Recently my friend Imtiyaz Shaikh passed AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate exam. I requested him to write a "how-to-pass-exam" blog but due to his busy schedule, it has not happened.

So I interviewed him on overall exam experience and preparations, do's and don't. This blog is in question answers format.

How to pass AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate ?

Q1. How many days are needed for the preparations of this exam?

Ans: If you have zero knowledge about AWS then minimum three months and if you have little exposure to AWS then approx two months.

Q2. Where to start?
Ans:  a) Make free tier account on AWS cloud. It is free for limited access but needs credit card they will deduct the tiny amount from it and credit it back to verify your credit card. Link

b) Aws has very good documentation. Go through everything at least twice or thrice. Link
https://aws.amazon.com/documentation/
https://aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/

c) Get Linux Academy account. It has very good tutorials and hands-on lab sessions. Link 

d) Get a Wizlabs account for a mock test. Wislabs mock test helps to cover 50% questions. Exam questions are somewhat similar to mock test. Link

e) Free questions & answers  Link http://www.aiotestking.com/amazon/category/exam-aws-saa-aws-certified-s…

Q3. Which are the important topics?
Ans: 
VPC
EC2
S3
RDS
ELB
Auto-Scaling 

Q4. There are many courses in LinuxAcacdemy which are the important one to get started quickly?

Ans:  Yes, LinuxAcacdemy has lots of courses on AWS alone. So to save time you should follow the order of courses to get prepared in less time.
1. AWS concept
2. AWS essentials
3.AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level (New)

Q5. What is exam pattern & How is the topic wise exam layout? 

Ans: AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate is the scenario based exam where you will get MCQ, Single-answer questions,  True/false kind of questions.

Topic wise exam layout: 
1.0 Designing highly available, cost-efficient, fault tolerant, scalable systems
2.0 Implementation/Deployment
3.0 Security
4.0 Troubleshooting

-Exam time: 80 Minutes
-Total Questions: 60
-Exam Fees: 150 USD
-No negative marking on wrong/skipped answers.
-You can change your answers as many time as you want

-Also, you can mark any question "Mark as a review" and revisit the questions afterwards.
-Passing score is dynamic and needs 70% passing (safer side)

Read more on certification exam on AWS official website https://aws.amazon.com/certification/our-certifications/ 

How to pass AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate ?
Useful Books :
1. AWS Certified Solutions Architect Official Study Guide: Associate Exam http://amzn.to/2zTJUiP