AWS Certified Solutions Architect Study Guide: Associate SAA-C01 Exam, 2nd Edition

Incredibly thorough overview of key AWS Services. Much like a couple other reviewers pointed out, the practice questions at the end of each chapter are difficult and tricky. Having said that, it has forced me to better understand the material. I'll follow up with this review after completing my exam.Regarding the online resources, I too had problems with my access code and account. After contacting Wiley tech support, they quickly remedied the issue with my account and I now have access to the online material. It sounded like they are aware of the issue at this point.------Update 7/15/19I sat for my CSA exam on July 3rd and passed. I'm downgrading this book to 4 stars as it did not cover some subjects in more detail, that the exam certainly asked plenty of questions about. Below is a list of topics that I wish this book covered in way more detail. I feel like this book is still solid material for the CDA exam as well, so it has some solid overlap.Topics this book does not cover well:1. Making DynamoDB more performant (DAX).2. Kinesis. This book barely scratches the surface and is important to know.3. API Gateway. Again, this book barely covers the topic.4. AWS SQS. More detailed information needed on this topic.5. AWS SWF.

Simple 21 step instructions on how to access the online resources:1. Follow the instructions to get a PIN emailed to you.2. Follow the instructions in the email containing the PIN.3. Discover the instructions do not work.4. Search the community help section to find a solution to Wiley's shortcomings.5. Discover in a section insultingly named, "Wiley for dummies," that this has been a broken process for several years, with solutions provided that also don't work.6. Try to register with the site so you can post a question. You will need your PIN.7. Discover that the PIN is not valid.8. Attempt to email Wiley technical support through the site support widget.9. Discover this is a right reserved for registered members.10. Reply in vain to an email you received from Wiley, asking for support.11. Call one of the support numbers: 1-877-762-2974 or +1-317-572-3994 (International) (8:00 am to 8:00 pm EST).12. Recite your issue. Be transferred.13. Recite your issue again. Sit on hold.14. Exchange emails with support to provide them with the PIN you received. Sit on hold.15. Be directed to create an account with efficientlearning.com.16. Receive the following cryptic message: We are currently processing your request. Please go back to login page and try again.17. Advise the support technician of the new developments. They should fix this.18. Receive a new password via email.19. Log in again.20. Change your password.21. Enjoy your online content!Simple!

Practice Questions are too hard. But I haven't taken the official certificate exam yet. I will report back after I take the official exam.Edit: Just passed Solutions Architect Associate Exam. The real exam is relatively easy compared to the questions in this book. My review still holds. However, I still think it is worth the money and effort to work on the questions of this book. This may pave the way for professional level test - just my guess. Agree with the other review: cannot access online materials.

As another reviewer pointed out, the practice exams at the end of each chapter are far more difficult than any question you'll receive on the SA Associate exam. This book contains more information than you need to pass the Associate-level exam and seems written to be somewhere between Associate and Professional.I can't speak for the digital component as I never tried it, but this is an excessively comprehensive (but good!) study guide for the Associate exam and probably a decent resource for the Professional exam alongside a Professional-specific book.I'm not sure if I would recommend this to someone coming into AWS with no prior experience, but I would recommend they buy this book as a second guide after purchasing something a bit more high-level first.Update (09/05/19) : I just passed the SysOps Admin course, which I did not use this book to study for. As I expected, this book covered material also in that exam and I suspect the last chapters of this book (the CD/CI stuff) will be useful for the DevOps Associate exam. I had given this book to someone months ago who was studying for his AWS Solutions Architect exam, but I'll be ordering a second copy now to help prepare for the DevOps associate and maybe even the two Professional-level certifications. Upgrading to four stars.Update (12/09/19) : I passed the DevOps Associate as well. This book covered the AWS development tools (AWS Code Pipeline/Commit/Deploy, API Gateway, Lambda, and some others) sufficiently that I was able to take an in-depth DevOps exam with enough understanding of the concepts and services to develop my own website with various AWS integrations for practice.Buy this study guide for the AWS Solutions Architect exam, but hang on to it for SysOp and DevOp too. There's more detail in this book than in the three Associate exams combined (I doubt you'll ever be asked to compute DynamoDB Read Capacity Units and Write Capacity Units for example), so I've been going back to it now that I'm studying for the Solutions Architect Professional exam.Buy it with the confidence that it'll see you through your complete certification journey, so long as you are diligent enough to do your own hands-on as well. Upgraded to five stars.

Great book. Definitely worth spending extra for 2nd edition.

Enjoyed reading the study guide and the review questions are helpful. The AWS web gui and CLI have changed too much in that most examples were outdated. This caused endless frustration and I spent more time googling the correct way to do something than reading the book. Otherwise this book covers the concepts, but like it states in the pre-amble, the web interface and CLI change too often for it to be up to date.

The basic text is ok but it's hard to tell that this is an official guide not least because the exam questions are really quite different from those in the actual exam (which I successfully passed recently).Coming from a project management rather than technical background, I tried a few different learning sources to prepare for the exam including pluralsight, udemy and acloudguru - the latter was definitely by far and away the best in terms of preparing for and passing the exam.

The book gives a good high level overview for the AWS exam, but misses important subjects such as SQS which is a foundation for asynchronous decoupling and is part of the exam. I would not recommend this edition of the book, unlike the 1st edition. It needs errata and further proof reading as I doubt some of the answers to the questions (e.g Ch6Q12 don't change all users passwords after the IAM root user is compromised - the root user could have reset all the passwords). My copy of this book is my most annotated textbook which is not a good thing.

The URL for the online material on Wiley’s website is incorrect and I have no idea where the unique PIN I need to register to access the online material is. Not a great start:(

It gives you an overview of whats important. read the white paper on AWS to get better hands on.