The AWS Certified Data Analytics - Specialty (DAS-C01) exam is definitely a difficult and challenging certification exam!
It has 65 questions that you must finish within 3 hours. Also be aware that its scenario questions are lengthy. If you have already taken solutions architect associate or cloud practitioner exam you will find good difference in terms of the length of the questions. You will come across even paragraphs in some questions in your data analytics specialty certification. Make sure you have good practice of reading long questions and answering them quickly.
According to the AWS’s exam guide, the target candidate should have a minimum of 5 years of experience with common data analytics technologies. The target candidate also should have at least 2 years of hands-on experience and expertise working with AWS services to design, build, secure, and maintain analytics solutions.
Below is the breakdown of the course by sections:
From the table above, the domain that needs to be focused on the most is Processing domain along with Analysis and visualization domain. The processing domain has EMR which has a focus on Big data concepts but I was not asked many questions related to EMR. But had a lot of questions on Glue and its integration with other services. According to me equal importance needs to be given to all domains as the questions will be a mix from different domains as they will expect you to know integration between different services.
My way of exam preparation:
I referred the Udemy course for my preparation- AWS Certified Data Analytics Specialty 2023- Hands on I took almost 6-8 weeks to finish the course. I made sure I completed one domain and went to the next domain. The way the course is designed is very easy to learn as the domains and some topics were related to each other. Also, the practice questions at the end of each domain were helpful to revise the topics. The labs/exercise/hands on lab were helpful to get some hands-on practice as well. I made notes from each topic and revised it regularly as there are a lot of things to remember in this exam.
My next step after this course was to take whizlabs practice test.These questions were too difficult and I did not feel the questions in the actual exam were as difficult as whizlabs practice questions. As the questions from these practice tests were too detailed and were not close to the actual exam.
I decided to take the tutorials dojo practice tests after that. Tutorials Dojo Practice tests. These practice tests were a game changer for me. As I started gaining confidence to take the exam only after taking these practice tests. These tests were very close to the actual exam. The explanations after each question and the links to topics were outstanding. I referred to all the topics below each explanation and got to learn more from them. The only thing about these tests were that they did not have many questions from Elastic search or MSK. There were a couple of questions from elastic search and MSK.
I identified the topics that I should refer and services that I lack knowledge in. I then referred to FAQ's of each and every service and made notes out of them. Most of the FAQ's were a repeat for me but good revision for me. I prepared a good set of last minutes topics to revise and that helped me a lot a day or two prior to the exam.
One important thing I would mention is please get a good nights sleep. It is super important for you to stay fresh for all 3 hours of the exam. So sleep early and have some energy bars before taking the exam.
Topics to focus on:
AWS Glue - Glue and its integrations with other services
Redshift – Make sure you scan the FAQ’s before taking the exam as this service has a lot of questions.
Amazon EMR- Many questions were not asked from this topic
Amazon Kinesis – This is a super important topic as there a lot confusing questions from this topic.
Amazon Athena- Lot of questions from this topic along with its integration with Redshift and Glue
AWS Lake formation – There were a couple of questions from this topic specifically related to permissions and cross account access.
Amazon Quicksight- Couple of questions from this topic but were easy enough to answer them if you have referred the material well.
Here are the words or phrases that you would see within the question. Some of the examples are as below:
- minimize administrative tasks
- minimal coding effort
- most cost-effective
- most efficient way
- minimal development effort
List of whitepapers good to refer before taking the exam:
- Big data Analytics on AWS
- AWS Whitepapers and guides
- https://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/Migration/migrating-applications-to-aws.pdf
- Database Migration Service Best Practice
- Exam Guide
- AWS Certified Data Analytics sample questions
- Optimize memory in AWS Glue
- Top 10 performance tuning techniques for Amazon Redshift
FAQ’s that I would recommend reading-
AWS Lake Formation
AWS Glue
AWS Redshift
Amazon EMR
Amazon Athena
Amazon Quicksight
AWS DMS
Amazon MSK
Amazon Opensearch
Kinesis Data Streams
Kinesis Data Firehose
Kinesis Data Analytics
Amazon S3
Amazon Dynamodb
Good Luck on your exam preparation!!
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