Akash's Blog

_

Showing posts with label AWS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AWS. Show all posts

Saturday, April 5, 2025

How did I clear SAP-C02?

Introduction

I recently cleared the AWS Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C02) exam. It’s an intense experience that truly tests you to the core. This was the toughest AWS certification I’ve taken so far. Clearing it on the first attempt is quite challenging. In this post, I’ll be sharing my exam experience and preparation journey, which I hope will help others too.

Preparation

When I began preparing for the exam, it was mostly about reading content, experimenting on AWS, and browsing the internet to learn from the experiences of others who had cleared it. Initially, I was completely directionless—I had no clear plan. As the exam date got closer, the pressure started to build. Preparing while managing a full-time job made it even more challenging.

I realized that the exam isn’t just about knowing services—it's about applying the right solution for a given scenario, considering all the constraints. I juggled between multiple resources (listed below) and focused on understanding the context and purpose of each service as much as possible.
I focused more on understanding the services rather than just memorizing facts. That doesn't mean you can skip memorization entirely—some questions do require specific knowledge, like API Gateway and Lambda timeouts, maximum allowed S3 object size, CIDR block details, and similar technical limits.

I also tried a couple of mock exams on Udemy for practice, which helped me reflect on my understanding and gave useful feedback on my preparation. It's important to mention—don’t rely blindly on the mock test answers. Always question the answers, understand the reasoning behind them, and focus more on learning than just the scores.

During preparation I focused on following things for all the services which I was studying,
  • When to use primarily?
  • When not to use and alternatives?
  • Limitations and Restrictions
  • Scalability, Availability, Fault Tolerance

Exam

The exam is mentally exhausting and can completely drain you with its scenario-based questions and tricky answer choices. Some options may seem correct at first glance and give you a false sense of confidence, but once you deep dive into the question, you realize they're wrong. In fact, the most obvious-looking answers are often the incorrect ones!

I would recommend following,
  • Time Management is extemely important (I almost failed in this!
  • Use Whiteboard wisely during the exam to find most important clues from the question.
  • Don't rush to answer, take time and re-validate your answer.
  • Flag question for review and move ahead if you don't know. Don't invest time there!

If you have a solid understanding of services in Compute, Storage, Security, and Networking, you should be able to answer more than 50% of the questions, based on my experience. However, that alone isn't enough—you need to score at least 750 to pass the exam.

Summary

If you are planning to appear for this exam, you should be confident enough with the understanding of different AWS services along with their use cases and limitations. This exam is bit difficult to clear if you don't have hand-on experience of AWS in my opinion. However, with proper planning and consistency in study can surely make you clear this exam. All the best! 
 

* The sticky note idea is copied from this reddit thread.


Sunday, March 9, 2025

I passed AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate Exam! 🎉


Intorduction

I recently passed the AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate exam and wanted to share my experience, hoping it might help others in the future.  

Although this is an associate-level exam, it thoroughly tests your understanding of data engineering concepts and the relevant AWS services through realistic scenarios.


Preparation

I used Udemy course, AWS Certified Data Engineer Associate 2025 - Hands On! by Stephan & Frank Kane which helped me to understand the concepts in detail. It includes hands on sessions in multiple services, which you can follow along. For some services like Redshift, Glue, EMR, Kinesis I had to practically explore things on my own.

However, going through the course wasn't enough, thus I decided to go with some mock exams.


It is more about understanding the nature and application of the services. Multiple services can be used for same solution but questions checks what is best in terms of cost, operation overhead, time and efficiency. 

For revision I used the slides from the same Udemy course.

Exam Day

The day of the exam started off frustrating. Due to a slow internet connection, I was unable to check in, and I feared I might have to reschedule and repay for the exam. Even after my internet speed improved, I was still not allowed to check in, leaving me completely unsure of what was going on.


I tried calling Pearson support but had no luck. I attempted to reschedule, but initially, I didn’t see that option. After 10–15 minutes, it finally appeared, and I was able to reschedule. Phew...  

The exam was quite challenging, packed with tricky and confusing scenarios. I struggled to stay focused on the lengthy questions. The exam consisted of 65 questions with a total duration of 130 minutes—just 2 minutes per question. (I later realized that non-native English speakers get an additional 30 minutes, but it must be claimed before scheduling the exam.)  

Some questions were straightforward, and I felt confident answering them, but the majority required a solid understanding of the relevant AWS services.

Conclusion

The exam evaluates your clarity on AWS services and their use cases. It took me approximately 3.5 weeks to prepare, including completing the course and taking mock tests. That said, my prior experience with AWS, along with having previously passed the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam, significantly helped streamline my preparation and reduce the required study time.

Suggestion

If you're planning to take this exam, prioritize understanding how services apply in terms of time, cost, and operational overhead, as these were the key themes for me. Rather than just memorizing facts, focus on grasping real-world use cases.

References

Thursday, December 26, 2024

AWS Cloud Cost Optimization

Introduction

AWS Cloud is one of the biggest cloud player which has captured more than 31% of the cloud service market. The cost of the services is majorly on usage based, the more you use the more you pay. We as an individual or as an organization need to understand how much we can optimize the cost when it comes to AWS because there can be multiple ways to achieve desired results but we are specifically looking for most optimal way.

In many cases we can save cost by taking necessary actions, however, it’s important to understand that saving cost should not be the first focus. It can come on the way to building it or even it’s ready and now we have some dedicated time to attend the cost related aspect of it.

Pricing in AWS

This is what AWS say about pricing,

You pay for the service you need, for as long as you use them, without compex licensing.

We should understand the “actual” need and “probable” usage before deciding the components and their capacity in cloud service, however, many of times these are two unknows which we can not confidently claim from the start. We can start with a minimal infrastructure and make it flexible to scale which is usually doable in Cloud environment.

High cost is not a bigger challenge if the usage also brings high value and returns for the business which is usually the case, the more usage is the more business value it should extend at the end of the day.

We can also calculate the price beforehand using AWS Pricing Calculator.

Ways to save money

There can be several ways which you can use to cut down the overall cost. Not all of the options will work for you but based on you current structure you can take up one or two options which can save you some bucks.

When it comes to cost we should also consider the cost we need to pay to the person who is taking care of this optimisation. Someone in the team took that responsibility and spent 20 hours to reduce 1000$ per month and the person got paid 30$/hour is a still a good deal.

Service

Choosing the right service for the job is very important when it comes to cost. There are certain services in AWS which you can choose for the same sort of job. There are many options for same purpose, for example, S3 and EFS you can use for storage and both may fulfill the requirement. However, the cost different is significant, for 1 GB of storage S3 can cost around 0.03$/month while EFS can cost 0.36$/month (in US East - N. Verginia).

Ofcourse this doesn’t mean you must choose s3 over EFS, both have their right use cases to serve. We need to understand which one we can pick and atleast review the cost as well before deciding the service to use.

Capacity

Capacity of the instances we are using in infrastructure makes a huge difference in billing. We can typically guage the machine requirements early based on the processes that we are planning to run on these machines. We usually know beforehand about whether it’s computation heavy or memory heavy operations, we usually know approaximately how much primary and secondary storage is required.

There are multiple types of instances available, we need to review our need and find the most suitable one with required configurations.

Details of all instance types can be found here.

Even though I specifically mentioned EC2 but it applies to RDS as well. Similar strategy can also be applied while deciding S3 storage tier and even the bucket policies to move between tiers for the sake of cost.

We can also review this in AWS Cost Explorer which can help in right sizing the instances.

Reserve

Choose reserved instances over on demand instance if we are sure that we will need them for atleast year or ever more than that. Reserved instance pricing is locked in and not completely based on usage, while on demand will be billed on usage. Ultimately, you end up saving upto 70% for 3 year term.

If we choose reserved t3.large instance for three years vs on demand instnace the monthly expense reduces by 50%. This difference will increase for high end instances upto 75%.

Alerts

We can enable the billing alerts based on the billing metrics so that in advance we get to know about the possible cost for given month. We can get an estimation in advance so that we can prepare and even take action to reduce the cost if possible.

Auto Transition

There are different options available in AWS to save money by shifting to tier as per the user. S3 Intelligent Tiering is one of the good example. It automatically detects the right fit for the object and moves it to most cost effective storage. Not necessarily this will fit all the usecases but we should explore such options for the service so that we don’t miss an opportunity to save money.

Review & Clean Up

Regular review and cleaning up unused resources may look unproductive or boring but 30 minute connect every month or quarter can definitely help to save a lot of money. Work pressure or busy schedule may pile up some unused ec2 machines, volumes, buckets etc. which we should regularly keep in check.

Alternative Cloud

This is not an option all the time but nowadays most major cloud provider services are durable and robust, if cost can be major factor, don’t stick to one cloud provider and explore other alternatives which can be a huge saving in a longer run, rest assured quality and performance is not compromised.

Conclusion

In current situation of booming cloud services and competitive environment between cloud providers, we should be vigilant about the different factors in the service that we consume and the long term repurcissions, when it comes to cost. There are several ways which we can try to cut down cost as much as possible without compromising on the quality and performance of the system. However, being ignorant about cost and pricing may end up with wasting your money which could have been utilised better.

↑ Back to Top