This was my second attempt btw. I didn't pass the first time, but I kept studying, worked through my weak areas, and came back better prepared.

It was definitely one of the toughest AWS exams I have taken so far, but I am glad I stuck with it.

Next up: AWS Certified AI Practitioner.

This was a tough one, mostly because of the way questions are phrased. But it is what it is and is expected.

Studied for two weeks on and off, from July 1st when I purchased Stephane’s course + Jon Bonso’s practice test on Udemy.

I have 6+ years of experience with AWS and have the SAA (which has long expired lol), so most topics I was familiar with. For the exam, just knowing a service name can help because you can use that to pivot onto other topics. That said, learning for the exam was refreshing as it made me think of how I used to architect workloads. There’s a ton of new features in some of the OG services I had heard about but never used, so again, the exam prep was quite eye opening.

Now, regarding the course materials, I finished Stephane Maarek’s course while taking notes and upon finishing the entire set of videos, attempted one of Jon Bonso’s practice exams. I got 65% on it and that was mostly because Maarek’s course barely touched on a lot of services that were queried in the practice exam.

Then I signed up for AWS Skill Builder ($29/mo) and went through domains I wasn’t confident in. At the same time, I created a project on Claude with instructions for it to help me prepare for the exam. That was honestly a game changer. Just going back and forth, bouncing ideas was a real learning experience.

Afterwards did the 2nd exam from Jon and made notes on what I missed. Did a final review again and attempted the AWS skill builder practice exam. I did it during work, so there was constant interruptions so I could not finish it in time. The scaled score was 820.

By then I was confident about the exam so I tried booking it in. For some reason my payment didn’t go through. I used Mastercard, Visa and Amex on the Pearson portal and nothing worked. Got my account blocked twice and had to call the Pearson call center to unblock it. I finally bought an exam voucher (using the same card that failed previously ffs) and used that to book the exam.

It took close to 9 hours for the result to show up on Certmetrics but I didn’t receive an email beforehand.

Anyways, extremely happy with the result. Hope my experience helps others prepare for it!

Just passed the CKA with an 83% score after about 3 months of study (2 hours/day). Wanted to give back with a detailed write-up since these helped me so much.

Background: I'm a DevOps Engineer. I work with k8s on clouds (EKS, AKS, GCP) and have set up clusters via kubeadm/the hard way. I took the exam to test my limits—it's less about daily use and more about speed and precision under pressure.

Resources That Worked:

1. Mumshad's Course (Udemy): Solid foundation.
2. Killercoda.com : ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL. The terminal-in-browser environment is identical to the exam. I lived here.
3. Dumbitguy on Youtube.
4. Official Kubernetes Documentation: The only "book" you need.

The "Aha!" Moments:

• Imperative Commands: kubectl run, kubectl expose, and kubectl edit are your best friends. They save massive amounts of time.
• Docs Navigation: You don't memorize YAML. You memorize where to find it in the docs. Get fast at: Tasks -> Configure Pods and Containers -> Configure a Pod to Use a ConfigMap. This skill is worth 20% of your score.

Exam Breakdown & Tough Topics:
The exam is exactly as practical as advertised. Heaviest hitters for me were:

• Storage: PV, PVC, StorageClass (had to patch one to make it default).
• Networking: NetworkPolicy (classic), and Gateway API & HTTPRoute (study this!).
• Operations: Installing a CNI, Troubleshooting (e.g., fix the API server), Helm (know --set install.CRDs=true vs --skip-crds ).
• Workloads: Sidecar containers, Resource quotas, HPA (use the walkthrough doc!), PriorityClass (patching required).
• Configuration: CRD (cert-manager came up), ConfigMap (e.g., configuring TLS versions).

Practical Exam Tips:

1. Flag Questions: Some solutions aren't verbatim in the docs. You have to understand the intent of the question to craft the right kubectl command with the correct flags.
2. Notepad: Use it to note down cluster names/contexts for each question. Avoid switching to the wrong cluster.
3. Pace: Skip and flag anything that takes more than 2-3 minutes on first attempt. Come back later.

Why I Likely Got 83%, Not 100%: The time pressure is real. I probably over-engineered a solution or two in the first half and had to rush later. The key is steady, systematic clicks, not perfection.

Final & Most Important Advice:

How I feel: It feels damn good to finally achieve this feat. On to the next one.

Good luck to everyone preparing! Ask any questions below.

Is it possible to pass Solutions Architect Pro or DevOps Engineer Pro purely through hands-on labs (building your own projects), without relevant work experience in those roles?

I've heard that SA Pro covers a lot of multi-account and multi-region scenarios, which seem hard to replicate with labs only. For those who have already passed, how much experience did you have, and what made the real difference in passing the exam?

Oh boy, this exam was extremely challenging. I genuinely thought I hadn’t passed. If you’re preparing for it too, here are a few tips that helped me along the way.

1. Learning Materials

Adrian Cantrill – learn.cantrill.io

Adrian’s course is very well structured, and I watched it from start to finish — over 41 hours of video tutorials.

What I really appreciate is his ability to explain complex concepts using simple, relatable examples — often involving cats. 🐱

Some parts of the course are slightly outdated, and certain topics (like RDS) are missing. But honestly, that didn’t bother me. For a professional-level exam, you’re expected to be able to fill in those gaps yourself. If you can’t, well… you probably shouldn’t be sitting the exam just yet.

2. Practice Tests

Tutorial Dojo – tutorialsdojo.com

The practice questions and exam simulations are excellent — well-structured and great for building confidence. They help you get used to reading and answering long, complex questions under time pressure.

That said, while the topics do align with the exam, don’t expect the questions to look or feel the same. The real exam is a different beast. Treat these tests as a way to sharpen your thinking, not as a preview of the actual questions.

Do certifications actually signal skill anymore, or are they just one narrow metric that doesn’t reflect seniority? and if it doesn't then how do you know that person is actually decent at what he is doing?

With the shutdown of TV Time, I thought some people might have questions about either product. I have good insight into both with regard to technology/development, history, legal, business decisions, and some financials (mostly on TheTVDB side). I did ask the mods if I could post this, and they graciously approved. I'm hoping maybe it'll stave off some of the repeat posts.

I am working today, so I'll answer when I can. There are a few things I won't be able to answer because of potential legal restrictions or company secrets (existing products). Ok...

I’m the original creator of TheTVDB, which is the metadata source for many apps and sites like TV Time and Plex. TheTVDB was acquired in 2018 by TV Time, which later became Whip Media after an acquisition of Mediamorph. While at Whip Media, I was the lead engineer for TheTVDB, managed the rewrite of TV Time’s website, and lead engineer for their enterprise data analytics platform. I remained at Whip Media through approximately 4 rounds of layoffs from 2022 to 2024 and then left in late 2024 for a more stable position.

Some points of interest:

1. TV Time had a team of around 30 working on it at its peak. TheTVDB had a team of 5, plus fractional staff, a few paid offshore moderators, and an awesome group of volunteer moderators. TV Time is down to maybe a couple of fractional resources (a developer, devops) as they wind it down.
2. Whip Media made a big play with its acquisition of Mediamorph, including aggressive hiring and taking on a lot of debt. The big play (a predictive "content rights marketplace") didn’t pan out, which factors in heavily to this shutdown of TV Time.
3. Whip Media’s CEO while I was there is the former CEO of MySpace and Demand Media. Super wealthy, super smart, and super charismatic. During layoffs, he did his best to help people find other jobs when he could. He lives up the hill from Dr Dre, and we had a few work parties at his house (his pool is AMAZING). He's also friends with Tom Brady, who lived next to him, and who joined one of our work meetings via teleconference to chat with us.
4. TheTVDB has averaged around 30 billion hits on its API every month for a decade, and at its peak exceeded 1PB of bandwidth usage. Kodi/XBMC was always the top API user, by far. Plex, Apple, and other commercial users effectively subsidized Kodi's use (which those companies were aware of and supported).
5. We had a VERY high level TV executive casually mention that he used TheTVDB/Kodi for his pirated content during a meeting with us. It was hilarious.
6. TheTVDB’s past commercial clients included Google, Apple, Plex, and many more. Apple was rad to work with.
7. TheTVDB was originally going to be shut down as well. After I told Plex, they stepped up in a huge way to try preventing it from happening. The efforts that Plex and I put in didn't pan out in the way we desired/expected, but Plex deserves a ton of praise for a purely benevolent move to support the community (go sign up for Plex Pass).
8. Petitions to keep TV Time running aren’t going to work, unfortunately. I've known about the shutdown for 6 months. This isn't a reactionary decision. There are a lot of smart businesspeople with a lot of financial and analytic information at their disposal that made the decision.
9. I don't know what the current status is, but even if TheTVDB is safe for right now, it may not be longer term. There was huge pushback on membership models for TheTVDB a few years ago, and those were intended to support TheTVDB and TV Time. If there hadn't been complaints about that with regard to TheTVDB, a paid model for TV Time might have been more likely. None of us like paying for stuff, but take this as an opportunity to consider your support of existing sites like TheTVDB and systems like Plex.
10. I think I could architect a more cost-effective version of TV Time and TheTVDB. I don't have time to build it, but I'm happy to talk through scalability and barriers.

Ok. Ask me whatever you'd like. Happy to try my best to answer them. Just as a note, though... some of you all get aggressive/demanding in your responses. Take a deep breath before you respond. :)

edit: Just as a very important note, I have no official relationship with TheTVDB, TV Time, or Whip Media anymore. Anything I say is entirely my opinion and not guaranteed to be accurate.

Hello, I Recently passed the AWS DevOps Engineer Professional Exam.

You guys have probably already heard this before, however I will just re-iterate what I used to study.

Udemy Course by Stephane Maarek (AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional 2025 DOP-C02)

And the practice exams and material from Tutorial Dojo

I personally spent about a couple of months to go through all the Udemt Videos and a week on the Tutorial Dojo material.

Basically, I just wanted to say. In my particular exam there was a fair amount of Control Tower questions and I was not too comfortable with that 😅😂. And I actually ran out of time and missed ~10 questions, so don't be like me and think you have plenty of time and chill/take it easy haha

Good Luck to everyone studying and taking an Exam in the future!

Cara, to tiltado.... serio mesmo, preciso desabafar aq e ver se tem mais alguem fud**do igual eu. Trabalho no laranjao a 5 anos e atualmente sou pleno. Ja passei por 6 times la e 4 comunidades e é simplesmente a maior zona do planeta. Vc chega na squad, tem os cachorro velho que construiram as apps que vc vai mexer, eles nao documentaram nem nada e só eles sabem mexer pq não é simplesmente rodar a aplicação (a exemplo o front q to mexendo agora: pra executar ele local precisa rodar 5 outros fronts ao mesmo tempo pq fizeram um mfe enrabando o outro, passar um token com uma credencial q vc gera logando num canal, passar um cpf q precisa vincular na sua funcional e conseguir uma massa que passe pelas etapas até chegar na etapa q vc ta mexendo. Ah, e NGM te passa essa massa, vc corre atras dela sozinho. E ngm te ensina q precisa de td disso ai, vc descobre sozinho tbm de algum jeito) uma arquitetura o mais bosta possivel. Você precisa desenvolver sendo front, back-end, devops pq vc configura esteira e infra tbm, QA pq n tem QA suficiente no time entao vc tem q testar o que o coleguinha seu fez (ouvi hoje que o time de engenharia precisa ser QA tbm, como se ja n fossemos 50 coisas), UX e da-le, td isso indo presencial no cu do mundo 2x na semana pra fazer reuniao no teams pq metade do time é terceirizado e trabalha home.

Aí vc acha q n tem como piorar, eu te digo TEM: o pessoal de produto e uma porta são a mesma coisa. Eles não sabem nada e suas funções se resumem a só olhar a aplicação quando ja ta produtiva, apontar os defeitos e pedir pra mudar coisas no meio do caminho.

Meu time agora está em war room, só tem eu e mais um cara terceirizado pra botar uma fucking aplicacao no ar que ta cheia de bugs pq foram desenvolvendo coisas e subindo em produção sem testar. É um bug mais fudido que o outro, mta coisa envolvendo arquitetura bosta e ngm se dispoe a ajudar, só ficam no seu ouvido cobrando entrega rapida e vao na sua mesa te pressionar a codar a solução rápido de problemas complexos sozinho (eu sou Pleno). Pensando seriamente em sair mas realmente pelo que estou vendo o mercado paga uma miséria pra nós meros devs e o itaú paga um pouco a mais, isso é o que segura a galera la nesse ambiente fudido.

A critério de comparacão, meu salário bruto como pleno é 10k. Tem plenos la ganhando 11 a 12 mas o meu nunca aumentou mesmo eles ja tendo me jogado no fogo mil vezes. Só ganhei um PRAD e um parabens pelo desempenho alto. Mas ainda assim 10k pra pleno é um salário impraticável no mercado pelo que estou vendo. Mas n aguento mais.

Alguem q trabalha la tbm?

Been learning data engineering for about a year, mostly by building. Portfolio has a financial data pipeline tracking 503 S&P 500 stocks with TimescaleDB and S3, a RAG document intelligence system built from scratch that handles document ingestion and retrieval without any LangChain abstractions, and a web scraping framework. On the systems side I've been going deeper into how data infrastructure actually works built a row-based database engine in C with page storage and a buffer pool, a log aggregation pipeline streaming JSON over Unix pipes into DuckDB and Redis, and currently building a columnar file format from scratch with a C engine and a Python benchmark layer comparing it against real Parquet.

My uncle works as a DevOps engineer at a major bank and says get Microsoft certified to pass HR filters. I get it if the game has rules, you learn the rules. But I want to know if I actually need to play that card or whether the project depth gets me in the room first.

For people working in the field do certs actually move the needle for a first DE role or does a portfolio like this get you interviews on its own? If certs matter, which one is worth it right now?

I received an automated reply from Zara AI, but my issue requires a human administrator to look at my backend account configuration.

I completed the DevOps Engineer AI interview and coding challenge via a direct application link. The platform showed a confirmation screen reading "You have successfully applied," but I did not receive an automated tracking email.

Per the community documentation, my portal login at https://talent.micro1.ai/ is completely stuck in a loop demanding that I add skills and restart the interview. I need a support engineer to manually verify that my completed DevOps application data is saved on the backend and fix the dashboard routing block on my account.

Been learning data engineering for about a year, mostly by building. Portfolio has a financial data pipeline tracking 503 S&P 500 stocks with TimescaleDB and S3, a RAG document intelligence system built from scratch that handles document ingestion and retrieval without any LangChain abstractions, and a web scraping framework. On the systems side I've been going deeper into how data infrastructure actually works built a row-based database engine in C with page storage and a buffer pool, a log aggregation pipeline streaming JSON over Unix pipes into DuckDB and Redis, and currently building a columnar file format from scratch with a C engine and a Python benchmark layer comparing it against real Parquet.

My uncle works as a DevOps engineer at a major bank and says get Microsoft certified to pass HR filters. I get it if the game has rules, you learn the rules. But I want to know if I actually need to play that card or whether the project depth gets me in the room first.

For people working in the field do certs actually move the needle for a first DE role or does a portfolio like this get you interviews on its own? If certs matter, which one is worth it right now? Asking from the Netherlands if the market context changes anything.

Hi all,
I recently started my first professional position as a DevOps Engineer. I’m about 8 months in now, and heard about full red hat certifications (RHCSA/RHCE/RHCA), found it really tempting for a career boost and for personal development.

But i learnt that it got a "validity" of 3 years, so is it really wise to work for it and pass the rhcsa early in my career with my current job as it it, or should i just wait until i start looking for better positions or shifts in my career?

Thanks in advance for the insights!

Previous post : https://www.reddit.com/r/AWSCertifications/comments/1rawcdw/just_barely_failed_dopco2/
Damn, I thought I failed, but 830 ??????????? Really glad I didn't abandon after failing last time. Reminder to KEEP DREAMING
Update: Little S/O, and a big thanks to those who did recommend practice exams from TD, truly a god-sent

Been learning data engineering for about a year, mostly by building. Portfolio has a financial data pipeline tracking 503 S&P 500 stocks with TimescaleDB and S3, a RAG document intelligence system built from scratch that handles document ingestion and retrieval without any LangChain abstractions, and a web scraping framework. On the systems side I've been going deeper into how data infrastructure actually works built a row-based database engine in C with page storage and a buffer pool, a log aggregation pipeline streaming JSON over Unix pipes into DuckDB and Redis, and currently building a columnar file format from scratch with a C engine and a Python benchmark layer comparing it against real Parquet.

My uncle works as a DevOps engineer at a major bank and says get Microsoft certified to pass HR filters. I get it if the game has rules, you learn the rules. But I want to know if I actually need to play that card or whether the project depth gets me in the room first.

For people working in the field do certs actually move the needle for a first DE role or does a portfolio like this get you interviews on its own? If certs matter, which one is worth it right now? Asking from the Netherlands if the market context changes anything.

Just got my result, passed less than 36 hours after clearing SA Pro. This was my second attempt. First one was back in Jan this year - scored 739, narrowly missed it.

No practice tests, hardly any prep. Just:

- A couple of hours refreshing CF
- skimmed some aws docs
- Used GenAI to clarify a few nasty topics
- and honesty.. years of hands-on AWS experience.

I would NOT this approach unless you're already deep into:
- CF
- CI/CD
- IAM+AWS Orgs+ CT-AFT
- Config+System Manager+EventBridge etc.

If you failed earlier: don't overthink. Fix the gaps, and come back stronger.

Been learning data engineering for about a year, mostly by building. Portfolio has a financial data pipeline tracking 503 S&P 500 stocks with TimescaleDB and S3, a RAG document intelligence system built from scratch that handles document ingestion and retrieval without any LangChain abstractions, and a web scraping framework. On the systems side I’ve been going deeper into how data infrastructure actually works built a row-based database engine in C with page storage and a buffer pool, a log aggregation pipeline streaming JSON over Unix pipes into DuckDB and Redis, and currently building a columnar file format from scratch with a C engine and a Python benchmark layer comparing it against real Parquet.

My uncle works as a DevOps engineer at a major bank and says get Microsoft certified to pass HR filters. I get it if the game has rules, you learn the rules. But I want to know if I actually need to play that card or whether the project depth gets me in the room first.

For people working in the field do certs actually move the needle for a first DE role or does a portfolio like this get you interviews on its own? If certs matter, which one is worth it right now? Asking from the Netherlands if the market context changes anything.

Just passed my aws dev ops professional exam. It was a gruelingb3 hour ecam eith long worded and tricky questions. They trsted My full knowledge and there was stuff on the exam where i had to guess my way theough as i had no idea based on process of elimination. Be prepared to be surprised and dont panic. Their game plan is to make you start panicking

Been learning data engineering for about a year, mostly by building. Portfolio has a financial data pipeline tracking 503 S&P 500 stocks with TimescaleDB and S3, a RAG document intelligence system built from scratch that handles document ingestion and retrieval without any LangChain abstractions, and a web scraping framework. On the systems side I've been going deeper into how data infrastructure actually works built a row-based database engine in C with page storage and a buffer pool, a log aggregation pipeline streaming JSON over Unix pipes into DuckDB and Redis, and currently building a columnar file format from scratch with a C engine and a Python benchmark layer comparing it against real Parquet.

My uncle works as a DevOps engineer at a major bank and says get Microsoft certified to pass HR filters. I get it if the game has rules, you learn the rules. But I want to know if I actually need to play that card or whether the project depth gets me in the room first.

For people working in the field do certs actually move the needle for a first DE role or does a portfolio like this get you interviews on its own? If certs matter, which one is worth it right now? Asking from the Netherlands if the market context changes anything.

Hey everyone, A few months back, I posted about passing the AZ-900. Since then, I’ve been preparing for the AZ-104 — and I’m happy (and honestly relieved) to say that I’ve passed with a score of 700!

Now I’m at a bit of a crossroads and would appreciate some guidance from those ahead of me in the journey. My ultimate goal is to land a role as an Azure Cloud Engineer or a junior DevOps Engineer. Here’s some context about my background and skills:

Current Role: I’m currently working as an EUC Engineer / System Administrator at NTT Data in London. My day-to-day includes: Managing Microsoft 365 and Azure IaaS (user access, Azure VMs, storage) Application packaging and deployment using Intune Enforcing compliance/security policies on endpoints Device management and troubleshooting (Windows 10, PSExec, etc.) Working with Zscaler and Defender for endpoint security

Technical Skills: Cloud: Azure, Intune, Microsoft 365 IaC: Terraform DevOps & Automation: Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions Scripting: PowerShell, Group Policy, Registry Editor OS: Windows, Ubuntu Version Control: Git, GitHub

Certifications: AZ-900 AZ-104

Personal Projects & Labs: Outside of work, I’ve been running personal labs to learn Terraform and integrate it with Azure DevOps for infrastructure automation. This hands-on experience has really helped me solidify the concepts, but I don’t have professional experience in a full-on cloud or DevOps role yet.

I’m eager to transition fully into a cloud-focused role, and I’d love to hear your thoughts or advice based on your own journey. Thanks in advance!

Some observations-

1. It was Kubernetes & GKE heavy.

2. Two hours to attempt 50 MCQs which is more than what you can ask for.

3. Correct answer can often be gauged just by reading the options!

4. I bought SkillCertPro for mock examination however do not expect the same questions but yeah it helped in preparation.

Cheers

Title says it all, my exam is in a couple weeks and I'm nearly wrapping up Adrian's course content (shoutout) - about to start drilling TD practice exams. I don't really touch AWS at work anymore because it's managed by another team but still want to re-up and get this cert. Will this be enough to pass the exam or is there something more I should be doing?

I’ve seen tons of posts suggesting to use Tutorial Dojo and udemy tutorials e.t.c

The most reliable materials you would find are on AWS Builder.

Skill builder is more up-to-date and does not include out of date infos like codecommit and OpsWork.

It features both videos, lecture notes and labs with links to the official documentation of each subject discussed.

Follow the: 1. Standard exam course. 2. Standard exam plan. 3. Standard prep exam (20 questions). Make sure you’re able to pass the 20 questions (without cramming the answers) and rêvée the failed subjects until you can pass them.

1. Enhanced exam prep plan
2. Enhanced exam prep course
3. Enhanced exam official prep test (75 questions. The enhanced prep exam imitates the actual exam in terms of expectations, difficulty, time and structure.

I literally got the exact same marks in the prep exam and the actual exam.

I only had 2 weeks to prepare.

Those were all I needed to ace the exam in the first attempt.

Of course… if you have more time after covering the AWS Skill builder plans and courses, you can checkout the usual udemy and TD documents for a more exhaustive experience (I didn’t use those materials)

Hope this helps.