✨ AWS Tip of the Week

I teach AWS classes a couple of times each month. I’ve been doing this since the beginning of the business about eight years ago. In addition to really enjoying running classes, one of the things that keeps me interested is the wide range of technology questions I get. When I think I’ve heard it all, someone throws something at me that I would have never thought of myself. I often find myself discovering new stuff in every class I teach.

There is one common question I get regardless of the class I’m teaching: “Which AWS certification should I get first?”

So, for this week’s AWS Tip, I’ll give you my opinion on where I would start if I were starting my AWS learning journey.

Regardless of your role, the first exam is the Solutions Architect Associate exam. Why? Because it’s the foundation of everything. It’ll help you build highly available, resilient, and secure solutions on AWS. To succeed, you’ll need a fairly deep knowledge of a smaller number of AWS technologies.

Plus, IMHO, it’s the easiest of all the Associate level exams to pass, and it’ll give you a good sense of what to expect from the other associate exams.

Next up, I would get the Developer certification. Even if you’re not a traditional developer, this exam should be achievable with dedicated study time.

Depending on your goals, consider stopping here. By passing both the Architect and Developer associate level exams, you’ll have a solid foundation of knowledge and hands-on skills on AWS.

For those of you wanting more, the next certification I would target is the SysOps Administrator. I purposely left this one to the end, and here’s why. Unlike the Solution Architect certification, the SysOps exam will expect you to know a lot of topics. I’ve seen lots of folks new to AWS struggle with this exam. Get as much hands-on operations experience in AWS as possible before attempting this one. It’s the most difficult of the associate certifications.

Finally, let’s discuss Security certification. We do many security reviews for companies, and we often find the same basic issues overlooked—IAM, encryption, and network security.

Adequate security is critical, so why the dotted line? Think of this as a choose-your-own-adventure. Even if you’re not a ‘security’ person, having an educated opinion on AWS security and knowing when something just doesn’t feel right is vital. For this reason, it should 100% be on your list; you’ll have to choose where it fits in your AWS journey.

Until next week, get out there and learn new stuff!

📚 Always Be Learning

Staying with the certification theme, here are a few links to help you on your AWS journey

• Exam Prep Standard Course: AWS Certified Solution Architect - Associate (SAA-CO3) (requires an AWS Skill Builder login)
• Exam Prep Standard Course: AWS Certified Developer - Associate (DVA-C02) (requires an AWS Skill Builder login)
• Security best practices with AWS IAM

🎧 Talking Cloud: GenAI Edition

Next week, on April 26th, we’re broadcasting a special edition of our weekly Talking Cloud podcast. AWS will join Travers and me in discussing GenAI within organizations. As always, we’ll be broadcasting live on Twitch, and registration is not required.

If you’re like me and manage your week via your calendar, you can register and get reminders! I hope to see you there.

🎧 AI Chip Wars, Solo D&D and Fallout

This week’s podcast covered the latest AWS updates, including the decommissioning of the Snowmobile data migration service, new integrations with Jira and CloudFormation enhancements, and the availability of new AI models like Claude Opus and Llama 3 on Bedrock.

The hosts also discussed Andy Jassy’s comments on generative AI potentially being bigger than cloud computing, Amazon’s growing interest in alternative chips like Graviton, and a legal battle lost by AWS over data storage patents. Other topics included visualizing the solar eclipse’s impact on AWS traffic, the creepy movements of Boston Dynamics’ new Atlas robot, and how AI is being used to accelerate drug development for diseases like Parkinson’s by up to 10 times faster.

The episode wrapped up with movie recommendations and a preview of next week’s special episode focused entirely on generative AI with expert guests from AWS.