The following is the basic process that I used to study and train for my AWS Solutions Architect - Associate certification.



1. Start with the Exam overview:

https://aws.amazon.com/certification/...associate/

2. Buy and read the Sybex (Wiley) AWS Certified Solutions Architect Study Guide 4th edition (or later). This book is particularly good for those with existing IT / physical server experience. Use the practice questions at the end of each chapter.

3. Use the Wiley online question test bank that is included with the book purchase. Note that a small percentage of the questions had out-dated (wrong) answers or were just poor / ambiguous questions in the first place... but overall the test bank is helpful.

4. Read the Well-Architected Framework materials and know the Pillars -

web-based summary:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/en_us/wel...ework.html

5. Read as many AWS service technical whitepapers or FAQs as possible, especially on areas where one performed poorly on the sample tests.

Amazon EC2 - https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/
Amazon S3 - https://aws.amazon.com/s3/faqs/
Amazon VPC - https://aws.amazon.com/vpc/faqs/
Amazon Route 53 - https://aws.amazon.com/route53/faqs/
Amazon RDS - https://aws.amazon.com/rds/faqs/
Amazon SQS - https://aws.amazon.com/sqs/faqs/
Amazon CloudFront - https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/faqs/

6. Learn Security and IAM

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepape...cture.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepape...ntrol.html

7. Learn Subnetting

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/lates...locks.html

Free subnetting questions - https://subnetting.org/

Youtube series -
EP 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWZ-MHIhqjM
EP 5 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj_ubhpi0WQ

Note that during the exam you may not write any notes, you would need to memorize the subnetting cheat sheet and use it inside your head!

8. Use AWS Skillbuilder - "Free Exam Prep Standard Course" (there is also a longer paid training course that includes labs that I did not use). The free course includes AWS Official Practice Question Sets thru benchprep.com

9. For those content areas with poor practice test performance, go build real resources in AWS to cement the concepts.

10. Additional resources that I didn't actually use but would use if I had failed the test, or if I just had more time to spend on the certification:

AWS Well-Architected Labs
(requires an AWS account to deploy actual resources)
https://www.wellarchitectedlabs.com/

The full Well-Architected Framework document (over 900 pages!):
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/pdfs/well...mework.pdf