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Sorry guys, I didn't mean to bash anyones course. I was just trying to give some info to people who are lost in what class to take or not like I was when starting out. I'm sure these courses work for some people. For me, after having taken the class, I feel that if i didn't have the extensive hands on, I wouldn't not have passed. These classes are basically like extremely high level cliffnotes.

For anyone trying to take the exam now, I would say use Tutorials Dojo to give you an idea of whats on the test, plus youtube/google is all you need. Unpopular opinion, I still don't think these classes give any depth of info that you can use to pass the exam. You need other material/practice/experience, so why waste the money, unless you're a pro and just need a refresher ? If anyone is saying that they passed based on the content in this exam alone, then good luck trying to do anything in AWS.

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Hi Guys,

Just wanted to share the good news, that I passed the AWS SA Pro exam. For people who are thinking about what to study, I'll provide some info here, since i just took the test 2 days ago. For background, I've been working on AWS on and off for 5 years or so. My study habits were not that great. I studied a few days a week, over the course of about 3 weeks, going through mostly the TD practice exams. This should be proof that, if you have experience, this exam is not as crazy as people make it out to be.

Courses that i took

- Neal Davis - This is ok for someone with a vast amount of AWS experience, otherwise not that helpful. I would not recommend.

- Tutorial Dojo - This was more helpful as there are some topics in the practice exams where it will cause you investigate and learn it if you have not been exposed to it before. I would recommend this.

I looked at the Maarek course, and this was even more high level than Davis'. Honestly, i don't know how/why people are recommending these courses, because there is no way anyone is passing this exam or even the associate one with the information that is in these courses alone, unless they have extensive hands on experience.

Now the part everyone wants to know, what was on the exam. I mostly remember questions that threw me off, so i will list that here for anyone else about to take the exam. Here goes:

1. AWS Privatelink - multiple questions

2. S3 Access Patterns - S3 gateway vs interface endpoint, vs direct access?

3. EC2 Placement groups - multiple questions

4. Launch templates with only a single instance type specified

5. AWS Data Sync vs Data Migration Service

6. AWS Organizations( didnt throw me off, but just wanted to add it for everyone to cover it thoroughly) - How to restrict some privilege with SCP or individual Policy on a role ?

7. Elastic Disaster Recovery - multiple questions, and I had never even heard of it

8. Demand Instances - Capacity Reservation

9. Storage Gateways

10. The rest was typical VPC/Cloudfront/SQS/RDS/etc architecture questions.

Just cleared the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional exam with minimal preparation—and I mean bare minimum! Honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d make it, but somehow, I scraped through.

I aggressively prepared for the Architect Associate exam, which I cleared four months ago, and that definetly helped. For Pro, I relied mostly on my prior knowledge, some light review, and a few practice tests. Not the best strategy, but hey, a pass is a pass!

For anyone aiming for this cert, I’d definetly recommend better prep than I did—the exam is no joke. But if you’ve got solid experience and a strong foundation from the Associate exam, you might just make it through.

Happy to answer any questions!