I had been studying for the SAA-C01 on and off for the last year, but as the test is being retired within the next 2 months I felt better just starting over on the C02 version that came out in March 2020. The tests are pretty similar with some domain consolidation from 5 to 4 domains to know about. The details inside those domain changes I’m still investigating, but I believe they’re minor changes and there’s just more services in the new test. Yep more services to understand.
AWS has some of the most complex set of services compared to other service providers. While I do wish they would offer a console to our VM’s, I think they’re more interested in moving people into services in the long term. Services or micro services in themselves really are the future for compute architectures going forward. It’s what truly enables a full DevSecOps lifecycle that’s easy to manage compared to monolithic VM’s which in itself does not enable the quick change outs of components in the way that containers can. Still you have to understand all compute platforms to pass the test so EC2 can not completely be discounted and VM’s still are there for your applications that can not yet be containerized. However I would say that containerization is similar to scripting that in order to remain relevant in the future you need to automate and you need containers or you’re going to be at a disadvantage in certain cases.
Still I’ll try to keep a working log of my journey to obtain this certification while also trying to get my CE’s for my Cisco certs, and just finishing up my Security+ which in itself was a challenge. I also have my eyes set on getting a CISSP in the next year as I grow my Cyber Security skill set that has really been lurking behind a lot of the work I’ve done in the IT industry for the last 20 years. I think I’ve come a long way from the kid building his own BBS and FidoNet node in the 90’s and one thing I’ve learned is you can not stop growing your skill sets.