Even if you have good hands-on experience in the areas that this exam tests you on, it is still necessary to spend significant time to ensure you pick up a sound understanding of the concepts and have solved at least 3 mock exams AND scored north of 80%.
For me, it took close to 3-4 months of hard work. It involved going thru the study materials, doing the associated lab exercises, taking notes during the process and cross referencing them smartly for easy retrieval later. I feel that as much as understanding what each AWS service can do, it is just as important to remember what it cannot do. This is crucial since there are multiple AWS services which offer very similar functionalities; the exam can trick you into picking the wrong one, especially when you are under pressure. Just one wrong choice can make all the difference in the exam and that can be really frustrating after months of hard work.
There are 5 sections that you should focus on for this exam:
1)Collection
2)Storage
3)Analytics/Compute
4)Visualization
5)Security
Even many of us who have been working on AWS for some time typically wouldn't have focused much on Security and that can prove to be the weak link in the chain. When I was solving the mock exam, I realized that Security was my weak point. So, I went back to the drawing board and began to work harder on this section. Of course, it may be a different section for you. But the point I'm trying to make is that you have to identify your weak points early and work especially hard on those.
I used the Udemy course (https://cognizant.udemy.com/course/aws-data-analytics/learn/lecture/18455264?start=1#overview) to begin with. This is a good course and the instructor does a good job explaining the concepts. However, in my opinion, once you have completed this course and have grasped all the concepts therein, you are only 40-50% prepped from an exam standpoint. The devil as they say, is in the details. You would need to double click on all the topics and invest time and effort in doing research on the service capabilities from other sources as well. You can start with the AWS FAQs. You also need to explore with your own hands-on.
Some of the questions on the exam will be really long and the choices given will be equally long. In such scenarios, it becomes important to disqualify the ones that are obviously wrong by the process of elimination and work only with the rest. Else you are likely to keep wrestling with all the choices and that can adversely impact the time on hand for the rest of the questions. So watch out for that. I finished the exam with just under a minute to spare. So, time management becomes extremely important.
You can use the following content to prep for your exams
Cloud Academy. There is a mock exam associated with the course. Reach out to Cognizant Academy for your login
Udemy. There is a mock exam associated with the course. This is free for all Cognizant associates
Whizlabs. There are 3 mock exams that comes with this and it is reasonably priced. You can go for it
But I noticed that not too many similar questions came on the actual exam. :-(
Once you complete the Udemy or CloudAcademy course and pass the mock exam, you can share the screenshots with Academy and that will qualify you to get a free voucher from the Cognizant Academy team. I think you should pick this route. Else you will need to spend $300 from your pocket. Obviously, you need to pass the exam to get that amount reimbursed
I wish you luck in your endeavour.
