with their respective weightages. 

First you have a 34% designing resilient architectures. At 24% you have both defining performance architectures and Specifying secure applications and architectures. At 10% you have designing cost optimized architectures and at 6% you have defining operationally excellent architectures. Now, let's look at each of these domains in detail. 

The first domain or design resilient architectures can be divided into four parts. Firstly, you need to know how you can choose reliable or resilient storage using services like AWS S3, AWS Glacier, and AWS EBS, then you have how you can design decoupling mechanisms using AWS services. Now this is possible with the help of AWS SNS. Now. These aren't the only services that enable this, they are just some of the services. Secondly, you need to know how you can design a multi-tier architecture solution, this is important because you need to know how you can create a solution that involves several other services. Then you need to know how you can design highly available and fault tolerant architectures.

Now for the second domain, defining performance architectures, first you have to know how to choose performance storages and databases Services that are used, like AWS RDS, AWS Redshift, and AWS DynamoDB. The second step is how you can apply caching to improve performance, a service that can be used for this is AWS Elastic cache. Thirdly, how you can design solutions with elasticity and scalability. You have AWS Lambda, AWS CloudWatch and AWS data pipeline. 

Now for the third domain, which is specifying secure applications and architectures, you need to know how you can secure applications using services like AWS Inspector, AWS CloudTrail and AWS IAM, you need to know how to secure data using cloud HSM and AWS Macie and how you can define the networking infrastructure using CloudFront VPC and elastic load balancer.

For the fourth domain, you have designing cost optimized architectures. Firstly you need to know how you can design cost optimized compute solutions.  You can use AWS EC2, Elastic Beanstalk, AWS Lambda and AWS Lightsail. Then you need to know how you can design cost optimized storage solutions using AWS S3, Glacier, EBS and Elastic File System. 

And the final domain to define operationally excellent architectures. You need to set up design features and solutions that enable operational excellence. Some of the features are that you perform operations as code, you annotate documentation, you make frequent and small reversible changes and anticipate and tackle failures.

Its worthy of mention thay, AWS has always provided a lot more job postings as compared to the other two giants in the cloud computing domain, which are Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. 

So here we come to the end of today's post, i hope you guys find it informative. Please be kind enough to share it with your friends and family.

Print this post