How I got AWS Certified SysOps Administrator in 2 weeks ☁

It's been a few months when I got my first AWS Associate Certificate. And I wanted to get my last Associate certificate for AWS before I got distracted by some other technology. Since the start of the pandemic, I took the opportunity to utilize my extra time to get some certifications.

For the past certifications, my strategy was pretty comparable to others, go through the study material (courses, labs and documentation) do some practice tests and then book the exam once I felt prepped. But sometime, I would slack off or get distracted by some side project or technology and hence this would drift me away from studying.
Following Andrew Brown's advice, I booked my SysOps exam before I started preparing and gave my self 15 Days for the prep.

So I started my preparation with the AWS Certified SysOps course from Andrew available on freeCodeCamp's YT:

%[https://youtu.be/KX_AfyrhlgQ]
I decided to study for at least 90-120 mins a day. Brokedown each topic that I needed to revise since there was a lot of overlap from Solutions Architect and Developer Associate.

So until this Sunday (6th September), I was able to finish going through the course material and also finished some labs and hands-on.
I had my exam this Tuesday (8th September 2020) which means I only had 1 day to do the practice exam.
I was quite confident so far but as soon as I did my first practice exam (Jon Bonso's Practice exam) I lost my confidence.
I went through the explanations for incorrect answers and just tried to understand the concepts better.

Not panicking, I decided to do another one and failed it too, so I was really nervous now and thought maybe I should postpone my exam. I went through all the explanations for my wrong answers and decided not to do any more practise exams now.

I decided to just go through my notes and sleep through it. Was really nervous when I woke up for the Test Day.
Didn't sweat much as the worst thing I could do was fail the exam, which I didn't 😉.

The exam was not so hard, as the practice exams. Also, given all three associate exams I think the following is the ranking according to me, starting from hardest:

• Solutions Architect
• SysOps Administrator
• Developer Associate

I think overall the experience was overwhelming for me but would say that having a deadline really helped achieve this certificate in about 2 weeks.
I would again like to thank Andrew for his course and his advice on the exam. Also the community of #100DaysOfCloud, it's great to be part of a team that motivates you and supports you with your cloud journey!
Feel free to hop on to the discord server and see what all the fuss is about?

As part of my preparation, I did some labs and hands-on that I published on YouTube, feel free to check them out!

You can reach out to me on Twitter if you have any questions in regards to the exam, throw me a follow to see what adventures I am planning in the cloud for the future.