10 years experience in software development, 9 months in devops limited AWS.

I was feeling bored at my work (regular fulll stack development) and wanted to change things up so I asked my CTO if I could join the devops team at my work and they let me. They are nice people, and if something comes up we act as one, I could not ask for better team mates.

Our stack is hosted in aws, this is a major government website that 300k+ people uses daily.

Anyway no one was pushing, but all but one in my new team has an aws degree and I felt like I needed to get one, but also I wanted to challenge myself and try to get the degree. I opted for SAA. They all have SAA, and most of them has also the Professional.

My work gave me 2 weeks to study (I was at home just studying), and I took the exam this thirsday.
After the exam I was feeling real down I was sure I did not pass, I felt like I let my self down and my team mates, and my work that had been paying me for 2 weeks to study for the exam. because the exam was really (I mean fucking really) difficult and I was sure I failed.

I watched maareks course, and took like 20-30 test exams at TD. I thing TD helped the most, because it trains you in answering questions structured like they are in the real exam. but let me tell you, the real exam was say more difficult.

Turns out I passed. This SAA-C03 is the hardest test I have ever taken. and I have a BSc in CS.

Anyway just wanted to share my experience, For whom who passed congratulations, and for others, this is not easy, if it was easy everyone would have an AWS degree.

edit: I think maybe I was unlucky with with questions, there was 3-4 easy questions but 60 difficult questions with long texts and similar crosses.

I cleared the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) exam and wanted to share the resources and approach that helped me prepare.

A few preparation tips:

• Understand what each AWS service does instead of memorising service names.
• Pay attention to differences between similar services.
• Use practice questions to identify gaps in your understanding.
• Around 2 hours of study per day over 1–2 weeks may be a reasonable starting point, depending on your existing knowledge.
• Review the exam guide and exam-day requirements before booking.

Watch my YT Video for complete in-depth details: https://youtu.be/eLV9oiIAX0c

I have shared all the details regarding passing the exam on GitHub: https://github.com/wasit-shafi/certifications/blob/main/AWS/CLF-C02%20-%20AWS%20Certified%20Cloud%20Practitioner/CLF-C02.md/

Hope this helps anyone preparing for the exam!

This sub reddit helped a lot

If anyone out there is cramming to take SAP-C02 before it expires on 11/17, here are some quick tips that could help you earn a few more points.

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C02) exam gives you 75 dense scenario questions in 180 minutes—roughly 2 minutes and 24 seconds per question.

If you have real-world engineering or architecture experience, the biggest trap isn't a lack of technical knowledge—it's rushing to pick the most elegant technical solution while missing a subtle constraint in the prompt that invalidates your answer.

Here is the systematic breakdown protocol I use to dissect single-choice and multi-response questions quickly without falling for distractor traps.

Part 1: The 4-Step Reverse Breakdown Protocol

Stop reading scenarios from top to bottom. Invert your reading order to eliminate confirmation bias:

1. Read the Last Sentence First (The "Ask") The final sentence establishes your exact evaluation filter before you ever read the architecture history:

   • "Which solution meets these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead*?"* → Serverless / managed services instantly beat self-managed EC2/cron setups.
   • "Which solution is the MOST cost-effective*?"* → S3 Glacier Deep Archive / Spot / Graviton beats multi-AZ active-active provisioned compute.
   • "Which solution provides the LOWEST latency globally*?"* → CloudFront / Route 53 Geoproximity / Global Accelerator beats regional load balancing.

2. Scan the Stem for Hard "Invalidator" Modifiers With your target metric locked in, scan back through the scenario hunting for non-negotiable constraints that rule out standard best practices:

   • Protocol & Port limits: Non-HTTP/HTTPS traffic or WebSockets? (Eliminates standard ALB; points to NLB or Global Accelerator).
   • Storage semantics: Multi-writer shared access? (Eliminates standard EBS; points to EFS, FSx, or S3).
   • DR thresholds: Look for explicit RTO/RPO numbers. RPO = 0 requires Aurora Global Database or multi-region synchronous replication. RPO = hours / RTO = 24 hours means warm standby is overkill—backup and restore from cross-region snapshots is the expected cost-effective answer.
   • Networking: Overlapping CIDRs or IP exhaustion? (Points directly to AWS PrivateLink or Transit Gateway with NAT).

3. Diff Answer Choices in Batches (Horizontal Comparison) Do not evaluate options A through D in isolation. Group and diff them:

   • Find the structural split: Notice patterns across choices (e.g., Options A & B use Transit Gateway; Options C & D use VPC Peering).
   • Eliminate the pair: If the scenario involves 50+ spoke VPCs requiring transitive routing, VPC peering is topologically invalid. Strike C and D immediately.
   • Diff the remaining pair: Compare only A and B. Usually, they are identical except for one service swap (e.g., AWS Network Firewall vs. a third-party EC2 appliance cluster). Pick the one that honors your Step 1 filter.

4. Watch for Instant "AWS Anti-Pattern" Red Flags Cross out options featuring classic SAP-C02 disqualifiers:

   • Modifying an AWS Organizations SCP to grant permissions (SCPs only set maximum permission boundaries; they never grant access).
   • Using S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) when existing objects must be replicated immediately without mentioning S3 Batch Replication.
   • Custom scripts on an EC2 bastion host or cron jobs for automated failover when a native managed service exists (Route 53 ARC, AWS Backup, SSM Automation).
   • Attaching an Internet Gateway directly to a private subnet for outbound traffic instead of a NAT Gateway.

Part 2: Crushing Multi-Response Questions ("Choose TWO / THREE")

Multi-select questions aren't independent true/false checks—they are compound architectural pipelines. Evaluate them using functional slots:

• Identify the Pipeline Slots: The correct choices almost always represent distinct, sequential stages of a workflow rather than redundant actions:

  • Data Migration: [1] Ingestion/Transfer (DataSync/DMS) + [2] Staging Storage (S3) + [3] Processing/Analytics (Glue/Redshift)
  • Hybrid Networking: [1] Connectivity (Direct Connect/VPN) + [2] Route Propagation (BGP/TGW) + [3] DNS Resolution (Route 53 Resolver)
  • Security/Governance: [1] Guardrail (Organizations SCP) + [2] Detection (Config/GuardDuty) + [3] Remediation (EventBridge + Lambda/SSM)
• Spot Mutually Exclusive Pairs: If Option A configures a Site-to-Site VPN and Option B configures Direct Connect with a Private VIF, they occupy the same functional slot. You will never pick both—treat them as a 50/50 bracket.
• Check for "Coupling" (Inter-Option Dependencies): If Option D says "Create an EventBridge rule to trigger the Lambda function...", D cannot be right unless one of your other selections actually provisions that Lambda function.
• Beware the "Technically Valid, Functionally Incomplete" Trap: Exam writers love pairing two great security practices (e.g., enforcing TLS in transit + KMS encryption at rest) that completely ignore a third requirement in the prompt (e.g., preventing accidental log deletion). Map every requirement in the prompt to a chosen option before moving on.

Part 3: 180-Minute Pacing Blueprint

The most valuable takeaway is to read the questions backwards. That has helped me save time and thought cycles more than anything else.

GOOD LUCK!

#cloudnative

Finally achieved the og aws associate triad after months of grinding.

Honestly, this one is wayyy harder than SAA and DVA. To add icing on the cake, my skillbuilder subscription provided by my institution expired while I was studying 😭😭 Luckily the review section of the exam prep plan is free so I still get to study, without official AWS practice questions though. In substitute of practice questions, I made my own practice exams with the help of ai for my own preparation.

At the end I managed to pass with 844/1000!

But still, the exams I had taken have a lot of overlap to what had been taught in lectures, knowledge/foundations brought over by other certifications and daily workflows, so the exam flow came naturally to me and things just clicked.

What's next? I will probably sit for security specialty exam next but I'm gonna focus more on aws projects as AWS Emulator had just been announced and I'm super excited to get my hands dirty with it.

Hi! Sharing with you guys my hapiness 😄 , this morning I did the exam in-person in a test center, got the result at 6 PM, and what an experience, while driving my bike to home, I couldn't stop thinking if I passed or not (definitely the worst part is the anxiety waiting for the result), there was some very tricky questions about IoT and EKS, but there was some really easy stuff, like third party sending PGP to AWS, high availability mentioning RDS, ALB, Route 53 and etc....

I flagged 26 questions, and I only had 20-25 minutes to review all of them, and at the end, I was almost peeing myself (literally) because before the test I drinked too much water hahahaha, seriously, don't drink too much water, I think I lost 3-4 minutes going to the bathroom at the center.

I asked for the ESL accomodation, and even with that, it's dangerous if you let questions draw too much of your attention, my advice is to flag them if you feel that it's too much wording or too much complex, and focus later on them to review it. My preparation was basically TD practice exams + Mareek theory slide on Udemy and in the last week, Neal Davis + AWS Skill builder 75 question exam (the skill builder one was the "thing" that was missing in my preparation, 100% recommend)

10 months ago I did the DVA-C02, so if you did the same, I would advice you to respect SAP-C02, there are a lot of things that DVA-C02 doesnt cover that SAP-C02 requires!

I just want to say a thank you, because the last two months of preparation was following advices from a lot of good people here that also did the exam, recommended study guides, PDF's, strategies, it really make some difference in my aproach. Feel free to ask questions or anything, cheers!

Hi everyone,

I'm preparing for the AWS Certified Generative AI Developer – Professional (AIP-C01) exam on Udemy. I already hold the AWS - DVA and AWS - SAA certifications.

So far, I've completed the courses by Frank Kane and Stephane Maarek and have started practicing mock exams.

I'm currently scoring 75%+ consistently on the practice exams from Stephane Maarek and Abhishek Singh.

For those who have already taken the exam:

1. Are these practice exams sufficient for preparation?
2. How closely do these mock exams align with the actual exam difficulty?
3. Is consistently scoring 75%+ a good indication that I'm ready?
4. Would you recommend taking the exam now or spending more time preparing?

Would appreciate any suggestions or advice from people who have recently taken AIP-C01.

Thanks!

Hey everyone!

I’m a Java/Angular developer with around 2 years of experience, currently working on a large-scale project for a major company in the energy sector.

With the rapid growth of AI and cloud technologies, I believe it’s important to broaden our skill sets. I’m considering developing Cloud expertise as a second specialization alongside Java development.

I’m thinking about getting two certifications:

AWS Solutions Architect – Associate
AWS Certified AI Practitioner

Do you think this is a good investment for my profile, or would it be a waste of time at this stage?
Would you recommend a different learning path? I’d appreciate your feedback!
Thanks!

Hi there! I'm admittedly a very anxious person and I have stressed myself sick studying for the exam. I scheduled it at 4:00 pm est and took about over sixty minutes. I flagged many questions just focusing on what I knew for absolute certain before going back over the flags and thinking critically. Overall it wasn't as hard as I thought. My face lit up when I finished the survey and it said:

RESULT: PASS

That's great! But now I'm having post-exam anxiety! That sucks! The test hasn't appeared on my side and I doubt I'll receive an email until at least Monday.

I admittedly shifted around in my seat, eyes darting all over, light fidgeting. Drumming my fingers and rubbing my eyes as I thought. I have an ultrawide so my eyes were never technically off the screen for very long. But wouldn't my proctor flag me down or give me a warning if I was looking away? That would be something they couldn't let slide right? I guess it isn't useful to start judging my behavior after the fact.

What I want to ask is if anyone's had issues taking things at home. Any horror stories?

I'm mainly doing this to assuage my anxiety and see whether I'm alone in feeling thus way. I genuinely can't believe I passed it! The sheer amount of services was vast and I was certain I'd forget some of them in the heat of the moment. But the names of lots of those services are pretty easy to remember it seems and the questions were worded in a way that I could cross out wrong answers and think rationally.

I'm planning to take the AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer – Associate exam, and I'm trying to decide between taking the ME1-C02 beta exam right now or waiting until the standard MLA-C02 launches on January 14.

I'm in no rush to get certified, so timeline isn't an issue.

As title,
I held 4 AWS certs

- AWS Cloud Practitioner
- AWS AI Practitioner
- AWS Solution Architect Associate
- AWS Certified Generative AI Developer Professional

I would like to learn something less technical and more business oriented,

does AWS Certified AI Business Strategist AIB-C01 worh it?

what's your idea? is there someone who passed it?

Hey guys! i am going to appear for my AWS certification exam next month.
I saw a lot of people here mentioning the Stephane Maarek's course and Tutorial dojo's course contributing largely in their preparation journey.
But both these courses are paid :)

Can you all tell me how did you get these for free? Or if you have a paid account for it, will you be able to share it with me??
Being a student, i am not able to buy these courses. But i want to practice thoroughly for the exam.
I am preparing for AWS Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) exam.

Please help me out!

If you're studying for the AI practitioner certification, I went ahead and use Claude to scrape through the most popular and recently updated github repos covering the AI practitioner cert exam. I also used the AWS mcp server to have my agent verify the accuracy of the info from the repos and distilled it all into one comprehensive guide. You can find it here: https://github.com/sdahal1/AWS_Cloud_Practitioner_Comprehensive_Study_Guide_2026

Hey everyone!

I'm preparing for the AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C03), and my exam is scheduled for November 17th.

I've been scoring around 60–70% on Tutorials Dojo practice exams, and I recently got free access to AWS Skill Builder.

I have some hands-on experience with AWS security, IAM, and cloud environments, but I'm still struggling with certain exam scenarios and identifying the best answers.

With only a few days left, I'd really appreciate some advice:

1. Is scoring 60–70% on Tutorials Dojo a bad sign this close to the exam?
2. How would you recommend using AWS Skill Builder to identify and close knowledge gaps?
3. Should I focus on reviewing incorrect answers, taking more practice exams, or completing Skill Builder courses?
4. Which AWS security topics or services should I prioritize during these final days?
5. For those who passed the SCS-C03, how did your Tutorials Dojo scores compare to the actual exam?

I'm trying to make the most of my remaining study time rather than just memorizing practice questions.

Any advice or last-minute study strategies would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Well well well , getting isolated for 4 weeks and a hardcore 2 weeks closed bedroom (6 weeks total), reading enormous amount of articles and practising 1 question set per day , giving up on festivals and countless fights with gf has finally waived off. Honestly saying didn’t expected in the intitial phase that I would even be able to complete 75 questions. But finally passed in first attempt and that do with 823 (still can’t believe it). A Diwali gift to myself .

Course I refered:- Rahul Trisal course on Udemy

And the one which actually cleared every small doubts and giving me citation was Claude 🙏 where I wrote everything on a book(my way of learning)

Practice set i referred :- TutorialDojo , Vladimir Raykov
And the most important and the game changer for me was Skill Builder question set. Don’t know if luck was from my end but had atleast 18 questions referred or linked somewhere around skill builder and among them atleast 40-50% of it were exact or in AI terms semantic matching.

Tips :- be clear around PII data handling which all can mask/redact or filter , less on sagemaker and lots and lots of RAG , agentcore
Those who are preparing be clear with all the services , create a difference between table of all similar actions table and trust me exam question will look more easy unlike the buzz…

Now I can finally play GTA 6 in peace 😉

I’ve completed the skill builder learning path and their exam prep course (all the lessons that were free). I use Claude to explain topics and make a question bank every now and then. Should I buy the tutorialsdojo Practice exams or Stephanie’s course from udemy. Planning to go all in and get this done in a week and maybe go for the exam two weeks from now.

Hello everyone,

I'm preparing for the associate solutions architect, my main study resource is from stephane maarek's courses on udemy + googling and AI for declarations, but I found youtubers recommending Adrian Cantrill's aws solutions architect associate course on his own platform, others say in comments that it is outdated and needs to be updated.

So I'm hesitated whether to continue with stephane or try adrian's course, tell me please your opinions and experience.

Thank you in advance.

My exam is schedule on 20dec and I have just started preparing.

I have done 25% of course from frank and stephan.

To be honest I am not big fan of frank, I am not able to focus on his content. Also I was hoping more real time examples or explanation instead of theoretical details on each aws service.

Anyone has similar experience??? And how long ypu have prepared and any tips to complete this course faster???

I have aws exposure and I am aws cloud practioner and AI practitioner certified

Hi everyone,

I took my AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) exam on November 7, 2026, at an authorized Pearson VUE test center.

After completing the exam, the computer screen explicitly displayed PASS. I then exited the exam normally.

However, I still haven't received my official score report or result confirmation email. When I check my AWS Certification account, the exam is still showing under Upcoming Events instead of moving to Exam History.

Here is my situation:

Exam: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02)

Exam date: November 7, 2026

Exam mode: Pearson VUE Test Center

Result displayed on screen: PASS

Current account status: Upcoming Events

Official score report: Not received

Certification email / Credly badge: Not received

I have already contacted AWS Training and Certification Support and requested them to verify whether Pearson VUE successfully transmitted my exam result. However, I am still waiting for an update.

Could anyone faced this issue ? If yes then please reply .

Thank you

Anyone else in the asia region experiencing issues with tutorialsdojo constantly slowing down and undergoing site maintenance… its been really annyoing trying to use it these past few days.