27 Answers
Wow! 920/1000 score, that’s great! Congratulations and thank you for posting your detailed exam feedback!
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Wow, that is an amazing score! I hope I am able to get a similar result on my next attempt! I am glad you found my feedback useful. Thank you very much for the mention and for this excellent dump of exam information!
The way the exam used "ES" instead of "Elasticsearch" also tripped me up and my mind went totally blank about what "ES" could be!
It sounds like they even repeated the VPC peering questions with the overlapping CIDR ranges… And the Websphere question, I now think the answer was related to MQ but I don’t remember enough detail!
Based on your "services/difficult topics" section it really looks like you nearly had the same exam as me! I can almost picture some of the questions in my head just based on your descriptions. Maybe they just have a bunch of similar questions, but anyway, that should mean I have been studying the right stuff.
Just because I am a bit paranoid though, for the Provisioned IOPS v GP2, GP2 is the cheaper solution right? My math tells me it is, but it is always good to hear that from others.
Also, for 12. Managing S3 Bucket Permissions – Notify if there is a publicly accessible object in the bucket. Trusted Advisor vs AWS Config? That is Trusted Advisor, yes? https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/02/aws-trusted-advisors-s3-bucket-permissions-check-is-now-free/
And to turn your initial question to me back at you, what advice can you give me for my upcoming exam? You’ve already done me a great service though with this dump of information!
Hi Josh, yes, the GP2 (General Purpose) EBS type is the most cost-effective. For the AWS Config vs Trusted Advisor, I actually chose AWS Config because there is an already available rule that you can simply attach to S3 but I might be wrong but I think I may be right? Aside from the things I listed above, also review AWS Managed Policies (PowerUserAccess = used by developers and does not refer to Windows Power User ) . You already took the exam so you can definitely pass it the next round. You can also add your review materials just like what I did and practice exams from Tutorials Dojo Udemy(affordable and has relevant questions/explanations) or WhizLabs (more questions but costs more and less difficult questions). Try those free trainings in aws.training too Let’s keep in touch!
Ah, yes you are right about Config. You chose the right answer then! Awesome! I appreciate the encouragement. My exam is tomorrow afternoon. Today I am going to take the ACloudGuru exam simulator again, which is very hard, but full of good information. And retake the Tutorial Dojo practice exams again.
Good luck Josh! I know you can pass it! Don’t forget 6 Rs of migration too https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/enterprise-strategy/6-strategies-for-migrating-applications-to-the-cloud/
Hey guys can you say how much time would someone who has cleared Associate exam need to prepare for the Professional Exam
I’ve done it in 3 weeks but it depends on you and on how hard you studied for the exam, and what exam preparation guide you are using
For AWS Config vs Trusted Advisor, see https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/flag-buckets-aws-config/
920/1000! With a passing rate of 75% you sure did very well on your exam! Thanks a bunch for this detailed write-up and for sharing your additional review materials!
Thank you!
Mukul: Congratulations on your achievement!! Passing with such high score is truly impressive and shows how well you grasped all the material. Also the content you shared here is very very helpful! I had a quick question on amount of time you put in so that I can plan for this exam for my situation. To share my preparation — I started to prep AWS – SA – Associate on Feb 16th and Passed on March 8th with 82% with about 2 hours everyday. I used acloudguru course for Associate prep and also took whizlabs tests (I agree with you their questions are repetitive and is not truly worth).
Can you please give some guidance on amount of time Associate should plan to put in?
Many Many Thanks!!
Great work Mukul, if you don’t mind, how much experience do you have on AWS ?
I have about 5 years experience in AWS. Mostly on EC2, ELB, RDS and Lambda services. The CSAP exam is very challenging and has a lot of services that I don’t usually use like setting up a direct connect gateway, VPC Peering with longest prefix match, SMS, KIbana and many others. In my view, your actual AWS experience is not enough to pass the exam. You really have to know the strategy and have the hint of the certain topics that you have to focus on.
Congratulations! Thanks for sharing. I am also preaparing for the exam and I am planning to take it by the end of the month. Your feedback is very helpful and I bookmarked every important detail you had provided. Again Thank you.
You’re welcome Kazuredavis! Good luck on your exam!
Congrats for passing and getting a high score. Just recently passed Solutions Architect Associate Exam. Now I am continuing my training in AWS and studying for the CSAP Pro certification. Your feedback was very helpful.
Congratulations and best of luck on your CSAP pro cert exam!
I could not find the contents of the link you posted about Josh Grishwell’s exam feedback ?
https://acloud.guru/forums/aws-csa-pro-2019/discussion/-L54O7rbsKt7v5ThDtj/examquestionfeedback-vpca
Can you or josh please update the link here.
Sorry, links are not working when I pasted it? I’ll edit my post!
Thank you for sharing this. I passed my exam last weekend, all thanks to your helpful list of services/topics. This new exam was just released last month so there are only few relevant resources out there in the Internet, just like this one, which is why I can’t thank you enough really for such a detailed write-up and for sharing your review materials.
I’m taking my exam next month. I have one module left and will be reading the whitepapers and doing the exams next. How long have you studied and what is your background :)?
I am glad that you found my feedback helpful. Please upvote so other gurus can learn as well!
Hi Mukul
How depth the questions on AWS Rekognition, AWS Mechanical Turk, and AppStream had appeared on the exam?
I saw these new services on the options but not really in the scenario question. You just have to know the basics
Hi Mukul,
I just passed my CSA exam with one month of preparation. Do you think, I can also pass the CSAP exam in a short span of time? I am kinda in a hurry since I am planning to move to another role soon.
Passed my exam today. Thank you Mukul! The list of topics and services are spot on! You are a God send! Wouldn’t be able to pass it without this article you’ve written
Congratulations John. I am also planning to start preparation for professional. need a quick feedback . How much is this (https://acloud.guru/learn/aws-certified-solutions-architect-professional-2019 ) course aligned with the new exams and if you have some tips to fill knowledge gaps.
What a cool avatar you got there mate! 🙂
Congrats Mukul! I am preparing for my exam and this feedback has been very helpful.
I just passed the SA Professional exam last Friday. I would add another topic for preparation that I have not seen: learn to speed read. Seriously, the exam questions are a "wall of words" as one colleague puts it. If you try to read each question and answer thoroughly, you will not have enough time to complete the exam. Almost all the questions and most of the answers were long dense paragraphs.
You must be able to skim read the question and get the gist of it, and then skim read each answer to quickly determine if it can be thrown out or considered as a possible right answer. Usually you can toss out two of the answers and then need to determine which of the remaining two are the most correct. Again, there is no time to fully digest all the text. You need to be able to read quickly and get the essential points out of the question and answers. If you have not mastered the material, you will will end up spending too long thinking and not finish the test.
I did the Udemy practice exams. There were only a few questions and answers in those practice exams that even came close to being as long and dense as what I encountered on my real exam. Imagine all 75 questions being even longer and denser. Push yourself to try speed reading even the short practice exam questions. You can do it, but you need to really know the material so that your subconscious comes up with most of the correct answers.
BTW, on the subject of the Udemy practice exams, I have a sort of back-handed compliment on them. To me, many of the answers were wrong or had errors. And yet, that actually helped me learn the material. I had to read through countless pages of AWS documentation to prove to myself that I understood the material well enough to justify my position. Do not accept the explanations given in the practice exams without reading up on the topic yourself. You’ll probably need to hunt for the proper documentation yourself since sometimes the references provided were not directly applicable.
I also did the A Cloud Guru exam simulator. It was a good exercise, but my main issue was that the explanations of the answers only justified the correct answer. There was no explanation of why the other answers were wrong. A key strategy in taking the exam is to weed out incorrect answers, so knowing what makes an answer wrong is critical.
Congratulations Peter for passing the exam. I’m also preparing for my AWS Professional exam. Which Udemy practice test did you used? Is it with Tutorials Dojo or WhizLabs? Is the Tutorials Dojo practice exams helpful like what Mukul mentioned, and what are those wrong answers in their practice tests? I just bought their reviewer and so far, it looks good and getting updated often. I don’t see any errors so far, but can you tell me what questions are there that are wrong?
I think he is referring to Whizlabs I used that for my SA review last December but then switched to Udemy practice tests due to whizlabs poorly written tests, from test questions to answers and then the explanations very hard to digest and comprehend due to full of typos and grammar mistakes. For now I am preparing for the pro and I finished the Jon Bonso 6 sets scoring around 60%, if he is referring to Jon’s tests it’s odd because I do not find any wrong answers there and the explanations provided plus the links to the documentation supports the answers.
The tests I took were the Jon Bonso tests. I noticed that he is fixing errors since I noticed changes between the multiple times I took each test. So it’s possible the errors have been fixed by now. I did not bother with the Whizlabs tests since I had heard they were not as good.
Good thing about it is he updates it regularly.
I finally passed the SA Pro yesterday, I was supposed to take the exam last month but I felt not ready yet so I studied for another month which helped a lot and luckily I passed on my first attempt. It took me 3 1/2 months to study and prepare for the exam.
The exam is tough with long question and answer paragraphs. Most of the topics I encountered are the same as on Mukul’s feedback.(https://acloud.guru/forums/aws-csa-pro-2019/discussion/-L_joCzK9FTbpP2P7H0Z/how_i_passed_the_new_aws_solut) Overall the actual exam topics are the same as the practice exam. Though none of the questions are the same but they are similar. DO NOT EXPECT the same questions on the actual and the practice tests, (the practice tests are not illegal exam dumps) They are MADE TO TRAIN you NOT TO CHEAT your way to the actual exam.
I used Acloud Guru and Tutorials Dojo-Jon Bonso CSAP Practice test in Udemy, a lot of documentation and the Official AWS SA Pro Practice Exam for my study materials.
Very thankful to both ACG and Tutorials Dojo for providing a good prep courses. Highly recommended. And also to the feedbacks I gathered here on ACG forums as well as Jon’s Q&A. I found them really really helpful. I very much appreciate Jon’s quick detailed responses in his Q&A’s. His support as an instructor was well noted.
hello. How difficult was the exam compared to the Tutorial Dojo practice tests? congrats on passing!
The Tutorials Dojo practice exam gave me a good idea on the level of difficulty of the actual exam. I’d say it’s at par with the real one. The actual exam focuses on the new services so make sure you read and understand the explanations they have provided especially for these new services.
Congratulations Kazuredavis! Your feedback helped to calm down my nerves. I am also using Jon Bonso’s practice exams in Udemy, very impressive customer support in updating the questions and answers students QA. Was a bit scared that ACG + Tutorials Dojo would still be not enough but I guess, these two should suffice. Are there any topics in the exam that were not present in Jon’s practice tests or Mukul’s feedback? I am on my last leg of my review
Hi, what are the top 3? It says “content removed” for some reason.
I have the same question. What is tye ===content removed====
Just a quick note to add that I passed the exam on Thursday last – pretty much every topic listed here came up, I actually can’t see any entry in Mukul’s list that didn’t come up in my exam.
Another note after passing the cert…
I didn’t get any ML questions beyond Rekognition, but I did get a question on setting up CodeBuild and CodePipeline for feature flags, and another interesting one on saving costs in a multi account organization by routing all outbound traffic through one account that has the NAT Gateway. (I’m trying not to get too specific and bring down the wrath of the moderator.)
The only additional advice, check out the SA Pro Exam Readiness course in AWS training before trying any practice tests. They show you how to analyze and break down the questions and answers. Practice doing that on the practice tests.
Thanks for the excellent course Scott.
Hey Brian , Would be really gratefull if you could tell in details . Thanks 🙂
Hello Cloudgurus, today I passed my exam (I do not know my score yet) and I want to contribute with my comments regarding the exam.
Most of the topics mentioned by Mukul Gopal came into my exam. @Mukul Thanks a lot for your review, it helped me a lot 🙂
Additional Topics I encountered:
Several questions regarding DR/HA strategies for RDS (MySQL & Aurora)
Tapes and MAM metadata migration strategy
Cloud Formation stack update parameters (updating approved AMIs)
AWS STS different scenarios. (ASSUMEROLE, ASSUMEROLEWEBIDENTITY, ASSUMEROLESAML)
Federation scenario with SAML / IDP
Lambda Access to outside of the VPC
S3 public Access alerting / remediation
S3 cross region replication
AWS Cognito
EFS on Prem?
Transit Gateway scenario
Data Migration taking into consideration total amount of data, bandwidth and connectivity (Internet, DirectConnect or Managed VPN)
DirectConnect Private / Public VIF scenarios.
Updating Parameters on a Cloudformation stack.
VPC Flows
ElasticCache for different services such as DynamoDB and RDS scenario
AWS Aplication Discovery and deep on prem analysis (even network utilization among VMs) before migration to AWS.
How to increase IOPs on EC2 (PIOPs vs GP2)
No mention on Docker or K8s
S3 Access Policy for specific EC2 Instances within a VPC
AWS GuardDuty
AWS Certificate Manager & KMS (Key material)
23. AWS Appstream
The prep material I used to study and prepared for the exam:
• ACloudGuru CSA Course
• ACloudGuru CSA-Pro Course
• ACloudGuru Certified Advanced Networking Course
• ACloudGuru Certified Security Specialty Course
• ACloudGuru Lambda Course
• ACloudGuru Lambda@Edge Course
• ACloudGuru introduction to Cloudformation Course
• AcloudGuru Exam Prep Guide Course
• Many, many AWS whitepapers
• Many, many AWS Reinvent deep dive Videos on Youtube
• AcloudGurus Exam simulator for CSA-Pro
• Udemy JonBonso practice Exam
• 3 study hours per day during 4 months 😊
• AWS Playbooks
Hopefully this review could help you guys.
Special thanks for ACloudGuru Team for such a great work. Keep it up!
Onwards to Security Specialty.
You are the most recent comment on this thread so I am taking Mukul’s list and your list and mashing them together. That’s a monster of a list to complete, but hopefully I can get through it. Thanks
Hi, what are the top 3? It says ====content removed=== for some reason. If not ok for the forum then please DM me. Thanks!
Just passed with an 876, thanks to the acloudguru course and Jon Bonso practice exams.
I think the notes above cover most of the main topics, but I found a _very _strong emphasis on CI/CD. There were 8 questions directly on CodePipeline/CodeBuild/CodeDeploy.
Other things that were important were understanding volume performance iops/throughput (not just EBS, also instance stores), and deep questions on Direct Connect (Advanced networkign videos were critical for getting those right).
Now off to the next cert…
congrats! how is the Bonso practice exam compared with the actual exam? On par?
I passed my AWS Certified Solutions Architect- Professional exam on Saturday with a 970/1000, within 10 days of practicing I did not have any real AWS experience before starting but had a 5yr+ career in Information technology. Get Familiar with the Subject Areas. When you are preparing for an exam, subject area for the exam becomes the most important thing that you must understand. Objectives of AWS certification is very important review them carefully, and then start your preparation through the Valid study material to know the complexity of each subject area.
How I prepared:
Actually, read all the whitepapers on the exam outline from AWS on this Cert.
Take all AWS Tutorials and Courses.
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Read the Valid AWS Certified Solutions Architect- Professional exam study guide (60%) Practice valid exam practice questions. Most of questions are matched.
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At the end one thing more I want to say, reading AWS Certified Solutions Architect- Professional Exam community reviews and discussions regarding exam experience of different candidates will be helpful.
Good luck 🙂
I passed my AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam on Saturday with a 970/1000, within 10 days of practicing I did not have any real AWS experience before starting but had a 5yr+ career in Information technology. Get Familiar with the Subject Areas. When you are preparing for an exam, subject area for the exam becomes the most important thing that you must understand. Objectives of AWS certification is very important review them carefully, and then start your preparation through the Valid study material to know the complexity of each subject area.
How I prepared:
Actually, read all the whitepapers on the exam outline from AWS on this Cert.
Take all AWS Tutorials and Courses.
=== Removed by moderator ===
Read the Valid AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam study guide (60%) Practice valid exam practice questions. Most of questions are matched.
=== Removed by moderator ===
At the end one thing more I want to say, reading AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam community reviews and discussions regarding exam experience of different candidates will be helpful.
Good luck 🙂
Hi All
AWS Solutions Architect Professional Exam experience!
Thank you all for your exam feedback and sharing with community here, it actually helps to study properly and focus on important topics. However I have failed the exam on 05/05/2020 I may have missed few questions I got 700% score. I am little upset because had spent a lot’s of time weekends, evenings but, what I can do? That means I will need to study more. I had learned a lot from this forum and even I though failed want to share and contribute to community 🙂
Below my exam feedback:
1) Time management very important, I had allocated between 2.5 to 3 minutes for each questions max is 3 minutes, some questions I was finishing in 1 minute there for I could spend 3 minutes for some tough questions. At the end I had left 2 seconds to review flagged questions )). But, I wasn’t planning to review flagged question anyway, because I wasn’t sure with the answer, there for I was answering right a way with the intention I might or not come back.
2) Used Linux Academy watched twice entire course, first time 4 month ago and second a month ago and took exam simulator got around 70%
3) Took A cloud guru course and also watched probably twice with sometime break in between. Didn’t take test simulator but reviewed answer’s only.
4) Used AWS SA Pro Practice Tests by Jon Bonso and personally learned a lot from this test (Very much recommended), took test also twice with break 2 month in between. In first try I was getting 65 to 70% and in second try I was getting 80 to 85%. I think I have spend more time taking the test because it has 4 test with 75 question each, was taking this Test with intention of learning more about the limitation of each services.
5) AWS official training a month before the exam, also learned cool stuff there, how to eliminate some questions
6) Took official AWS practice test and passed with 75%
7) Watched few AWS Re:Invent videos about networking (Direct connect) and systems manager
8) Didn’t read white papers much, only few
9) Used this forum for guidance
And, finally failed :)))
Below services I had encountered more in my TEST other then what @Mukul Gopal shared:
1) AWS Fargate – at least 5 questions on this, mostly it came as an option (as answer) I didn’t study fargate at all 🙁
2) CloudWatch alarm and CloudWatch event – at least 3-4 questions
3) AWS Secrets manager or Parameter store – 2-3 question, I needed to select which one to use
4) AWS Catalog vs CloudFormation – at least 2-3 questions
5) ECS, Docker images – How I would deploy
6) AWS API Gateway, Lambda, DynamoDB – at least – 4-5 question, 400 and 500 errors (Don’t remember exact question)
7) AWS CI/CD Services (CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline) – 4-5 questions CodeDeploy, Codebuild as an option
8) AWS Rekognition, AWS Lex, AWS Connect – had to pick right service for cloud contact, conversation and predicting intention of the caller
9) AWS Directory service, Direct connect, Transit VPC, Transit Gateway, Direct Connect Gateway, private and public VIFs, (Many questions)
10) CloudFront I am not so good with CloudFront – Hence, many question on this one as well (Make sure you know this service)
I will add more as we go, but this is what I remember and encountered little difficult.
Good luck, will try once I feel I am ready.
Thanks, hope it helps you to get certified!
Hi oradb90 thank you for your very thorough report. I hope you don’t feel too discouraged, I am sure you will pass next time!
Hi guys. The tutorial Dojo practice tests are like exam questions? I tried them and they are easier them the practice exam of the course. Anyway with them I got a lot of gaps on my knowledge. Trying them before the exam.
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Try them before final AWS Solution Architect Professional exam and become a part of the Amazon community.
The SA-Professional exam is probably one of the hardest tests ever. Some of the questions are as long as a Tolstoy novel! Sharing with you our exam study guide which we hope can help in your next attempt at it. Don’t lose hope and like what we always say for Pro level exams, always use as much resources as you can. You can make it the next time around. https://www.dumpsforsales.com/product/sap-c01-dumps-pdf/
Congratulations Mukul and thanks for the feedback!!
Hi Mukul, just out of curiosity, were you able to pass the AWS SA Pro practice exams by Tutorials Dojo in the first attempt ?
Congratulations Mukul! By posting this you have pulled me out of the “valley-of-despair”, see Scott’s course :). I’m almost there, going to finish strong! Couldn’t do it without ACG!!
Hi Mike, haha, no more valley-of-despair! You will reach Cloud9 soon! (AWS has a Cloud9 service too but it does not show up on my exam
Thanks a lot for sharing, Mukul. What’s your opinion of migrating on-prem IBM MQ to AWS? Can we replace it with either AWS MQ or SQS? Thanks!
Congratulations Mukul! I recently passed the CSA Associate exam and preparing for the Professional. Aside from ACG, can you share me the link for the Tutorials Dojo practice tests that you were referring to? I used them for my CSA Associate exam, but I can’t find their practice tests for CSA Pro.
Here is the link to the Tutorials Dojo CSAP Pro exam, I am using this for my review https://www.udemy.com/aws-solutions-architect-professional-practice-exams-2018/?couponCode=TDOJO-CSAP-ACG&fbclid=IwAR1Jfj08OSVt9AWZLXNUI8jk2Fll6QjmMcOD7GyKlprhaCFjchqi7QMuefA
Congratulations Mukul! Thank for your shared.
Congrats! Thanks for sharing
There is no mention of Docker/Kubernetes? Block chain – anything on that?
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