© 2016, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.

Russell Sayers, AWS Technical Architect

February 23, 2017

How to prepare for certification and advance your career

Cloud migration has accelerated, and AWS is innovating faster than ever

AWS Pace of Innovation

New features and/or

services

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 20160

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

82159

280

516

722

1000~

The result: a demand for cloud skills

Companies need cloud expertise now more than ever

Indeed Job Postings that include “AWS”

2012 2013 2014 2015 20160

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200

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400

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700

Relative Percentage

*Indeed.com job trends, http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends/q-AWS.html

Certifications stand out

AWS Certifications validate knowledge with an industry-recognized credential

Why get certified?

What industry research says

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate is recognized as a high

paying certification in the industry

*Data from the 2016 Global Knowledge IT Skills and Salary Report

73% of respondents who pursued certification in the

past year noted an increase in their job effectiveness

because of related training

$123,801average annual salary

What other IT professionals say

AWS Certification has helped me establish my technical

credibility at Adobe.” – Todd Murchison

Cloud Operations Engineer, Adobe Systems

“ The company now sees me as an expert in my area.

Colleagues consult me on cloud solutions more often.”

– Deepak PanthArchitect, Accenture

“

Our certification roadmap

Coming soon: specialty certifications

Tips for Preparing

How to prepareThe best preparation for certification exams is practical experience, and we also offer preparation resources to help you study

How to prepareThe best preparation for certification exams is practical experience, and we also offer preparation resources to help you study

How to prepareThe best preparation for certification exams is practical experience, and we also offer preparation resources to help you study

How to prepareThe best preparation for certification exams is practical experience, and we also offer preparation resources to help you study

How to prepareThe best preparation for certification exams is practical experience, and we also offer preparation resources to help you study

How to prepareThe best preparation for certification exams is practical experience, and we also offer preparation resources to help you study

How to prepareThe best preparation for certification exams is practical experience, and we also offer preparation resources to help you study

How to prepareThe best preparation for certification exams is practical experience, and we also offer preparation resources to help you study

Take your certification exam

Sample Questions

Sample SA – Associate questionYou are architecting a website for viewers of a commercial to complete a survey. The survey is an interactive PHP application, displaying dynamic set of questions to each viewer. Which architecture will use Auto Scaling to scale out during periods of peak demand, while providing a cost optimized solution:

Sample SA – Associate questionYou are architecting a website for viewers of a commercial to complete a survey. The survey is an interactive PHP application, displaying dynamic set of questions to each viewer. Which architecture will use Auto Scaling to scale out during periods of peak demand, while providing a cost optimized solution:

A) Calculate the instances that will accommodate peak load. Use this number as your Auto Scaling minimum.

B) Create an Auto Scaling group 30% larger than the size needed for peak load. Stop some instances, and configure Auto Scaling to start instances as traffic increases.

C) Move static content to CloudFront and Amazon S3. Configure Auto Scaling to add instances to the group as traffic increases. Configure a Launch Configuration with an AMI which contains your web application.

D) Move PHP application to CloudFront and Amazon S3. Configure Auto Scaling as the origin of your CloudFront distribution.

Sample SA – Associate questionYou are architecting a website for viewers of a commercial to complete a survey. The survey is an interactive PHP application, displaying dynamic set of questions to each viewer. Which architecture will use Auto Scaling to scale out during periods of peak demand, while providing a cost optimized solution:

A) Calculate the instances that will accommodate peak load. Use this number as your Auto Scaling minimum. (expensive, provisioning for peak)

B) Create an Auto Scaling group 30% larger than the size needed for peak load. Stop some instances, and configure Auto Scaling to start instances as traffic increases.

C) Move static content to CloudFront and Amazon S3. Configure Auto Scaling to add instances to the group as traffic increases. Configure a Launch Configuration with an AMI which contains your web application.

D) Move PHP application to CloudFront and Amazon S3. Configure Auto Scaling as the origin of your CloudFront distribution.

Sample SA – Associate questionYou are architecting a website for viewers of a commercial to complete a survey. The survey is an interactive PHP application, displaying dynamic set of questions to each viewer. Which architecture will use Auto Scaling to scale out during periods of peak demand, while providing a cost optimized solution:

A) Calculate the instances that will accommodate peak load. Use this number as your Auto Scaling minimum. (expensive, provisioning for peak)

B) Create an Auto Scaling group 30% larger than the size needed for peak load. Stop some instances, and configure Auto Scaling to start instances as traffic increases. (Auto Scaling doesn’t start/stop instances)

C) Move static content to CloudFront and Amazon S3. Configure Auto Scaling to add instances to the group as traffic increases. Configure a Launch Configuration with an AMI which contains your web application.

D) Move PHP application to CloudFront and Amazon S3. Configure Auto Scaling as the origin of your CloudFront distribution.

Sample SA – Associate questionYou are architecting a website for viewers of a commercial to complete a survey. The survey is an interactive PHP application, displaying dynamic set of questions to each viewer. Which architecture will use Auto Scaling to scale out during periods of peak demand, while providing a cost optimized solution:

A) Calculate the instances that will accommodate peak load. Use this number as your Auto Scaling minimum. (expensive, provisioning for peak)

B) Create an Auto Scaling group 30% larger than the size needed for peak load. Stop some instances, and configure Auto Scaling to start instances as traffic increases. (Auto Scaling doesn’t start/stop instances)

C) Move static content to CloudFront and Amazon S3. Configure Auto Scaling to add instances to the group as traffic increases. Configure a Launch Configuration with an AMI which contains your web application.

D) Move PHP application to CloudFront and Amazon S3. Configure Auto Scaling as the origin of your CloudFront distribution. (S3 cannot host a PHP application, autoscaling cannot be configured as an origin)

Sample SA – Associate questionYou are architecting a website for viewers of a commercial to complete a survey. The survey is an interactive PHP application, displaying dynamic set of questions to each viewer. Which architecture will use Auto Scaling to scale out during periods of peak demand, while providing a cost optimized solution:

A) Calculate the instances that will accommodate peak load. Use this number as your Auto Scaling minimum. (expensive, provisioning for peak)

B) Create an Auto Scaling group 30% larger than the size needed for peak load. Stop some instances, and configure Auto Scaling to start instances as traffic increases. (Auto Scaling doesn’t start/stop instances)

C) Move static content to CloudFront and Amazon S3. Configure Auto Scaling to add instances to the group as traffic increases. Configure a Launch Configuration with an AMI which contains your web application.

D) Move dynamic content to CloudFront and Amazon S3. Configure Auto Scaling as the origin of your CloudFront distribution. (S3 cannot host a PHP application, autoscaling cannot be configured as an origin)

Sample Developer – Associate questionA recently deployed application is using DynamoDB to store customer registrations. Customers are given a unique randomized hash for the primary key. The application has been working without issue for a month. After unexpected increase of customer registrations we are now seeing a large number of application exceptions and customer complaints.

What could a potential cause of the issue?

Sample Developer – Associate questionA recently deployed application is using DynamoDB to store customer registrations. Customers are given a unique randomized hash for the primary key. The application has been working without issue for a month. After unexpected increase of customer registrations we are now seeing a large number of application exceptions and customer complaints.

What could a potential cause of the issue?

A) The VPC subnet of the application instance is missing a route to an internet gateway.

B) DynamoDB reads and writes are exceeding the provisioned throughput of the DynamoDB table.

C) The randomized key is causing sub optimal usage of the provisioned throughput.

D) IAM policy to allow is throttling DynamoDB traffic.

Sample Developer – Associate questionA recently deployed application is using DynamoDB to store customer registrations. Customers are given a unique randomized hash for the primary key. The application has been working without issue for a month. After unexpected increase of customer registrations we are now seeing a large number of application exceptions and customer complaints.

What could a potential cause of the issue?

A) The VPC subnet of the application instance is missing a route to an internet gateway. (Everything was previously working)

B) DynamoDB reads and writes are exceeding the provisioned throughput of the DynamoDB table.

C) The randomized key is causing sub optimal usage of the provisioned throughput.

D) IAM policy to allow is throttling DynamoDB traffic.

Sample Developer – Associate questionA recently deployed application is using DynamoDB to store customer registrations. Customers are given a unique randomized hash for the primary key. The application has been working without issue for a month. After unexpected increase of customer registrations we are now seeing a large number of application exceptions and customer complaints.

What could a potential cause of the issue?

A) The VPC subnet of the application instance is missing a route to an internet gateway. (Everything was previously working)

B) DynamoDB reads and writes are exceeding the provisioned throughput of the DynamoDB table.

C) The randomized key is causing sub optimal usage of the provisioned throughput.

D) IAM policy to allow is throttling DynamoDB traffic. (This is not an IAM property)

Sample Developer – Associate questionA recently deployed application is using DynamoDB to store customer registrations. Customers are given a unique randomized hash for the primary key. The application has been working without issue for a month. After unexpected increase of customer registrations we are now seeing a large number of application exceptions and customer complaints.

What could a potential cause of the issue?

A) The VPC subnet of the application instance is missing a route to an internet gateway. (Everything was previously working)

B) DynamoDB reads and writes are exceeding the provisioned throughput of the DynamoDB table.

C) The randomized key is causing sub optimal usage of the provisioned throughput. (Good key entropy gives optimal use of throughput)

D) IAM policy to allow is throttling DynamoDB traffic. (This is not an IAM property)

Sample Developer – Associate questionA recently deployed application is using DynamoDB to store customer registrations. Customers are given a unique randomized hash for the primary key. The application has been working without issue for a month. After unexpected increase of customer registrations we are now seeing a large number of application exceptions and customer complaints.

What could a potential cause of the issue?

A) The VPC subnet of the application instance is missing a route to an internet gateway. (Everything was previously working)

B) DynamoDB reads and writes are exceeding the provisioned throughput of the DynamoDB table.

C) The randomized key is causing sub optimal usage of the provisioned throughput. (Good key entropy gives optimal use of throughput)

D) IAM policy to allow is throttling DynamoDB traffic. (This is not an IAM property)

Sample SysOps – Associate questionWhich of the following is not available via a standard Amazon CloudWatch metric to monitor?

Sample SysOps – Associate questionWhich of the following is not available via a standard Amazon CloudWatch metric to monitor?

A) The number of bytes currently used by hash tables on an Amazon ElasticCache node.

B) Memory utilization on an EC2 instance.C) Disk usage activity on an EC2 instance.D) The number of connections that were not successfully established

between the load balancer and the registered EC2 instances.

Sample SysOps – Associate questionWhich of the following is not available via a standard Amazon CloudWatch metric to monitor?

A) The number of bytes currently used by hash tables on an Amazon ElasticCache node. (BytesUsedForHash)

B) Memory utilization on an EC2 instance.C) Disk usage activity on an EC2 instance.D) The number of connections that were not successfully established

between the load balancer and the registered EC2 instances.

Sample SysOps – Associate questionWhich of the following is not available via a standard Amazon CloudWatch metric to monitor?

A) The number of bytes currently used by hash tables on an Amazon ElasticCache node. (BytesUsedForHash)

B) Memory utilization on an EC2 instance.C) Disk usage activity on an EC2 instance.D) The number of connections that were not successfully established

between the load balancer and the registered EC2 instances. (BackendConnectionErrors)

Sample SysOps – Associate questionWhich of the following is not available via a standard Amazon CloudWatch metric to monitor?

A) The number of bytes currently used by hash tables on an Amazon ElasticCache node. (BytesUsedForHash)

B) Memory utilization on an EC2 instance.C) Disk usage activity on an EC2 instance. (VolumeReadBytes,

VolumeWriteBytes, VolumeReadOps, VolumeWriteOps)D) The number of connections that were not successfully established

between the load balancer and the registered EC2 instances. (BackendConnectionErrors)

Sample SysOps – Associate questionWhich of the following is not available via a standard Amazon CloudWatch metric to monitor?

A) The number of bytes currently used by hash tables on an Amazon ElasticCache node. (BytesUsedForHash)

B) Memory utilization on an EC2 instance.C) Disk usage activity on an EC2 instance. (VolumeReadBytes,

VolumeWriteBytes, VolumeReadOps, VolumeWriteOps)D) The number of connections that were not successfully established

between the load balancer and the registered EC2 instances. (BackendConnectionErrors)

Next Steps

1. Review exam-specific preparation paths at aws.amazon.com/certification/certification-prep/

2. Take the first step – sign up for a training class3. Schedule your exam so you have a date to study for4. Take a practice exam online to test your knowledge

before your exam date

Take a free practice exam

• We are offering everyone who attended this live webinar a free practice exam

• Codes will be emailed to you over the next few days

• Redeem your free practice exam by March 31, 2017

Questions?

Thank you!

Russell Sayers, AWS Technical Architectsayersr@amazon.com