The usual disclaimer, AWS CSA Pro is a tough exam. I have 17 years of experience in industry, I hold multiple certifications, and this is the first time that I got reminded of college, of taking exams for classes that I did not understand anything of! Unless you really need it, I would recommend, to NOT do it.
If you're still reading, aka determined to take the certification, congratulations on taking the first, hardest step and good luck getting it!
The AWS CSA Pro exam is a three hour exam, with no scheduled breaks and has 75 multiple choice questions. The exam can be taken online or onsite. To me, one of the toughest thing about exam was navigating through the maze like stories built on simple concepts. English is purportedly my second language, and if it is yours too, I would recommend taking the extra 30 minutes when scheduling - which I did not. I had questions where all answers looked correct, or all looked wrong, until I read them a couple of times and narrowed down the similarities and differences.
In knowledge perspective, the basic knowledge is not significantly different than AWS CSA Associate, but devil does lie in detail here - CSA Pro is all about details. I did my CSAA in 2017 and a lot of things have changed in the dynamic cloud landscape in these three years, including the material covered in certification. Don't repeat my mistake of thinking that you know AWS because a) You are certified, b) Have hands-on experience with *some* services, c) Have been following announcements. AWS / cloud is a fast changing landscape and knowledge becomes stale earlier that you might imagine.
I spent over six months preparing for certification, although that was broken across multiple sprints. Don't do that. All you need is two months of dedicated study.
I have had a fantastic experience with acloud.guru for CSA Associate and I still recommend that for CSAA, but I would NOT recommend same for CSA Pro. The course in itself is good for practical knowledge, it talks about real life experiences and expectation from a Professional Architect, but it is unable to do justice for course preparation. It genuinely recommends various whitepapers, but then, the whole idea of buying a course is to ease up the pain of going through dry documentation. If you must buy acloud.guru, buy it for knowledge, not for certification. Although if you do, take a look at all the referenced ReInvent videos and whitepapers. The number of whitepapers you'd have to read is enormous, and I wouldn't be able to link them all up here. One video that I particularly liked is Advanced VPC Design.
My enterprise supports udemy subscription and I used Stéphane Maarek's course for my primary study. This course is pretty good. I would recommend taking this course. Unlike acloud.guru that you can usually speed up to 1.5x if not 2x, this course is heavy and really needs to be taken up at 1x speed. Plan to go through the video course twice. I really liked that Stephane brought attention to multiple items. I also loved that he summarizes some sections - and I hope he adds similar summaries to other sections too. The course is quite keen, and it draws attention to minor'ish details that are important for exam, eg cost vs speed of various AWS Elastic Block Store options. Feel free to pause and repeat as many times as you need to, and take a break if it becomes heavy and focus becomes challenge. The course covers various details that may pass by in a jiffy, but have questions on exam. Reminder, the amount of services and their details covered in exam is humongous. Also note that this course is classified as "summary" by some sites and is indeed one of the shorter ones. This does not cover Console login or any other practicals, and is completely theory based. Which brings me to another course I used intermittently.
A colleague recommended me of Zeal Vora's course. I looked at this course, primarily because I was not getting enough confidence. This is a very detailed course and Zeal does a fantastic job of showing how to use various services. I would strongly recommend this course for 201 Deep Dives on various services for on-the-job work. However, apart from the fact that this is too long, I think this does not do justice to either bringing attention to key concepts for exam, or explaining higher level skills needed for Architect Professional on the job. If you could have two courses, check specific chapters in this course that you have trouble understanding. e.g. I come from Development background and networking is my weak area so I spent time on Zeal Vora's course as well as couple of reInvent videos (re)understanding AWS networking concepts.
Tip: Udemy runs promotions where courses are available at significant discounts. Sign up for emails, and wait till they run promotions to buy course, if you're not in a hurry.
One strategy that worked for me during the exam, was grouping the answers in categories and then identifying correct strategy within each category, to arrive at overall 2 or 3 or 4 correct answers from many more.
Finally, one last thing that helped me with practicing questions is Jon Bonso's sample questions on Tutorials DoJo. I had some technical issues with lost answers, but other than that, I liked it. Gives you a wide enough exposure to look at overlooked items during preparation. e.g., I had missed understanding "networkMode" in Fargate, and looking at practice exams, I was able to go back, read up and understand them.
In summary:
- Have a wide exposure and real knowledge before you choose to take up the certification
- Use Stéphane Maarek's course for understanding
- Try out Jon Bonso's sample questions
- Remember, it is not going to be easy. Don't be harsh on yourself when preparation becomes hard
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