‫So, here are my tips and my two cents
‫to pass the exam, so it's just general advice.
‫Probably some of this is obvious,
‫some of it you just need to hear once.
‫To me, the number one tip is practice makes perfect.
‫So, if you're new to AWS, it will take a lot of practice
‫to understand how to work with AWS on a daily basis.
‫If you're new to AWS, this course probably gives you
‫massive head start into using AWS.
‫If you feel confident, then do the exam,
‫if not, don't rush, you have time.
‫Just work on AWS, be confident.
‫Use IAM rolls, deploy applications,
‫and then when you're ready, you can take the exam.
‫The exam recommends you will each
‫have one or more years of hands-on experience.
‫So, there are things you can't fake,
‫so up to you to see if you're ready
‫or not to pass the exam.
‫So, what I say is practice makes perfect!
‫And, a feeling you might have right now
‫is overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge
‫I just threw at you, that you just learned.
‫So, it takes time to have knowledge,
‫this is not the kind of course you'd do in three days.
‫This is the kind of course that goes over weeks.
‫And, so if you have a lot of acquired knowledge,
‫but you don't think it's perfect yet in your mind,
‫then start practicing and do the course one more time.
‫It's a few hours, obviously, but it will really help you
‫not to waste the exam cost afterwards.
‫So, really just practice.
‫That's my advice.
‫So, if you want to practice, you may be like,
‫how do I do this?
‫Well, if you're in a company, then good,
‫just work with your company.
‫If not, then take one of your existing applications
‫in whatever language you want.
‫Try to deploy it manually in EC2.
‫That's be a good first step.
‫Then, try to deploy it on Elastic Beanstalk
‫and have it scale with a little downserver
‫and a scaling group.
‫Maybe create a CICD pipeline for it.
‫So you go all the way from your code
‫to your artifacts to the deployments.
‫Maybe you can try breaking down your application
‫to several components and use SQS and SNS
‫to decouple your whole application.
‫If possible, if you use java, go python, node,
‫these kind of languages, then you can run it
‫with AWS Lambda and its friends.
‫So, it's friends of DynamoDB, API gateway.
‫So that, maybe involve a bit of refactoring,
‫but it could be fun.
‫And, if you want to practice with the CLI and the SDK,
‫I would strongly recommend to have ideas like this.
‫So, for example, create a script or create CLI or SDK script
‫that will shut down your EC2 instances at night
‫and start them in the morning.
‫That's actually a fun project to do on your own.
‫Or, you can have one that automates snapshots
‫of your EBS volumes at night,
‫so you know they're always backed up once a day.
‫And, maybe an idea three is to list
‫under-utilized EC2 instances in one region.
‫And maybe under-utilize them
‫in CPU Utilization under 10 percent,
‫so that you don't waste money
‫on under-utilized EC2 instances for example.
‫Again, just a bunch of ideas, you may have your own ideas,
‫based on your used cases, or what you do
‫in your daily basis.
‫But, what I want to do is just give you
‫leads onto practicing.
‫Now, for the exam, you're going to have questions
‫and you're going to have multiple answers,
‫sometimes one answer, sometimes more than one answer.
‫Most of these questions are going to be scenario based.
‫And, for all the questions, I would suggest
‫to start by ruling out answers
‫that you know for sure are wrong.
‫So, it's a really good way to start, to getting started,
‫because if you know something is wrong,
‫then you eliminate it, and that's one less question
‫you have to think, answer you have to think about.
‫So, for the remaining answers, you need to really think
‫about which one makes the most sense.
‫And, honestly, I'll be very honest with you,
‫there are very few trick questions,
‫so don't overthink your whole process.
‫If one answer makes a lot of sense, then go for it.
‫If one answer seems feasible, but is very complicated,
‫and requires a lot of engineering, it's probably wrong.
‫Sometimes there are two answers that are correct,
‫but one really is easier than the other,
‫or makes more sense, so really use your sound judgment.
‫Try to think about how much effort it would be for you
‫to implement whatever the question asks you to do,
‫and make a decision based on that.
‫But usually, proceeding by elimination
‫and then using your judgment
‫and your knowledge really makes you go
‫through most of the questions.
‫Remember, there are very, very few trick questions.
‫And, the questions will have key words
‫that will indicate usually something
‫that will be determining in the answer.
‫If for example, serverless probably means
‫AWS, Lambda, and DynamoDB, and API Gateway.
‫That type of stuff.
‫Now, the AWS Whitepapers, they recommend you to read them.
‫To be honest, it is 10 whitepapers of 40 pages,
‫you may not want to read them all,
‫but you should skim them.
‫So, there's lot of white papers, you know,
‫it's Security Best Practices, so using IAM rolls,
‫that kind of stuff, encryption, we've seen this.
‫Then the Well-Architected Framework.
‫So, around how you architecture applications,
‫segregation of duties using RDS, ElastiCache, et cetera.
‫Architecting for the Cloud, which is kind of the same thing.
‫The CICD paper is going to be around CodeBuild,
‫CodeDeploy, CodePipeline, CodeCommit.
‫We've seen this in large.
‫Microservices on the AWS is going to be around AWS Lambda,
‫and also ECS, and also all these things
‫to decouple your microservices and have them
‫innovate with one another.
‫Serverless Architecture with AWS Lambda,
‫I think we've seen a lot of it,
‫and we we've also seen the SAM framework,
‫which will be discussed in there.
‫Optimizing Enterprise Economics
‫with Serverless Architectures basically explains you that
‫if you go Serverless, then you don't have to pay people
‫to manage and do maintenance of your stuff,
‫and so you save a lot of money.
‫And on top of it, Serverless means
‫that you only pay for what you use,
‫so you should be optimal in pricing.
‫Now, Containerized Microservices on AWS.
‫This is an advanced topic, but this is around ECS.
‫Basically it's saying okay, use docker in ECS
‫to deploy microservice on AWS.
‫Remember the exam only is asking you
‫about a high level of of ECS not a deep dive.
‫Blue/Green Deployments, I've tried to place
‫that everywhere alongside the course,
‫there's going to be blue/green deployments on Beanstalk,
‫maybe there's a bit of blue/green deployments
‫on Lambda or API Gateway.
‫All this stuff we've seen, blue/green is basically testing
‫the new version, the green version,
‫while the blue version is still running.
‫And then when we're ready, switching over
‫from the blue version to the green version.
‫Overall, I feel that we've explained the,
‫explored the most important concepts in this course,
‫but if you feel strongly about one of these papers,
‫and you want to read about it, then go for it.
‫I think they're very interesting, each of these papers.
‫The one paper you might want to have a peak into
‫is the Blue/Green Deployments on AWS,
‫just you have a quick look, but don't overthink it.
‫The most of the questions, and probably all the questions
‫are going to be covered by this course already.
‫Now each service will have an FAQ,
‫so frequently asked questions.
‫So, for example for Lambda its /lambda/faqs.
‫And I think they're very important
‫because FAQ covers a lot of the questions
‫they will ask you at the exam,
‫and they may help you confirm
‫your understanding of a service,
‫or maybe shed some light on a doubt you may have.
‫So, definitely look at the Service FAQs,
‫especially the one you don't really understand.
‫Now, lastly, is really around community,
‫so you need to get into the AWS community,
‫you need to talk to other Amazon engineers.
‫You know, talking to people really unlocks knowledge,
‫at least for me it does.
‫So, discuss with other people in the course Q&A.
‫Definitely help other people answering their questions.
‫And by answering their questions,
‫this is how you learn, you learn by teaching.
‫And you review questions, asked by other people.
‫Definitely look at what other people's concerns were.
‫Maybe they will help you.
‫Maybe the answers will, again, teach you a few stuff.
‫And, do the practice test in this section,
‫just to see where you are at.
‫You should read forums online.
‫If you are very curious, read online blogs
‫and also there are local meetups
‫to discuss with other Amazon Engineers.
‫Finally, if you are more of a YouTube person,
‫there are a lot of re-invent videos that are quite nice.
‫The re-invent is an AWS Conference,
‫and they have a lot of good content out there.
‫Basically a presentation of their service,
‫and sometimes a little demo.
‫So, that's it, really for the tips of what you need to do.
‫I believe you're ready, but it's up
‫to you to see how much more practice you want to have.
‫But, yeah hopefully these tips help
‫and I will see you in the next lecture.