Since I passed both the AWS Certified Solutions Architect and Sysops Admin Associate in the past month, I’ve had a lot of folks ask questions related to comparing and contrasting the two. In this blog, I’m going to share a video and infographic that covers my thoughts on: Which AWS cert was harder, what might impact which AWS cert you should study for, and what are the real differences between the AWS SAA and SOA?
I also do an overview of all AWS certs in general and which ones you might want to focus on depending on what your end goals are:
- Foundational AWS certifications
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
- Associate AWS certifications
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
- AWS Certified Developer – Associate
- AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate
- Professional AWS certifications
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
- AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
- Specialty AWS certifications
- AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty
- AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty
- AWS Certified Security – Specialty
- AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty
- AWS Certified Database – Specialty
The above video goes in-depth into the topics described above, but for just a very high level breakdown of the differences between the AWS SAA and AWS SOA (SAA-C03 vs SOA-C02), I made this handy infographic!
In the end of the video, I also discuss different AWS certification paths depending on the specific job role you’re in. I found this great breakdown from ACloudGuru here.
No matter whether you go for the AWS SAA or AWS SOA, I have a AWS exam review video to help you out!
And lastly, if you are starting to learn about AWS, it is worth noting that I’ve been making a lot of AWS lab and AWS tutorial walkthrough videos. You can find them in this playlist.
Network Knowledge Wrap Up
A great resource on learning AWS networking, is the AWS Networking Fundamentals book (Affiliate Code)
I’ve also recently started using the AWS Security Cookbook (Affiliate Code) and AWS Advanced Networking book (Affiliate Code). Both breakdown topics very well and have some great labs!
My AWS SAA blog
My AWS SOA blog