I’ve recertified at the time of writing this post – June 2021 – and wanted to share some of the experience and preparation for this one because it has been peculiar.
My preparation is very particular because I tend to prepare my materials mainly using my experience and the official resources available, which are pretty good in general. So I checked out the certification site and the digital readiness training. It was almost the same as the last time. I took the sample questions; they were new but similar to the old ones; nothing new there, except for Cloudwatch Insights.
I started preparing using the official guide – I bought it in London in 2018 – the docs, some videos from the digital readiness course and my notes from different projects I’d been working on; I couldn’t help but think that the exam needed a refresh. After all, three years in “cloud years” are a lot, maybe x2, due to the pace of current innovation. Also, many services were missing from the guide and exam outline, including Transit Gateway, AWS RAM, and Global Accelerator … all very relevant for modern architectures.
Well, what do you know? I got an invitation to provide input on the new content outline of the exam!
The Certification
I’m sure you know that AWS Certified Advanced Networking is regarded as one of the most challenging certifications, if not the most. It’s undoubtedly very subjective, depending on many personal factors. In addition, the subject matter is complex, and the official guide it’s not for beginners. It doesn’t hold hands – no funny stories about pets or people – and there is no official practice exam, except for the ones provided with the official guide. Finally, the exam doesn’t take any prisoners; it’s tough.
As with the other Specialties, you might get questions solely about the subject matter at hand, but many of them will be cross-domain: Security, Architecture, Cost, Compliance, DevOps … It’s not an exam for beginners, and you should hold, at the very least, an associate certification or the equivalent experience.
Don’t forget this exam – and the rest of the certifications – tests experience, not only technical knowledge, so if you don’t have it, you will need to make up for it.
The Exam
Sixty-five questions, multichoice, three hours – you know, the drill.
A good surprise was waiting for me. I was expecting a new set of questions – one of my connections on LinkedIn mentioned it -and I got them. But I wasn’t expecting the exam to be so up-to-date! Surprisingly, I’d just finished a survey about the contents of the new exam revision.
Luckily, that wasn’t a problem because I prepare comprehensively, and networking seems to be a big part of any project I work on.
The current revision goes beyond the official guide and updates services and scenarios. I have to say that the quality of the questions is higher than in previous incarnations: more straightforward and better wording and common real-life scenarios. I have faced most of them, so there are no unique, exceptional cases to trick you. However, that doesn’t mean they are easy. They are not. Some are lengthy, with similar responses, multichoice…
The sample questions are very relevant, but (primarily) they don’t refer to the new services.
Happily, I passed and improved my score massively from last time, which it’s always nice 🙂
After the exam, I went online and found a post on the AWS certification blog about the exam, discussing the contents from April 21. So I’d guess this update is relatively recent.
Areas of Study
I got the outlines from the original post by Nigel Harris – kudos, mate 🙂 The contents are relevant to the exam. I’m adding my notes – in cursive – but check the original post for resources and comments from the original author.
1. Edge network services
AWS Lambda, Lambda@Edge, Amazon CloudFront – Cloudfront is key; understand how it works with different origins. Remember, the RTMP distribution has been deprecated – mostly outdated content on the official guide – expand and review with other resources.
2. AWS global infrastructure and how to deploy foundational network elements
AWS Global Cloud Infrastructure, Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) configurations, route tables, network-access control lists (NACLs), and security groups.
NAT gateways (NGW), internet gateways (IGW), egress-only internet gateways (EIGW), and virtual gateways (VGW).
You should know all the basic stuff by heart if you are attempting the exam—good content on the official guide, but expand with other resources.
3. Hybrid network-connectivity options
VPNs, AWS Direct Connect – everything about them: technical specifications, scenarios, cost … good content on the official guide, but expand with other resources.
4. Inter-VPC connectivity options
VPC peering, AWS Transit Gateway – everything about them: technical specifications, scenarios, cost … outdated content on the official guide – expand and review with other resources. You should know about Transit VPCs, though. It still appears on the exam, and you may have to deal with it in some projects. If you don’t have real-life experience with the services, you should get some through laboratories or actual projects.
5. Automate network management using AWS CloudFormation
CloudFormation – got a few questions about it – good content on the official guide, but expand with other resources.
6. Integrate VPC networks with other AWS services
AWS PrivateLink, Gateway Endpoints, Interface endpoints – everything about them: technical specifications, scenarios, cost … good content on the official guide, but expand with other resources. If you don’t have real-life experience with the services, you should get some through laboratories or projects.
7. Security and compliance
CloudFront and AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF)
IPAA, EU/US Privacy Shield, and PCI.
Mostly outdated content on the official guide – expand and review with other resources.
8. Methods to simplify network management and troubleshooting
VPC flow logs, access logs for your application load balancer, and CloudFront logs.
Traffic Mirroring
Mostly outdated content on the official guide – expand and review with other resources.
9. Network configuration options for high-performance applications
Placement groups, jumbo frames, and elastic network adapters.
Good content in the official guide, but you should expand it with other resources.
10. Designs for reliability
AWS Well-Architected Framework
Amazon Route 53 and AWS Global Accelerator
Amazon VPC AWS Elastic Load Balancing
Mostly outdated content on the official guide, so expand with other resources. All those services are essential, so make sure to get some real-life experience with them through laboratories or actual projects.
New Revision is Coming
As I mentioned previously, while preparing for the recertification, I got an invitation to a survey about the contents of the new exam revision.
The thing is, the exam it’s updated. However, the official guide is not. So I’d guess this will be an opportunity to deliver a new guide and training content.
The new contents seem similar to the present incarnation, reducing the domains from five to four, adding new services, and increasing security content, networking performance, reliability and monitoring. Potentially, there might be laboratories as well. The exam’s not getting any easier, that’s for sure 😉
I’d guess we may get a beta at the end of the year; looking forward to it!
