AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) Exam Learning Path

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AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) Exam Learning Path
NOTE – Refer to SAP-C02 Learning Path
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) Exam Resources
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) Exam Summary
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) Exam Topics

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) Exam Learning Path

NOTE – Refer to SAP-C02 Learning Path

  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) exam is the upgraded pattern of the previous Solution Architect – Professional exam which was released in the year (2018) and would be upgraded this year (Nov. 2022).
  • I recently recertified the existing pattern and the difference is quite a lot between the previous pattern and the latest pattern. The amount of overlap between the associates and professional exams and even the Solutions Architect and DevOps has drastically reduced.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) exam basically validates

  • Design and deploy dynamically scalable, highly available, fault-tolerant, and reliable applications on AWS
  • Select appropriate AWS services to design and deploy an application based on given requirements
  • Migrate complex, multi-tier applications on AWS
  • Design and deploy enterprise-wide scalable operations on AWS
  • Implement cost-control strategies

Refer to AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional Exam Guide

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional Exam Domains

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) Exam Resources

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) Exam Summary

  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) exam was for a total of 170 minutes and it had 75 questions.
  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) focuses a lot on concepts and services related to Architecture & Design, Scalability, High Availability, Disaster Recovery, Migration, Security and Cost Control.
  • Each question mainly touches multiple AWS services.
  • Questions and answers options have a lot of prose and a lot of reading that needs to be done, so be sure you are prepared and manage your time well.
  • As always, mark the questions for review and move on and come back to them after you are done with all.
  • As always, having a rough architecture or mental picture of the setup helps focus on the areas that you need to improve. Trust me, you will be able to eliminate 2 answers for sure and then need to focus on only the other two. Read the other 2 answers to check the difference area and that would help you reach the right answer or at least have a 50% chance of getting it right.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) Exam Topics

Storage

  • S3
    • S3 Permissions & S3 Data Protection
      • S3 bucket policies to control access to VPC Endpoints
    • S3 Storage Classes & Lifecycle policies
      • covers S3 Standard, Infrequent access, intelligent tier and Glacier for archival and object transitions & deletions for cost management.
    • S3 Transfer Acceleration can be used for fast, easy, and secure transfers of files over long distances between the client and an S3 bucket.
    • supports the same and cross-region replication for disaster recovery.
    • integrates with CloudFront for caching to improve performance
    • S3 supports Object Lock and Glacier supports Vault lock to prevent the deletion of objects, especially required for compliance requirements.
    • supports S3 Select feature to query selective data from a single object.
  • Elastic Block Store
    • EBS Backup using snapshots for HA and Disaster recovery
    • Data Lifecycle Manager can be used to automate the creation, retention, and deletion of snapshots taken to back up the EBS volumes.
  • Storage Gateway
  • Elastic File System
    • provides a fully managed, scalable, serverless, shared and cost-optimized file storage for use with AWS and on-premises resources.
    • supports cross-region replication for disaster recovery
    • supports storage classes like S3
  • AWS Transfer Family
    • provides a secure transfer service (FTP, SFTP, FTPs) that helps transfer files into and out of AWS storage services.
    • supports transferring data from or to S3 and EFS.
  • FSx for Lustre
    • managed, cost-effective service to launch and run the HPC high-performance Lustre file system.

Database

  • DynamoDB
    • DynamoDB Auto Scaling
    • DynamoDB Streams for tracking changes
    • TTL to expire objects automatically and cost-effectively.
    • Global tables for multi-master, active-active inter-region storage needs.
    • Global tables do not support strong global consistency
    • DynamoDB Accelerator – DAX for seamlessly caching to reduce the load on DynamoDB for read-heavy requirements.
  • RDS
    • supports cross-region read replicas ideal for disaster recovery with low RTO and RPO.
    • provides RDS proxy for effective database connection polling
    • RDS Multi-AZ vs Read Replicas
  • Aurora
    • fully managed, MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible, relational database engine
    • supports Aurora Serverless to on-demand, autoscaling configuration
    • Aurora Global Database consists of one primary AWS Region where the data is mastered, and up to five read-only, secondary AWS Regions. It is a multi-master setup but can be used for disaster recovery.
  • DocumentDB as a replacement for MongoDB

Data Migration & Transfer

  • Cloud Migration Services
    • Cloud Migration (hint: make sure you understand the difference between rehost, replatform, and rearchitect) 
    • Server Migration Service helps to migrate servers and applications.
    • Database Migration Service
      • enables quick and secure data migration with minimal to zero downtime
      • supports Full and Change Data Capture – CDC migration to support continuous replication for zero downtime migration.
      • homogeneous migrations such as Oracle to Oracle, as well as heterogeneous migrations (using SCT) between different database platforms, such as Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server to Aurora.
      • Hint: Elasticsearch is not supported as a target by DMS
    • Snow Family
      • Ideal for one-time big data transfers usually for use cases with limited bandwidth from on-premises to AWS.
  • Application Discovery Service
    • Agent ones can be used for hyper-v and physical services
    • Agentless can be used for VMware but does not track processes.
  • Disaster Recovery
    • Disaster Recovery whitepaper, although outdated, make sure you understand the difference between each type esp. pilot light, warm standby w.r.t RTO and RPO.
    • Compute
      • Make components available in an alternate region,
      • either as AMIs that can be restored
      • CloudFormation to create infra as needed
      • partial which can be scaled once the failover happens
      • or fully running compute in active-active confirmation with health checks.
    • Storage
      • S3 and EFS support cross-region replication
      • DynamoDB supports Global tables for multi-master, active-active inter-region storage needs.
      • Aurora Global Database provides a multi-master setup but can be used for disaster recovery.
      • RDS supports cross-region read replicas which can be promoted to master in case of a disaster. This can be done using Route 53, CloudWatch and lambda functions.
    • Network
      • Route 53 failover routing with health checks to failover across regions.

Networking & Content Delivery

  • VPC – Virtual Private Cloud
    • Understand Security Groups, NACLs (Hint: know NACLs are stateless and need to open ephemeral ports for response traffic )
    • Understand VPC Gateway Endpoints to provide access to S3 and DynamoDB (hint: know how to restrict access on S3 to specific VPC Endpoint)
    • Understand VPC Interface Endpoints or PrivateLink to provide access to a variety of services like SQS, Kinesis or Private APIs exposed through NLB.
    • Understand VPC Flow Logs
    • Understand VPC Peering to enable communication between VPCs within the same or different regions. (hint: VPC peering does not support transitive routing)
  • Route 53
    • Routing Policies
      • focus on Weighted, Latency and failover routing policies
      • failover routing provides active-passive configuration for disaster recovery while the others are active-active configuration.
    • Route 53 Resolver
      • Outbound endpoint for AWS -> On-premises DNS query resolution
      • Inbound endpoint for On-premises DNS query resolution
  • CloudFront
    • fully managed, fast CDN service that speeds up the distribution of static, dynamic web or streaming content to end-users.
    • supports multiple origins including S3, ALB etc.
    • does not support Auto Scaling as an origin
    • supports Geo-restriction
    • supports Lambda@Edge and Cloud Functions to execute code closer to the user.
    • Lambda@Edge can be used for quick auth checks, and redirect users based on request data.
    • Security can be enhanced by whitlisting CloudFront IPs or adding custom header in CloudFront and verifiing it in ALB.
  • API Gateway
    • supports throttling, caching and helps define usage plans with API keys to identify clients
    • provides regional and edge-optimized endpoint types
    • supports authentication mechanisms, such as AWS IAM policies, Lambda authorizer functions, and Amazon Cognito user pools.
  • Load Balancer – ELB, ALB and NLB 
  • Global Accelerator
    • optimizes the path to applications to keep packet loss, jitter, and latency consistently low.
    • helps improve the performance of the applications by lowering first-byte latency
    • provides 2 static IP address
    • does not preserve the client’s IP address with NLB
  • Transit Gateway or Transit VPC
    • is a network transit hub that can be used to interconnect VPCs and on-premises networks via Direct Connect or VPN.
    • Transit Gateway is regional and Transit Gateway Peering needs to be configured to peer regional Transit gateways.
  • Placement Groups
    • Cluster placement group with Enhanced Networking for HPC
    • Spread placement group for fault tolerance and high availability.
  • Direct Connect & VPN
    • provide on-premises to AWS connectivity
    • know Direct Connect vs VPN
    • VPN can provide a cost-effective, quick failover for Direct Connect.
    • VPN over Direct Connect provides a secure dedicated connection and requires a public virtual interface.
    • Direct Connect Gateway is a global network device that helps establish connectivity that spans VPCs spread across multiple AWS Regions with a single Direct Connect connection.

Security, Identity & Compliance

  • AWS Identity and Access Management
  • AWS Shield & Shield Advanced
    • for DDoS protection and integrates with Route 53, CloudFront, ALB and Global Accelerator.
  • AWS WAF
    • protects from common attack techniques like SQL injection and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Conditions based include IP addresses, HTTP headers, HTTP body, and URI strings.
    • integrates with CloudFront, ALB, and API Gateway.
    • supports Web ACLs and can block traffic based on IPs, Rate limits, and specific countries as well.
  • ACM – AWS Certificate Manager
    • helps easily provision, manage, and deploy public and private SSL/TLS certificates
    • is regional and you need to request certificates in all regions and associate individually in all regions.
    • does not provide certificates for EC2 instances.
  • AWS KMS – Key Management Service
    • managed encryption service that allows the creation and control of encryption keys to enable data encryption.
    • KMS Multi-region keys
      • are AWS KMS keys in different AWS Regions that can be used interchangeably – as though having the same key in multiple Regions.
      • are not global and each multi-region key needs to be replicated and managed independently.
  • Secrets Manager
    • helps protect secrets needed to access applications, services, and IT resources.
    • Secrets Manager vs SSM Parameter Store.
      • Supports automatic rotation of secrets, which is not provided by SSM Parameter Store.
      • Costs more than SSM Parameter Store.

Compute

  • EC2
  • Auto Scaling
  • Elastic Beanstalk supports Blue/Green deployment using swap URLs.
  • Lambda
    • Lambda running in VPC requires NAT Gateway to communicate with external public services
    • Lambda CPU can be increased by increasing memory only.
    • helps define reserved concurrency limit to reduce the impact
    • Lambda Alias now supports canary deployments
  • ECS – Elastic Container Service
    • container management service that supports Docker containers
    • supports two launch types – EC2 and Fargate which provides the serverless capability
    • For least privilege, the role should be assigned to the Task.
    • awsvpc network mode gives ECS tasks the same networking properties as EC2 instances.

Management & Governance tools

  • AWS Organizations
  • Systems Manager
    • AWS Systems Manager and its various services like parameter store, patch manager
    • Parameter Store provides secure, scalable, centralized, hierarchical storage for configuration data and secret management. Does not support secrets rotation. Use Secrets Manager.
    • Session Manager helps manage EC2 instances through an interactive one-click browser-based shell or through the AWS CLI without opening ports or creating bastion hosts.
    • Patch Manager helps automate the process of patching managed instances with both security-related and other types of updates.
  • CloudWatch
  • CloudTrail
    • for audit and governance
    • With Organizations, the trail can be configured to log CloudTrail from all accounts to a central account.
  • CloudFormation
    • Handle disaster Recovery by automating the infra to replicate the environment across regions.
    • Deletion Policy to prevent, retain or backup RDS, EBS Volumes
    • Stack policy can prevent stack resources from being unintentionally updated or deleted during a stack update. Stack Policy only applies for Stack updates and not stack deletion.
    • StackSets helps to create, update, or delete stacks across multiple accounts and Regions with a single operation.
  • Control Tower
    • to setup, govern, and secure a multi-account environment
    • strongly recommended guardrails cover EBS encryption
  • Service Catalog
    • allows organizations to create and manage catalogues of IT services that are approved for use on AWS with minimal permissions.
  • Trusted Advisor
    • helps with cost optimization and service limits in addition to security, performance and fault tolerance.
  • Compute Optimizer recommends optimal AWS resources for the workloads to reduce costs and improve performance by using machine learning to analyze historical utilization metrics.
  • AWS Budgets to see usage-to-date and current estimated charges from AWS, set limits and provide alerts or notifications.
  • Cost Allocation Tags can be used to organize AWS resources, and cost allocation tags to track the AWS costs on a detailed level.
  • Cost Explorer helps visualize, understand, manage and forecast the AWS costs and usage over time.

Analytics

Integration Tools

  • SQS in terms of loose coupling and scaling.
    • Difference between SQS Standard and FIFO esp. with throughput and order
    • SQS supports dead letter queues
  • CloudWatch integration with SNS and Lambda for notifications.

Architecture & Design Flows

154 thoughts on “AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) Exam Learning Path”

  3. Thank you Jay. I strictly followed your instructions and I have passed the SAP exam. It’s not easy, to read all whitepapers, to learn from 100-hour videos, to do hands-on experiments and to do quizzes. But hey, you gave me the correct direction. It is said genius is 1% Inspiration and 99% perspiration. Trust Jay, and get your hands dirty. ^_^

    2. TJ, Could You Please advise best video course to start preparation for SAP exam

      1. There is NO single course for exam preparation on SAP, go thru the practice exam go through plenty of resources like practice exams, blog’s etc. and get confidence.

  4. Jay your post was a god sent! it really helped me fine tune my focus on the last week of the exam! I pleased to say I passed SAP-C01 yesterday. Time management and keeping your cool is key to passing this exam. You can’t afford to get stuck on a question for more then 2 mins. Both Linux Academy Adrian’s course and Braincert were a big help!

    Keep up the good work!

    Shabs

      1. Braincert AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional Practice Exams – It has 7 sets of questions but language of the question and explanation is not that lucid

        Stephane Maarek – Practice Exam AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional – 2 sets only but language is lucid

  5. Hi Jayant,
    Thanks for the blog …Could you please provide what needs to be read for the point “ElasticBeantalk with respect to Migration ” ?

    Thanks in Advance.
    Gaurav

    1. From the migration perspective, it is mainly what service would you use to move applications from on-premises to AWS.

      1. Hi Jayendra ,
        Appreciate your response . But would you please provide an example of what you mean by “mainly what service would you use to move applications from on-premises to AWS”.
        Any aws documentation link would be really helpful. Have to take my exam on 30th Sep. I have already gone through Zeal Vora course and its content related to Elastic Beanstalk.

        Thanks in Advance.
        Gaurav

        1. Hi Gaurav,

          Its mostly selection of Services based on applications. Like package the application as docker and host it on Elastic Beanstalk OR if the application is java, node.js which is already support by EB so thats an easy choice for answer.

  6. As per the review of course: DolfinEd AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional 2019 course,
    it doesn’t have much hand’s on. Also i read this certification require a lot of hand’s on. Can you recommend any hand’s on course.

    1. DolfinEd does not have a hands-on lab. For that you have to go for courses from Linux Academy or ACloud Guru which provide hands on labs on actual AWS.
      Professional exam is too vast and concepts are more deep which can be done more from actual experience rather than hands on labs. I feel if you do have the experience, its more theoretically deep.

  7. How do you feel about Braincert verse Whizlabs? I’ve been taking the Braincert exams, but I’ve seen a couple questions referring to NAT instances, which seems pretty out of date, however, Braincert also has all of the questions I saw on the official AWS Practice exam Is Braincert still closer to the actual exam than Whizlabs?

  8. Could someone confirm that the sample questions on AWS’s site for the Pro exam, as seen today Sept 2019, have answers 1C, 2A, 3A, 4B, 5D, 6B ? I don’t see an answer key to double-check my answers. Thank you!

  9. Hello Jayendra,

    Can you help me answer some practice questions? I’m a bit confused with some of them. I’m willing to pay the $50/hour

  10. Hi Jayendra,

    How much score do we need to have in braincert before we appear on the actual exam ?

    I’ve got a score of just 60 in 1st try on two of the exams with 2.5 months of preparation

    I’ve referred DolphinEd, LA both in my preparation.

    I scored in 70s in Jon Bonso exam so feel Braincert are tougher than Jon Bonso.

    In actual practice exam of AWS of 20questions I scored 50%

    Thanks
    Himanshu

    1. You should try score over 80%. Irrespective of the exams, you need to understand the concepts the score will improve.

        1. yup target for 80% and above. Any practice tests you take, target for 90% and above consistently.

          1. I thought with a scaled score with less than 57 right answers you can pass the exam 🙂 If you score more on a complex question out of the correct answer. Is not it?

  12. Thanks Jayendra. I’ve passed the exam. I scored a decent 80% with ” Meets Competencies” in all the 5 domains.

    I would say real time experience and lots of handson were the key for passing this tough exam.

    New CSA PRO exam is putting lot of emphasis on serverless, so how the integration works between these services (besides older services) should be understood well in order to ACE the exam.

    Thanks
    Himanshu

  13. Make font color little dark. Its very difficult to read the content. Content is very nice crisp and clear.

  14. Hi Jayendra,
    Good Evening.
    I am Jagadish, aspiring for AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional.

    Have you attended any online/classroom for this?
    If you know, can you please provide me the details?

    Thanks,
    Jagadish Chawandi

  17. Hi Jayendra,

    As per your suggestions I have gone with Braincert practice exams. But I have found that there are multiple questions repeated in every practice exam sets. Also, I have found that the same question set on other tutorials with very less amount. And on Braincert there is no support system where you can raise your request about the same.
    Now my money has stuck there and i have no choice to get that refuend.

    1. Hi Suraj, i think you should out to the team. I have not found duplicate exam questions and found the support email quite responsive unless its year end holidays.

      1. Thanks for your reply, I have connected to customer service they will look at my request for duplicate questions.

  18. Hello Jayendra,
    I have passed my associate exam with the help of your details blogs.

    Can you please share the link for professional exams too if you have any, I have gone through the exam guide and your instructions however your blogs would always help, especially Q & A section.

    Please send the link for those blogs for SCP exam

    Regards
    Amit

    1. hi amit, all the links are available in the post and on the landing page for all exams. Let us know if you need any other help.

  19. Hi Jayendra … would you recommend aCloudguru course over the DolfinEd course for taking this exam? I already did SAA in 2018 Feb and have experience of around 2 years as AWS Cloud engineer. Now the company wants me to appear for the pro exam due to APN requirements. Which course should I purchase for my study?

  20. And on Braincert there is no support system where you can raise your request about the same
    ===
    I wanted to correct this, this is not true at all. If you flag a question that will get back to you. I’ve corresponded with them a lot.

  21. Thanks for such a important points about every topic, it really helped me to pass my AWS SAP exam today.

    2. Hi Vinod,

      Can you please tell about the topics which were asked more in the exam and also the resources you used to prepare for exam

    3. Hi Vinod,

      congrats on aws pro cert.

      Can you please tell about the topics which were asked more in the exam and also the resources you used to prepare for exam

      Thanks,
      Amit

        1. I have updated the codes in the post, let me know which one does not work and I can check further.

          1. Getting “Sorry, this course is no longer accepting enrollments.” messages in Udemy. Is this course no more available in Udemy anymore?

      2. Hello Jayendra,

        Getting “Sorry, this course is no longer accepting enrollments.” messages in Udemy. Is this course no more available in Udemy anymore?

      3. Getting “Sorry, this course is no longer accepting enrollments.” messages in Udemy. Is this course no more available in Udemy anymore?

  24. Hi Jayendra,
    I have passed the SAA with 909 score. I don’t have AWS experience, would it be good idea going for Pro exam? I am pursuing these certifications to get into AWS SA role…

    This is kind of vicious circle… No AWS experience=> No AWS job and No AWS job => No AWS experience. How to break this?

    Any inputs?

    Thanks

    1. AWS Pro would really give you a deep dive into working with multiple services and how they integrate in an architecture, which SA-Associate does not.
      It would also help you in interviews, so you can take a chance.

    2. Hi Abhay –

      I’m sure with AWS SAA – you will more likely to get a breakthrough. Pls keep trying and don’t give up.

      Thanks,

  25. I cleared my AWS CSA Pro exam on last week. Your content helped to refresh during last minute to clear the exam easily. Many Thanks.

  26. Hello Jayendra,
    Which course would suggest Dolphin ED or Linux Academy – AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional.
    I would really appreciate your help and advise.
    I just passed AWS solution architect associate few hours ago.
    I do have Dolphin ED for CSA which was good but I have seen people pointing to Linux Academy due to labs.
    Please help.
    Venkat

    1. You can check on Dolphin ED which are good. You can also check Stephene Mareek course.

  27. Hey Jayendra, I prepared for SAP pro exam for 2 months now, already have watched Stephane course and wrote 4 Jon bonso mock and 2 mocks from braincert, I ended up scoring 50 to 65 percent in all the exams, if I write the original exam is my result gonna be similar to the mocks?.

    1. you should target atleast 80%. Also practice all that you can and make sure you get the concepts for both the right and wrong answers.

  28. Hi Jayendra,

    I always appreciate your blogs great work Thank you as well for the work and help you doing to learners.

    Have question, I am planning to start preparation for AWS SA Pro.
    By any chance services like Machine Learning, IoT , Developer tools , customer engagement can come in exam.

    Regards,
    Ankit

    1. Hi Ankit, SA-Pro does not cover ML, Big Data, Security or Network in detail. But there might be services which you need to know for the exam.

  29. hi jay,

    is there any coupon code for dolfined course of AWS SA – Prof. on udemy. the link given is not applying the code.

    thanks,
    aakash

    1. Hi Aakash, i have update the coupon. Please check and let me know if it does not work.

  30. Hello Jayendra,

    I have cleared the associate course last year now looking for professional,

    which course i should go for

    DolfinEd AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional course [Recommended]
    Stephane Maarek – Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional 2020
    Linux Academy – AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional

    I have bought the DolfinEd associate last time but similar to this it was quite lengthy videos. it was big struggle to finish all and remember it. Not sure this is the right and the better choice now for professional.

    1. Hi Kuldeep, DolfinED and Stephane courses are good. You can choose from any of them.

  31. Jayendra Patil, Good morning!. I remember the coupon code used to bring the DolfinEd CSAA Professional course to some $64 in the past and now with coupon code JCSAPMAY , the price is $88.99. IS that correct or do we have a better code? I appreciate for your response.

    Thanks
    Ganesh

  32. JCSAPMAY is giving some discounts but in April/May I remember seeing a coupon that used to bring down the price to $66 or so. Can I have he best Coupon please?

    1. Hi Ganesh, the price was increased i think after the recent update to the course. Let me check with the team.

      1. Good morning Jayendra, do you have any update on the correct coupon code? Thanks for your help

  35. Hi Jayendra,

    Do you have any SA-Prof exam practices recommendations in BrainCert? Do you have any exam coupons?

  36. Thanks Jayendra for excellent blog. It was very useful. i have cleared AWS Solution Architect Professional yesterday.
    There were many questions related to Aurora Global though.

    1. congrats Tushar and glad it helped. Surely, will add to the blog and include in the post.

  37. Hello and thank you for this amazing blog.
    I practiced SA Pro using Braincert and I found some wrong answers.
    I submitted those questions for reviews and no feedback until today.
    I don’t know how you can trust a tool while you have some doubts.

  38. I have been using Whizlabs for studying and practice exam for AWS developer and solutions – associate and passed them, but now , I am preparing for AWS Certified Solutions Architect-Professional and have used ACG study/practice exams but I don’t feel confident enough. Which practice exam should I use? Do I still need to buy more online study videos?

  39. Hi Jayendrapatil, I felt misquided in you recommendation to purchase “Braincert” AWS SAP practice exam as when I just login, I was greeted with negative comments about the quality of the exam. I think you should post those negative comments before recommending any course to people who s=visit your site. See some Negative comments below:

    subeesh surendran • 2 years ago

    There are 5 to 10 wrong answers in CSA-Pro,I have submitted this many times to instructor,No feedback from anyone

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    Duong Hai Chau subeesh surendran • 10 months ago

    I also found some incorrect answer, can we discuss?
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    Corwain Cyrus Duong Hai Chau • 9 months ago

    which questions?
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    gary Corwain Cyrus • 6 months ago

    hi Guys, which questions did you pickup and your suggestions ?
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    Alex • 2 years ago

    you should put stop time for break or something! I exited exam with 35 answered questions and went toilet and when i came back, all my answers were gone!!! You should fix it!!!!!!!

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    TMJ • a month ago • edited

    Hello Team,
    The question 14 of the practice Exam 4 is WRONG. We are here to learn and you’re joking. (Also lot of typos).

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    TMJ • a month ago

    So many typos. Why don’t you take time to review tests before advertising?

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    Saravanan Ramakrishnan • 3 months ago

    Hello folks, did anyone recently take the CSA Pro exam? Can yo u pleas share your experience?

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    gary • 6 months ago

    Hi Guys, which questions did you pickup and your suggestions for the correct answer?

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    Janarthanan Moorthy • 2 years ago

    What’s going on. I’m getting empty page after answering 25 questions. I’ve seen this issue multiple times. View — uploads.disquscdn.com

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    Junhui Liu • 2 years ago

    When reviewing previous tests, unanswered questions are shown without all available choices but only the correct choices. This is very inconvenient.

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    Junhui Liu • 2 years ago

    Can I save the exam and resume the progress later? Each practice exam takes about 2 hours and it’s difficult to find a whole piece of time.

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    Junhui Liu • 2 years ago

    It better that the choices were in different order when retaking a test…

    1. thanks Powell, i see most of the comments are 2 years ago. I have appeared for SAP-C00 and SAP-C01 and found them quite useful.

  41. Hi Jay,

    I passed aws sap yesterday. Thank you so much for all the information you’ve provided in this blog.

  43. Hi Omar,

    Could you provide the areas questions were? I heard the pattern was changed and there are more questions in new services that AWS is launching . Is that right or the pattern was almost same as Braincert/Whizlabs offers?

    Regards
    Prakash

    1. Hi Prakash, the practices exams were quite relevant and I took the exam in first quarter and was aligned. I will check with other users and update.

  44. Hello Jayendra,
    Please provide coupon code for DolfinEd CSAA Professional course. Thanks.

    1. thanks Surender, have heard great feedback about the Adrian courses. Will add the same.

  47. Hi Prakash,
    The questions were somewhat similar to Braincert. In fact, few questions sound just like Braincert with little change of the wording. I scored below 40% on the first 3 exams on Braincert and I reviewed their answers and went back to aws whitepapers and read some more. When you first start taking the practice exams, don’t worry about the time, just make sure you understand the questions and spot the right answers.
    Best luck and sorry for the late reply

  49. also do you have any discount coupons available please to buy those tests. It will be really helpful as the exam itself is too costly.

    Thanks

    1. Which one are you checking for here was black friday sale and new year sale and all of them are available at discounted price.

  50. Wonderful exam guide Jayendra! I cleared AWS SAP C-01 yesterday with a score of 880.
    Thank you for preparing this detailed guide. There were very detailed questions involving DNS, adding that content here may help readers.

    Here is what I prepared from –
    1. Pluralsight AWS SAP certification path
    2. Mr. Bonso’s practice tests on Udemy (reviewed the notes for each question after taking the test)
    3. last but not the least, went thru Jayendra’s study guide which served as revision before taking the test)

  52. I passed the SA Professional exam last week and got 916 😊
    Jayendra, this page of yours was the first thing i checked out, and it was quite useful in the preparation. I just wanted to share with people my experience and preparation, hopefully to help with this exam.
    I prepared for around 3 and half a month. Studied on weekends, 2 week Christmas holidays and took many leaves. Like everyone says, it’s a tough exam.
    I used Stephane Marek’s course on Udemy, Stephane’s practice test, Jon Bonso’s practice tests and Acloud guru Scott Pletcher course.
    Acloud Guru was the least useful to me. Goes into basic concepts, which you are supposed to know already and you can’t spend too much time on or not even asked in this exam. No practical solution Architectures. But the hands on labs and playground sandboxes are quite useful and a very good feature.
    Stephane’s course was best. I really liked the Solution Architectures in each lecture. Solidifies your understanding. Does not spend too much time on low level details. Practice test was also quite good.
    Jon’s practices tests are also quite good.
    Practice exams are important. I gave on in beginning and failed. Gave m the idea of where I stand and what I need to focus on. I kept giving practice tests throughout. It kept making me realize that I am not focusing on important aspects of certain services.

    AWS White papers are very important. Some important ones-

    https://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/building-a-scalable-and-secure-multi-vpc-aws-network-infrastructure.pdf?did=wp_card&trk=wp_card – I read atleast 4 times. Especially Direct connect, hybrid and Hybrid DNS.

    https://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/Security/DDoS_White_Paper.pdf

    https://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/aws-amazon-vpc-connectivity-options.pdf

    https://aws.amazon.com/architecture/security-identity-compliance/?cards-all.sort-by=item.additionalFields.sortDate&cards-all.sort-order=desc

    I found the Q&A and Introductory Videos for services on AWS site useful. Like some services which we do not need to know in detail like Rekoginition, Comprehend, Connect etc.
    Use cases for services on AWS site seemed quite useful to me. Helps clarify the concepts and how the service is used in real world, helps with scenario questions which come in exam.

    I also looked at some tutorial dojo cheat sheets https://tutorialsdojo.com/links-to-all-aws-cheat-sheets/

    For the exam, I feel the Process of Elimination is quite helpful. I would not know the answer or confused between 2, I would start eliminating the answers which I knew did not make sense.

    Good luck everyone! I wish you success in passing this exam.

  53. @Jayendra: I guess link for (Linux Academy: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional is not correct as it points to acloudguru). Do you have any discount coupon for Adrian Cantrill course?

    1. Hi Prakash, the A Cloud Guru and Linux Academy has been merged. Will check for the updated one.
      I currently do not have discount coupon for Adrian course.

      2. Dear Jayendra

        Do you have latest coupon code for udemy dolfined aws sap c01 course?

        Thanks in advance

  55. Hi Jayendra,

    Thanks for your Guidance and preparation tips for the exam. I passed my SAP-C01 exam today.

    2. Hi Sujitha,

      Could you please let me know what are the focus areas that is in the exam and the practice tests you tried apart from DolfinEd/Jayendra’s blog etc? I am planning to appear this month-end. I would appreciate your help.

      Regards
      Prakash

  56. Thank you Jayendra! I completed my professional certification with major help from these blogs.

  59. Anybody has taken the Braincert SAP course of last year and want to know are there any difference in questions. I was thinking to renew it but before that i wanted to make sure there are any new questions and its worth it?

  60. Hi Jayendra,
    I have taken Associate exam few years back. Now planning for Pro.
    If I spend daily 7hrs for preparation, roughly how many months it will take?

    Thanks,
    Anna

    1. Hi Anna, Professional is quite exhaustive as compared to Associate. If you can spend 7 hrs daily (which is a lot) – I would recommend spending 1 1/2 – 2 months at least. Preparing for a month and then practicing for about 15 days with practice tests.

      1. Hello Jayendra,

        Back to your blog after almost 4 years 🙂
        So you mean, you need around 2.5 months * 7 hours = 525 hours of study time to pass the Professional?

        1. 7 hours 🙂 2-3 hours for 2 months should be good enough, I feel. Professional is not simple as Associate.

          1. Yeah Jayendra somehow I misread 🙂 Around 150 hours should be enough.

            I know Professional is more practical oriented. Previously, the requirement was to complete Associate before going for Professional which is not the case now. I would have given the Professional with the kind of Prep I had for Associate back in 2018 :).

            Btw what is the difficulties lever of Professional now compared to 2018 / 2019?

          2. It’s the same for Professional exam – Questions have more prose, long answer options, multiple services. But if you know the services well, you will be able to eliminate two answers options quickly. Then its only between the other two.

      1. Thanks Jayendra. I always start with a free course and go for Paid one 🙂 If you have to suggest to me 2 Paid courses and Paid practice tests, what would you suggest? Just taking opinion here.

        1. Free ones are not great – Udemy is cheap Dolfined is detailed and slightly expensive. There is a course by Adrian as well, not mentioned here, which has good reviews.

    1. yup its taken over by ACloud Guru now – will check the latest one and update. The problem with ACloud Guru courses are they are not updated that often.

  64. Dear Jayendra,

    DolfinnEd course is showing around $70 (in their website, looks like no more available in Udemy) and Braincert practice test is showing $30. Is this a fair deal or do you have the latest coupons on these courses?

    Hope I am not trying to be too greedy here 🙂

    1. There is Stephen Maerck, DolfinED course which are both good. One is brief and concise other is vast and detailed. Braincert practice tests are great as well.

      1. Thanks Jayendra for your reply.

        After reading the whole blog and few youtube videos I have decided to go for DolfinED course which is around $70. Is that a good deal or do you have any coupon that will reduce the price further? I have seen the preview of Adrian course and it was $80. But I feel I should go for DolfinED. Stephen Maerck is around $17 and it’s already in my Udemy cart. $17 is not a bad bet for that course. But do you have any coupon for DolfinED ?

        1. One is brief and concise other is deep dive, so the price changes accordingly.

  65. I have passed SAP-C01 on 27th April 2022 !!!

    Thanks Jay for this great site which you keep updating !! (this was my starting point for this exam)

    I wanted to share few points.

    I) Good News for folks who are planning to attempt SAP-C01
    – There are around 40% questions from previous months/years
    (By going through multiple times the practice exams, you ensure this)
    – I did not see any very lengthy questions
    – I did not went through any re-invent or youtube videos (frankly no time for that)
    – I went through some 10 Whitepapers commonly pointed out by people
    – If you are non-English speaker, get that extra 30 min. I’m a slow reader. Got that extra 30 min. So could easily manage exam without any time pressure.

    2) Courses that I have used
    – AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional by DolfinED
    – Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional 2022 by Stephane Maarek
    – AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional from acloudguru

    3) Practice Exams that I have attempted
    – Udemy Practics Exam from Stepane Maarek
    – Udemy Practice Exam from Neal Davis
    – Braincert Practice Exams
    – DOJO Practice Exams
    – Jon Bosco Practice Exams
    – AWS BenchPrep

    4) Cheat Sheets
    – Jayendra’s Cloud Certification Blog (https://jayendrapatil.com/aws-certified-solution-architect-professional-exam-learning-path/)
    – DOJO Cheat Sheets
    – Neal Davis Cheet sheets (https://digitalcloud.training/category/aws-cheat-sheets/aws-solutions-architect-professional/)

    My work experience on AWS was very less. Hence I took lot of time to prepare (4 to 5 months)
    But now I can say to folks that even if you dont have any work experience, you can learn, understand and pass AWS SAP-C01 (each one has different paths)
    Eventhough I know it is good to watch re-invent and other youtube videos, I didn’t get time so I just focused on exam content.

    I really dont want to compare the different courses. All are good (each one has some issues/limitations too). It is better you at least go through 2 courses.
    Go through maximum practice exams. Note down (or take screen shot) of failed questions with answers.
    Initail few attempts of practice exams, go without any time contraint.
    Do the review of answers very thoroughly.

    As others mentioned following areas are very important. This knowledge you will also get when you complete couple for practice exams (there is no magic !)
    – On-prem to AWS/VPC Connectivity options
    – VPC-VPC Connectivity Options
    – S3, EFS, EBS – when to use and price difference
    – Cache – Redis, Memcahed when and where to use
    – There are so many new Services. Other than most commonly used services, for all other services, just know the purpose.
    Eg:-AWS Lex to get person’s intent
    – ASG, Route53, DNS, IPv6 egress only
    etc, etc

    Most Important:
    On Exam day, no study. Just relax and go.
    Till that last question dont loose your hope. Attempt even the 75th question as if you are going to Pass !!!

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