I recently took AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate (SOA-C02), and I felt that among the Associate exams, it teaches the most practically useful knowledge, so I’m sharing what I learned.
Table of Contents
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Exam Result
- Score: 765/1000 (passed)
- Exam date/time: Monday, October 2, 2023, from 17:30 (test center)
- Pass notification (email): Tuesday, October 3, 2023, 18:14
Prerequisite Knowledge
- I had already passed
SAA-C03andDVA-C02 - I use AWS at work (application development)
- Rather than infrastructure-focused AWS services, I mainly work with services that get built into applications, such as
SQSandDynamoDB
- Rather than infrastructure-focused AWS services, I mainly work with services that get built into applications, such as
Study Method (Conclusion: CloudTech Only + ChatGPT)
I went through the CloudTech question bank 3 times.
Also, as I mentioned in my article about taking DVA, I studied using ChatGPT as well again this time.
What I Did
- 1st pass: When an unfamiliar service came up, I had ChatGPT explain that service each time while I went through each question and answer once
- 2nd pass: For each question, I had ChatGPT explain why that choice was the correct answer to solidify my understanding
- 3rd pass: Solved the questions normally as a mock exam. For the questions I got wrong, I had ChatGPT create “easy-to-remember points (my own memorization phrases)”
The Actual Exam
There were quite a lot of questions about AWS IAM and AWS Organizations.
Rather than app-oriented services, my impression was that the exam leaned toward the side that manages them (operations, permissions, and governance).
Thoughts
This was my first time using CloudTech, and it was extremely easy to use. It is subscription-based, but it has many practice questions, and you can see question banks for all AWS certifications in one place, so I felt like this alone might be enough for every certification… (stealth marketing)
Finally
CloudTech × ChatGPT is highly recommended.