How to Pass the AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam
I am happy to say I recently passed the Amazon Web Services Certified Developer Associate Exam (AWS DVA-C01). Here's how I recommending studying to pass the test.
A few disclaimers:
- my company was generous enough to sponsor a live training, practice tests, online labs, and the exam fee
- this article is about passing the test – not developing on AWS
- I'm writing this as of 2/15/2022. AWS services can and will change frequently, so some details might be irrelevant when you read this or take the exam
Use Multiple Sources for Practice Exams
I started off using Tutorial Dojo Practice tests which are excellent heavily focus on X-Ray, ECS, DynamoDB, Elastic Beanstalk, VPC, and Cloudwatch.
I later did practice tests from Udemy's Practice Exams (also excellent) which focused on S3, IAM, EC2, Elastic Load Balancer, and other key AWS services to fill in my knowledge gaps.
Doing the practice tests and reviewing the explanations was the by far the more important tactic I used to prepare for the test.
Know the X vs Y questions
- When to use S3's 4 different encryption options
- Different deployment strategies (rolling, immutable, all-at-once, etc)
- Elastic Block store vs Elastic File System vs EC2 Instance store
- etc
Know Test Taking Strategies
- Eliminate 2 or 3 answers based on them being incorrect, not solving the problem, not being efficient, not following security best practices, referencing irrelevant AWS services or even made up services
- Bookmark questions and use questions from the test to help answer previous questions you were confused on
- Get a sense for which words correspond to which answers
- For example, “which solution uses the LEAST overhead” implies not adding code or much configuration and only setting things up once. Think auto-scaling services like Elastic Beanstalk instead of EC2.
Notes from my experience
- AWS hands-on labs did not help me much. Details are more important.
- I did not read any whitepapers in preparation as they talk about far more than what the exam covers.