AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate is a category of technical certifications offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) for beginners and professionals who run enterprise architecture programs, as well as solutions architects. It covers deployment of AWS systems, AWS best practices, and many other topics.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate is the first level of certification, one step below AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional. An Associate certification covers skills for working with the Amazon Cloud, Alexa and other services, including:
- identity access management (IAM)
- Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
- Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
- autoscaling and load balancing
- serverless websites
- Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
- DynamoDB
- Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
The AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate test is replaced by AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (Released February 2018) exam beginning August of 2018. The new exam covers updated procedures and best practices. It is a slightly longer version of the previous exam, with 10 more questions and an additional 50 minutes to complete the test.
Professionals can obtain Associate certification by taking either the original AWS Certified Solutions Architect exam or the new exam released February 2018.
To prepare for either exam, candidates can attend preparation classes, purchase exam guides, or apply real world practice. AWS also offers a practice exam. The exam consists of 55 questions (65 questions in the updated exam). Candidates have 80 minutes (130 minutes for the new exam) to complete the exam. The passing score is 65%. The cost to take either version of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam is $150. Training courses and supplementary materials are an additional cost.
The benefits of becoming an AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate include better salary and more career options.