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30-Day Prep Guide

Overview​

  • Exam Focus: Developing and maintaining applications on AWS.
  • Question Types: Multiple choice and multiple response.
  • Key Domains:
    1. Development with AWS Services (32% of scored content)
    2. Security (26% of scored content)
    3. Deployment (24% of scored content)
    4. Troubleshooting and Optimization (18% of scored content)
  • AWS Exam links
tip

You can download these notes as pdf from here and here.

Pre-Preparation​

  • Familiarity: Basic programming concepts and AWS fundamentals.
  • Setup AWS Account: Create and utilize a free tier AWS account for hands-on practice. Here's the modified plan, broken down into weekly segments:

Week 1: Introduction and Development with AWS Services​

Goals for the Week:

  • Understand the exam requirements.
  • Develop code for applications hosted on AWS.
  • Begin learning about AWS Lambda.

Daily Breakdown:

  1. Day 1-2: Read the exam guide thoroughly. Note down key topics and domains.
  2. Day 3-4: Study architectural patterns (event-driven, microservices, monolithic), idempotency, stateful vs. stateless concepts, tightly vs. loosely coupled components.
  3. Day 5-6: Learn about developing code for AWS Lambda, event source mapping, stateless applications, unit testing. Practice configuring Lambda functions (environment variables, parameters).
  4. Day 7: Review the material covered during the week. Complete practice questions related to AWS services and Lambda functions.

Week 2: Security and Data Management​

Goals for the Week:

  • Implement authentication and authorization.
  • Implement encryption.
  • Manage sensitive data.

Daily Breakdown:

  1. Day 8-9: Study identity federation (SAML, OIDC), bearer tokens (JWT, OAuth). Learn about Amazon Cognito, IAM roles, and policies.
  2. Day 10-11: Understand encryption at rest and in transit, certificate management, key protection. Study differences between client-side and server-side encryption.
  3. Day 12-13: Learn about data classification, environment variables, secrets management. Study AWS Secrets Manager and AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store.
  4. Day 14: Review security topics. Complete practice questions on authentication, authorization, and encryption.

Week 3: Deployment and CI/CD​

Goals for the Week:

  • Prepare application artifacts for deployment.
  • Test applications in development environments.
  • Automate deployment testing.

Daily Breakdown:

  1. Day 15-16: Study application configuration data access, Lambda deployment packaging. Learn about Git-based version control tools and container images.
  2. Day 17-18: Understand features in AWS services for deployment, integration testing. Practice deploying application stack updates.
  3. Day 19-20: Study API Gateway stages, CI/CD workflows. Learn about automated software testing.
  4. Day 21: Review deployment and CI/CD topics. Complete practice questions on deployment strategies and testing.

Week 4: Troubleshooting, Optimization, and Final Review​

Goals for the Week:

  • Assist in root cause analysis.
  • Instrument code for observability.
  • Optimize applications.
  • Conduct a comprehensive review.

Daily Breakdown:

  1. Day 22-23: Study logging and monitoring systems, languages for log queries. Learn about data visualizations and code analysis tools.
  2. Day 24-25: Understand distributed tracing, structured logging, application metrics. Practice implementing logging strategies and custom metrics.
  3. Day 26-27: Study caching, concurrency, and messaging services (SQS, SNS). Learn about profiling application performance.
  4. Day 28: Review troubleshooting and optimization topics. Complete practice questions on debugging and performance optimization.

Final Days: Comprehensive Review and Practice Exam​

Goals for the Week:

  • Conduct a full practice exam.
  • Review areas of improvement.

Daily Breakdown:

  1. Day 29: Take a full-length practice exam to assess your knowledge and identify weak areas.
  2. Day 30: Review areas where you need improvement based on the practice exam. Relax and ensure you're ready for the exam day.

Continuous Resources​

  • Documentation: Use AWS’s official documentation regularly.
  • Community Support: Engage with AWS developer communities.
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