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AWS certification

AWS Certification Cost

by anshuman@thinkcerti.com March 19, 2020

AWS Certification Cost and Duration

AWS offers multiple different certifications and paths. Each one is priced differently. We have made a list of different certifications offered by AWS and added the cost for each as of March 2020.

Please note that AWS does not mandate that one needs to have a specific lower level certification to appear for another certification. Also AWS certifications are valid for a period of 3 years.

Want to check out the AWS Certification paths? Click here

Here is a list of various AWS certifications and their cost

Foundation Level

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

This is the only foundation level certification available and aimed at those trying to prove their basic level of understanding of AWS technologies.

Cost: USD 100.00

Duration: 90 Minutes

Associate Level

The next level of certifications available which could get you through most jobs is the associate level. Out of this the Solutions Architect Associate and DevOps are the most popular.

AWS Certified Developer – Associate

Cost: USD 150.00

Duration: 130 minutes

AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate

Cost: USD 150.00

Duration: 130 minutes

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

Cost: USD 150.00

Duration: 130 minutes

aws certification path — Source aws.amazon.com

AWS Certified Professional

The level up from Associate are the professional ones. You need not get the associate level certifications to appear for these. However these ones are the ones that need a fair bit of experience behind you with AWS services to be able to understand and crack.

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional

Cost: USD 300.00

Duration: 180 minutes

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional

Cost: USD 300.00

Duration: 180 minutes

AWS Certified Specialist

The specialty certifications are for the pro’s. These are in niche domains and one can only apply for them if they have working experience in the specific field and AWS services. Usually this would mean that only professionals who have been working and managing solutions in the specific domain appear for these.

AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty

Cost: USD 300.00

Duration: 170 minutes

AWS Certified Alexa Skill Builder – Specialty

Cost: USD 300.00

Duration: 170 minutes

AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty

Cost: USD 300.00

Duration: 180 minutes

AWS Certified Security – Specialty

Cost: USD 300.00

Duration: 170 minutes

AWS Certified Database – Specialty

Cost: USD 300.00

Duration: 180 minutes

AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty

Cost: USD 300.00

Duration: 180 minutes

AWS Practice Exams

AWS also offers many exams as practice exam for a fraction of the cost. These exams do not provide certification post their completion. These can be great before appearing for the actual certification to understand the type of questions.

March 19, 2020 1 comment

AWS Certification tips from an AWS trainer

by anshuman@thinkcerti.com March 10, 2020

written by anshuman@thinkcerti.com

The Trainers Profile

The Trainer here is an AWS trainer, visiting faculty at Symbiosis Institute Of Digital And Telecom Management teaching AWS, working on AWS and Azure as a free-lancer and also a first-generation AWS user with experience with AWS spanning around 10 years.

So we interviewed Anshuman Sen, who has been training multiple students on AWS and Cloud technologies and has many students who have been able to crack AWS Solutions Architect Associate Certifications.

Q1 – Why is AWS certification so hot in the Market?

Industry 4.0 and the rush towards Digital transformation in every sector has meant there is a huge demand for cloud services. The new-age cloud providers are not just infrastructure providers anymore and have a plethora of additional services and microservices which make business processes simpler and deployment of products super quick.

Amazon Web services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure are aiding this massive shift.

AWS has the first-mover advantage and has been able to make inroads in many organizations. Due to this AWS is quite hot in the market and most IT jobs look for AWS certification to add value to the CV.

Q2 – Is it worth investing time and money and getting AWS certified?

IT organizations and IT operations are heavily dependent on cloud services. Be it development and Quality assurance with Devops, or business analytics or the complete set of business, data and IT operations. All aspects of these functions are being deployed on the cloud. AWS has many specific services in all these fields and hence makes a lot of sense.

Q3 – What are the key services of AWS that I should focus on?

This will depend on what certification you are looking at. For security specialty, Amazon KMS, IAM, ACL. VPC and security groups are important. AWS organization is another aspect one needs to understand.

For Solutions architect you need to get a clear hang of IAM, storage (S3, EFS, and EBS), compute( EC2 and Lambda), Database (Aurora, RDS, Redshift), Networking and content delivery (CloudFront, VPC, Route53, and ELB), Security and most importantly the deployment with Autoscaling, etc. Cloudformation. ElasticBeanstalk also forms an integral part of a solutions architect profile.

Enterprise architecture would connect to the infrastructure via a VPN, so understanding the various gateways and VPC in dept is important.

The Solutions Architect course covers most important and basic services from each category, necessary to create and deploy any application using AWS.

If you are looking at DevOps then you would need to understand ECS, Elastic Beanstalk and custom AMI’s and of course the complete security environment.

Q4 – How can I prepare for the AWS certification exam

If you have been working on AWS services then you will be comfortable with appearing for AWS certification. However, it is very unlikely that you have worked on all aspects and services of AWS which are part of the certification program. It is best to either do an online course. However, if you are coming from an non-aws background then joining a classroom program is the best option.

Q5 – What are the Opportunities after doing AWS certification

AWS certification could mean different things to different people depending on where they are in their careers.

For a database architect or an application architect, it could mean a move to a Solutions architecture role.

For a sales guy, it could mean better opportunities. Developer, QA etc would enjoy a different perspective of the infrastructure and cloud.

Sysops and Administrator roles will be able to assist Digital transformations better.

Q6 – What the top challenges faced by students appearing for AWS certification

AWS certifications are very scenario-based. They can be tricky. The solutions given at times can be very confusing and seem very close to each other. One needs to have a very deep practical understanding of each of the services and also how various AWS services interact with each other.

Q7 – What are the 5 tips you will give to students for mastering AWS

5 tips, well.

Understand the basics
Focus on practicals
Redo the classroom practicals thrice
Attempt as many practice exams as you can
Pick up case studies and try to design architectures of various popular applications.

Q8 – Finally, what is your message to the students

Well, AWS is constantly evolving. They are adding new services and updating the basic ground rules for many others. These are exciting times for cloud professionals. Keep learning!

March 10, 2020 0 comment

AWS Certifications Job Opportunities Reskilling techniques

Are you AWS certified? These are the job opportunities for you

by anshuman@thinkcerti.com February 28, 2020

written by anshuman@thinkcerti.com

AWS is one of the leading cloud computing providers in the market today. They have got 33% Market share. This means that a lot of organizations are using AWS as their preferred cloud computing service provider. And hence, these organizations need people who are skilled in AWS. These become obvious when we look at the various job roles where AWS is asked.

We analyzed various IT jobs to find out if AWS is in the top 10 skills.

And we were able to find these roles were AWS is in top 10 skills.

You can checkout the complete skill-set of each role by clicking on the Role name

Why AWS is mentioned in so many roles

As more and more organizations are moving towards executing a digital transformation project with a push for Industry 4.0, there is a serious demand for cloud providers. Cloud providers are no longer limited to offering cloud storage and compute infrastructure. New age cloud providers offer much more in terms of microservices or tailored specialty services that make them an irresistible bet.

Here is how AWS is making inroads.

Where is AWS being Used

AWS for Computing- The very basic

For the software to run, we need infrastructure or computing resources. And AWS provides computing resources on-demand. Hence, AWS is prominent in roles like Python Developer or a Game Developer as the Python developed application can be hosted on AWS and the performance of games can be enhanced by using CDN services of AWS.

You can check out the detailed skills required for each of these roles at this page

AWS Skills and Jobs

AWS in Computing- Advanced

With newer environments and demand for more efficient development cycles and low dependency on infrastructure, serverless and DevOps have been catching up. Serverless and containerization demands a deep knowledge of the service platform to design, develop and test. AWS has specialized services around it and hence as developers and QA professionals you would need to have deep knowledge and industry certainly values the certifications.

AWS in DataScience and IoT

AWS has some great offerings for data science and IoT. Right from the correct microservices to handle and store data like AWS Kinesis to providing a very efficient and cost-effective data warehousing solution called Redshift.

The focus of Industry 4.0 has been automation and connectivity and AWS sure has the services to back a solution.

No wonder AWS certifications have become so popular and in demand as AWS is no longer seen as just an infrastructure provider. AWS as a skill is now becoming a part of every IT role and not just limited to the system architects or system admin job roles.

Check out the various certification paths on AWS.

February 28, 2020 0 comment

AWS Certifications Job Opportunities Uncategorized

What is AWS and how can it boost your Career in the Digital world

by anshuman@thinkcerti.com February 21, 2020

written by anshuman@thinkcerti.com

Why learn AWS

AWS is one of the top cloud computing providers in the Market today. It has got 33% Market share. And it is one of the top in the Market because many organizations are leveraging AWS services for their Business growth.

This means that these organizations are looking for people who are skilled in AWS.

In this post, we want to understand the purpose of various AWS services and how you can use this information to plan your Career in the Cloud Computing domain using AWS.

Let’s revise the fundamental concepts of AWS

In simple words, Cloud computing is all about the on-demand availability of computing resources over the internet. The computing resources are primarily a CPU, a data Storage unit and Software to execute business functions.

Now, depending upon the Business size and scale, the need for Computing resources varies. Isn’t it?

An SME (Small Medium Enterprise) simply needs an Internet-connected mobile app to manage its Business whereas a large organization might need a Data warehouse unit to process huge data and generate Business reports.
The AWS services are designed considering these variations in the Business need of computing resources. To make it easy to understand the purpose of the various AWS services, we have created an Infographic on AWS services.

Download the AWS infographic from here

Now let’s talk about the AWS certifications

A certification is a way of telling your potential employers that your AWS skills are solid and they have been validated. It’s proof to confirm your statement that “You know AWS”.

There are 4 primary tracks in AWS certification.

Foundation

This certification lays the foundation and is useful for anybody who wants to know about AWS services. The other certifications are built on top of this Foundation.

Associate

The Associate level Certification is focussed on leveraging your AWS knowledge to address a specific Business need. There are 3 role options in this level

Solution Architect
Developer
SysOps Administrator

Professional

This is the next level of AWS certification. Again, the purpose of this certification is to leverage your expertise in DevOps and your experience of a given role to the next level and fulfill Business requirements. The 2 roles available at this level are

Solutions Architect
DevOps Engineer

Specialty

AWS also offers services for newer areas like Data Science, Machine Learning, Big Data, etc. The purpose of the specialty track is to certify your skills in using AWS services in specific areas. The expectation is that the professional has experience in the specific domain and now wants to leverage AWS services in that domain. The Speciality available are

Advanced Networking
Big Data
Security

You could read in detail about the various AWS Certifications and their benefits to your Career in this article.

February 21, 2020 0 comment