1 00:00:00,110 --> 00:00:02,020 ‫So, here are my tips and my two cents 2 00:00:02,020 --> 00:00:05,990 ‫to pass the exam, so it's just general advice. 3 00:00:05,990 --> 00:00:07,280 ‫Probably some of this is obvious, 4 00:00:07,280 --> 00:00:09,180 ‫some of it you just need to hear once. 5 00:00:09,180 --> 00:00:12,520 ‫To me, the number one tip is practice makes perfect. 6 00:00:12,520 --> 00:00:15,580 ‫So, if you're new to AWS, it will take a lot of practice 7 00:00:15,580 --> 00:00:19,870 ‫to understand how to work with AWS on a daily basis. 8 00:00:19,870 --> 00:00:21,740 ‫If you're new to AWS, this course probably gives you 9 00:00:21,740 --> 00:00:24,310 ‫massive head start into using AWS. 10 00:00:24,310 --> 00:00:26,190 ‫If you feel confident, then do the exam, 11 00:00:26,190 --> 00:00:28,920 ‫if not, don't rush, you have time. 12 00:00:28,920 --> 00:00:31,280 ‫Just work on AWS, be confident. 13 00:00:31,280 --> 00:00:33,410 ‫Use IAM rolls, deploy applications, 14 00:00:33,410 --> 00:00:36,380 ‫and then when you're ready, you can take the exam. 15 00:00:36,380 --> 00:00:37,510 ‫The exam recommends you will each 16 00:00:37,510 --> 00:00:39,610 ‫have one or more years of hands-on experience. 17 00:00:39,610 --> 00:00:41,320 ‫So, there are things you can't fake, 18 00:00:41,320 --> 00:00:43,530 ‫so up to you to see if you're ready 19 00:00:43,530 --> 00:00:44,720 ‫or not to pass the exam. 20 00:00:44,720 --> 00:00:46,950 ‫So, what I say is practice makes perfect! 21 00:00:46,950 --> 00:00:48,810 ‫And, a feeling you might have right now 22 00:00:48,810 --> 00:00:50,820 ‫is overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge 23 00:00:50,820 --> 00:00:53,720 ‫I just threw at you, that you just learned. 24 00:00:53,720 --> 00:00:56,240 ‫So, it takes time to have knowledge, 25 00:00:56,240 --> 00:00:58,190 ‫this is not the kind of course you'd do in three days. 26 00:00:58,190 --> 00:01:00,530 ‫This is the kind of course that goes over weeks. 27 00:01:00,530 --> 00:01:04,390 ‫And, so if you have a lot of acquired knowledge, 28 00:01:04,390 --> 00:01:06,830 ‫but you don't think it's perfect yet in your mind, 29 00:01:06,830 --> 00:01:10,280 ‫then start practicing and do the course one more time. 30 00:01:10,280 --> 00:01:13,540 ‫It's a few hours, obviously, but it will really help you 31 00:01:13,540 --> 00:01:17,580 ‫not to waste the exam cost afterwards. 32 00:01:17,580 --> 00:01:19,480 ‫So, really just practice. 33 00:01:19,480 --> 00:01:20,600 ‫That's my advice. 34 00:01:20,600 --> 00:01:22,080 ‫So, if you want to practice, you may be like, 35 00:01:22,080 --> 00:01:23,000 ‫how do I do this? 36 00:01:23,000 --> 00:01:25,650 ‫Well, if you're in a company, then good, 37 00:01:25,650 --> 00:01:26,670 ‫just work with your company. 38 00:01:26,670 --> 00:01:29,860 ‫If not, then take one of your existing applications 39 00:01:29,860 --> 00:01:31,340 ‫in whatever language you want. 40 00:01:31,340 --> 00:01:33,320 ‫Try to deploy it manually in EC2. 41 00:01:33,320 --> 00:01:34,710 ‫That's be a good first step. 42 00:01:34,710 --> 00:01:36,750 ‫Then, try to deploy it on Elastic Beanstalk 43 00:01:36,750 --> 00:01:39,130 ‫and have it scale with a little downserver 44 00:01:39,130 --> 00:01:40,780 ‫and a scaling group. 45 00:01:40,780 --> 00:01:43,200 ‫Maybe create a CICD pipeline for it. 46 00:01:43,200 --> 00:01:45,200 ‫So you go all the way from your code 47 00:01:45,200 --> 00:01:47,420 ‫to your artifacts to the deployments. 48 00:01:47,420 --> 00:01:49,720 ‫Maybe you can try breaking down your application 49 00:01:49,720 --> 00:01:52,800 ‫to several components and use SQS and SNS 50 00:01:52,800 --> 00:01:55,920 ‫to decouple your whole application. 51 00:01:55,920 --> 00:01:59,830 ‫If possible, if you use java, go python, node, 52 00:01:59,830 --> 00:02:01,800 ‫these kind of languages, then you can run it 53 00:02:01,800 --> 00:02:03,500 ‫with AWS Lambda and its friends. 54 00:02:03,500 --> 00:02:07,560 ‫So, it's friends of DynamoDB, API gateway. 55 00:02:07,560 --> 00:02:10,130 ‫So that, maybe involve a bit of refactoring, 56 00:02:10,130 --> 00:02:11,430 ‫but it could be fun. 57 00:02:11,430 --> 00:02:14,320 ‫And, if you want to practice with the CLI and the SDK, 58 00:02:14,320 --> 00:02:17,100 ‫I would strongly recommend to have ideas like this. 59 00:02:17,100 --> 00:02:21,720 ‫So, for example, create a script or create CLI or SDK script 60 00:02:21,720 --> 00:02:23,870 ‫that will shut down your EC2 instances at night 61 00:02:23,870 --> 00:02:25,100 ‫and start them in the morning. 62 00:02:25,100 --> 00:02:27,410 ‫That's actually a fun project to do on your own. 63 00:02:27,410 --> 00:02:29,580 ‫Or, you can have one that automates snapshots 64 00:02:29,580 --> 00:02:31,090 ‫of your EBS volumes at night, 65 00:02:31,090 --> 00:02:34,150 ‫so you know they're always backed up once a day. 66 00:02:34,150 --> 00:02:36,000 ‫And, maybe an idea three is to list 67 00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:38,950 ‫under-utilized EC2 instances in one region. 68 00:02:38,950 --> 00:02:39,977 ‫And maybe under-utilize them 69 00:02:39,977 --> 00:02:42,670 ‫in CPU Utilization under 10 percent, 70 00:02:42,670 --> 00:02:44,070 ‫so that you don't waste money 71 00:02:44,070 --> 00:02:47,330 ‫on under-utilized EC2 instances for example. 72 00:02:47,330 --> 00:02:50,090 ‫Again, just a bunch of ideas, you may have your own ideas, 73 00:02:50,090 --> 00:02:51,210 ‫based on your used cases, or what you do 74 00:02:51,210 --> 00:02:52,850 ‫in your daily basis. 75 00:02:52,850 --> 00:02:55,260 ‫But, what I want to do is just give you 76 00:02:55,260 --> 00:02:57,350 ‫leads onto practicing. 77 00:02:57,350 --> 00:02:59,623 ‫Now, for the exam, you're going to have questions 78 00:02:59,623 --> 00:03:00,930 ‫and you're going to have multiple answers, 79 00:03:00,930 --> 00:03:04,220 ‫sometimes one answer, sometimes more than one answer. 80 00:03:04,220 --> 00:03:06,680 ‫Most of these questions are going to be scenario based. 81 00:03:06,680 --> 00:03:09,070 ‫And, for all the questions, I would suggest 82 00:03:09,070 --> 00:03:10,960 ‫to start by ruling out answers 83 00:03:10,960 --> 00:03:13,270 ‫that you know for sure are wrong. 84 00:03:13,270 --> 00:03:15,550 ‫So, it's a really good way to start, to getting started, 85 00:03:15,550 --> 00:03:17,250 ‫because if you know something is wrong, 86 00:03:17,250 --> 00:03:19,620 ‫then you eliminate it, and that's one less question 87 00:03:19,620 --> 00:03:21,750 ‫you have to think, answer you have to think about. 88 00:03:21,750 --> 00:03:24,820 ‫So, for the remaining answers, you need to really think 89 00:03:24,820 --> 00:03:26,860 ‫about which one makes the most sense. 90 00:03:26,860 --> 00:03:29,370 ‫And, honestly, I'll be very honest with you, 91 00:03:29,370 --> 00:03:30,940 ‫there are very few trick questions, 92 00:03:30,940 --> 00:03:34,070 ‫so don't overthink your whole process. 93 00:03:34,070 --> 00:03:37,960 ‫If one answer makes a lot of sense, then go for it. 94 00:03:37,960 --> 00:03:41,980 ‫If one answer seems feasible, but is very complicated, 95 00:03:41,980 --> 00:03:45,990 ‫and requires a lot of engineering, it's probably wrong. 96 00:03:45,990 --> 00:03:47,800 ‫Sometimes there are two answers that are correct, 97 00:03:47,800 --> 00:03:49,490 ‫but one really is easier than the other, 98 00:03:49,490 --> 00:03:53,410 ‫or makes more sense, so really use your sound judgment. 99 00:03:53,410 --> 00:03:55,970 ‫Try to think about how much effort it would be for you 100 00:03:55,970 --> 00:03:59,030 ‫to implement whatever the question asks you to do, 101 00:03:59,030 --> 00:04:00,770 ‫and make a decision based on that. 102 00:04:00,770 --> 00:04:02,810 ‫But usually, proceeding by elimination 103 00:04:02,810 --> 00:04:05,030 ‫and then using your judgment 104 00:04:05,030 --> 00:04:07,060 ‫and your knowledge really makes you go 105 00:04:07,060 --> 00:04:08,750 ‫through most of the questions. 106 00:04:08,750 --> 00:04:11,560 ‫Remember, there are very, very few trick questions. 107 00:04:11,560 --> 00:04:13,080 ‫And, the questions will have key words 108 00:04:13,080 --> 00:04:15,360 ‫that will indicate usually something 109 00:04:15,360 --> 00:04:18,024 ‫that will be determining in the answer. 110 00:04:18,024 --> 00:04:20,090 ‫If for example, serverless probably means 111 00:04:20,090 --> 00:04:23,410 ‫AWS, Lambda, and DynamoDB, and API Gateway. 112 00:04:23,410 --> 00:04:24,860 ‫That type of stuff. 113 00:04:24,860 --> 00:04:28,430 ‫Now, the AWS Whitepapers, they recommend you to read them. 114 00:04:28,430 --> 00:04:31,050 ‫To be honest, it is 10 whitepapers of 40 pages, 115 00:04:31,050 --> 00:04:32,320 ‫you may not want to read them all, 116 00:04:32,320 --> 00:04:33,930 ‫but you should skim them. 117 00:04:33,930 --> 00:04:36,330 ‫So, there's lot of white papers, you know, 118 00:04:36,330 --> 00:04:39,640 ‫it's Security Best Practices, so using IAM rolls, 119 00:04:39,640 --> 00:04:43,300 ‫that kind of stuff, encryption, we've seen this. 120 00:04:43,300 --> 00:04:44,730 ‫Then the Well-Architected Framework. 121 00:04:44,730 --> 00:04:47,090 ‫So, around how you architecture applications, 122 00:04:47,090 --> 00:04:50,220 ‫segregation of duties using RDS, ElastiCache, et cetera. 123 00:04:50,220 --> 00:04:53,670 ‫Architecting for the Cloud, which is kind of the same thing. 124 00:04:53,670 --> 00:04:58,037 ‫The CICD paper is going to be around CodeBuild, 125 00:04:58,037 --> 00:05:00,490 ‫CodeDeploy, CodePipeline, CodeCommit. 126 00:05:00,490 --> 00:05:02,220 ‫We've seen this in large. 127 00:05:02,220 --> 00:05:05,770 ‫Microservices on the AWS is going to be around AWS Lambda, 128 00:05:05,770 --> 00:05:08,540 ‫and also ECS, and also all these things 129 00:05:08,540 --> 00:05:10,600 ‫to decouple your microservices and have them 130 00:05:10,600 --> 00:05:12,710 ‫innovate with one another. 131 00:05:12,710 --> 00:05:14,380 ‫Serverless Architecture with AWS Lambda, 132 00:05:14,380 --> 00:05:15,550 ‫I think we've seen a lot of it, 133 00:05:15,550 --> 00:05:17,300 ‫and we we've also seen the SAM framework, 134 00:05:17,300 --> 00:05:19,380 ‫which will be discussed in there. 135 00:05:19,380 --> 00:05:20,980 ‫Optimizing Enterprise Economics 136 00:05:20,980 --> 00:05:24,420 ‫with Serverless Architectures basically explains you that 137 00:05:24,420 --> 00:05:26,630 ‫if you go Serverless, then you don't have to pay people 138 00:05:26,630 --> 00:05:28,540 ‫to manage and do maintenance of your stuff, 139 00:05:28,540 --> 00:05:30,090 ‫and so you save a lot of money. 140 00:05:30,090 --> 00:05:31,490 ‫And on top of it, Serverless means 141 00:05:31,490 --> 00:05:33,300 ‫that you only pay for what you use, 142 00:05:33,300 --> 00:05:36,520 ‫so you should be optimal in pricing. 143 00:05:36,520 --> 00:05:39,550 ‫Now, Containerized Microservices on AWS. 144 00:05:39,550 --> 00:05:41,800 ‫This is an advanced topic, but this is around ECS. 145 00:05:41,800 --> 00:05:44,500 ‫Basically it's saying okay, use docker in ECS 146 00:05:44,500 --> 00:05:46,370 ‫to deploy microservice on AWS. 147 00:05:46,370 --> 00:05:48,370 ‫Remember the exam only is asking you 148 00:05:48,370 --> 00:05:51,120 ‫about a high level of of ECS not a deep dive. 149 00:05:51,120 --> 00:05:53,100 ‫Blue/Green Deployments, I've tried to place 150 00:05:53,100 --> 00:05:56,590 ‫that everywhere alongside the course, 151 00:05:56,590 --> 00:05:59,760 ‫there's going to be blue/green deployments on Beanstalk, 152 00:05:59,760 --> 00:06:01,830 ‫maybe there's a bit of blue/green deployments 153 00:06:01,830 --> 00:06:05,450 ‫on Lambda or API Gateway. 154 00:06:05,450 --> 00:06:07,870 ‫All this stuff we've seen, blue/green is basically testing 155 00:06:07,870 --> 00:06:10,340 ‫the new version, the green version, 156 00:06:10,340 --> 00:06:12,210 ‫while the blue version is still running. 157 00:06:12,210 --> 00:06:14,170 ‫And then when we're ready, switching over 158 00:06:14,170 --> 00:06:16,340 ‫from the blue version to the green version. 159 00:06:16,340 --> 00:06:18,110 ‫Overall, I feel that we've explained the, 160 00:06:18,110 --> 00:06:20,190 ‫explored the most important concepts in this course, 161 00:06:20,190 --> 00:06:22,560 ‫but if you feel strongly about one of these papers, 162 00:06:22,560 --> 00:06:24,810 ‫and you want to read about it, then go for it. 163 00:06:24,810 --> 00:06:27,340 ‫I think they're very interesting, each of these papers. 164 00:06:27,340 --> 00:06:29,410 ‫The one paper you might want to have a peak into 165 00:06:29,410 --> 00:06:31,970 ‫is the Blue/Green Deployments on AWS, 166 00:06:31,970 --> 00:06:34,690 ‫just you have a quick look, but don't overthink it. 167 00:06:34,690 --> 00:06:36,890 ‫The most of the questions, and probably all the questions 168 00:06:36,890 --> 00:06:39,500 ‫are going to be covered by this course already. 169 00:06:39,500 --> 00:06:41,960 ‫Now each service will have an FAQ, 170 00:06:41,960 --> 00:06:44,020 ‫so frequently asked questions. 171 00:06:44,020 --> 00:06:46,970 ‫So, for example for Lambda its /lambda/faqs. 172 00:06:46,970 --> 00:06:48,300 ‫And I think they're very important 173 00:06:48,300 --> 00:06:50,310 ‫because FAQ covers a lot of the questions 174 00:06:50,310 --> 00:06:51,840 ‫they will ask you at the exam, 175 00:06:51,840 --> 00:06:52,970 ‫and they may help you confirm 176 00:06:52,970 --> 00:06:54,380 ‫your understanding of a service, 177 00:06:54,380 --> 00:06:57,700 ‫or maybe shed some light on a doubt you may have. 178 00:06:57,700 --> 00:06:59,870 ‫So, definitely look at the Service FAQs, 179 00:06:59,870 --> 00:07:02,540 ‫especially the one you don't really understand. 180 00:07:02,540 --> 00:07:05,840 ‫Now, lastly, is really around community, 181 00:07:05,840 --> 00:07:08,280 ‫so you need to get into the AWS community, 182 00:07:08,280 --> 00:07:10,540 ‫you need to talk to other Amazon engineers. 183 00:07:10,540 --> 00:07:12,890 ‫You know, talking to people really unlocks knowledge, 184 00:07:12,890 --> 00:07:14,400 ‫at least for me it does. 185 00:07:14,400 --> 00:07:16,760 ‫So, discuss with other people in the course Q&A. 186 00:07:16,760 --> 00:07:19,810 ‫Definitely help other people answering their questions. 187 00:07:19,810 --> 00:07:21,260 ‫And by answering their questions, 188 00:07:21,260 --> 00:07:23,670 ‫this is how you learn, you learn by teaching. 189 00:07:23,670 --> 00:07:26,800 ‫And you review questions, asked by other people. 190 00:07:26,800 --> 00:07:29,100 ‫Definitely look at what other people's concerns were. 191 00:07:29,100 --> 00:07:30,090 ‫Maybe they will help you. 192 00:07:30,090 --> 00:07:33,320 ‫Maybe the answers will, again, teach you a few stuff. 193 00:07:33,320 --> 00:07:35,130 ‫And, do the practice test in this section, 194 00:07:35,130 --> 00:07:36,840 ‫just to see where you are at. 195 00:07:36,840 --> 00:07:38,000 ‫You should read forums online. 196 00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:39,980 ‫If you are very curious, read online blogs 197 00:07:39,980 --> 00:07:42,480 ‫and also there are local meetups 198 00:07:42,480 --> 00:07:45,100 ‫to discuss with other Amazon Engineers. 199 00:07:45,100 --> 00:07:47,310 ‫Finally, if you are more of a YouTube person, 200 00:07:47,310 --> 00:07:50,300 ‫there are a lot of re-invent videos that are quite nice. 201 00:07:50,300 --> 00:07:52,430 ‫The re-invent is an AWS Conference, 202 00:07:52,430 --> 00:07:54,430 ‫and they have a lot of good content out there. 203 00:07:54,430 --> 00:07:56,120 ‫Basically a presentation of their service, 204 00:07:56,120 --> 00:07:57,950 ‫and sometimes a little demo. 205 00:07:57,950 --> 00:08:00,872 ‫So, that's it, really for the tips of what you need to do. 206 00:08:00,872 --> 00:08:02,750 ‫I believe you're ready, but it's up 207 00:08:02,750 --> 00:08:05,827 ‫to you to see how much more practice you want to have. 208 00:08:05,827 --> 00:08:08,170 ‫But, yeah hopefully these tips help 209 00:08:08,170 --> 00:08:10,120 ‫and I will see you in the next lecture.