Why I Decided to Get Certified
With a background in business, I later pivoted my career into data and technology. The cloud kept showing up in client conversations, project ideas, and product architecture decisions. So I wanted to build real confidence in cloud technology, not just in using AWS, but in thinking the way AWS wants you to think: scalable, resilient, cost-aware and secure. The certification gave me a structure to follow, a reason to go deep, and a way to test what I actually understood.
How I Studied (and what helped)
I didn’t cram. I made the decision to go steady and thoughtful: one topic at a time, usually accompanied by a blog post to cement what I’d learned. That writing process turned out to be one of the best tools for learning as it was forcing me to explain things simply and that made gaps in my understanding painfully obvious.
I used a mix of video courses, flashcards and practice exams. I also turned to AI to talk me through some of the areas that was new to me. I found that this enabled me to learn much more about underlying concepts that may be foundational knowledge for those with a technical background, but that were foreign to me with more of a business background. These are the areas that wasn’t directly included in the exam, but was as expected as base knowledge. Without a solid understanding of these areas, the actual course content will be that more challenging. Here I’m talking of concepts such as networking basics (VPCs, CIDR ranges, IP addresses), the Domain Name System, Internet Protocols and File Systems.
However, what helped me most in solidifying what I had learned was getting hands-on experience. I’m not talking about building extensive or complex cloud architectures using all of AWS’s services, but rather spinning up an EC2 instance, hosting a static website on S3, and adding a few Lambda functions behind an API Gateway. That was incredibly helpful in making the theory feel more concrete.
A few takeaways from my exam prep:
- Practice exams are great for testing recall, writing is better for understanding, and hands-on practice is the best;
- Time spent comparing services (e.g. S3 vs EBS vs EFS) paid off on the exam and in real-world confidence;
- Don’t underestimate the basics: IAM, VPC, EC2 and S3 show up everywhere. Once you have a firm grasp on these, everything else seems to fall in place.
What the Cloud Taught Me
Preparing for this certification was a bit like zooming out from the “how” of tech and thinking more about the “why.” A few ideas really stuck with me:
Good architecture is about trade-offs
AWS doesn’t give you “the one way” to solve a problem, it gives you options. Do you want cost efficiency or ultra-low latency? Durability or performance? Self-managed or fully managed? Almost every design decision is a balancing act.
Managed services are underrated
It’s easy to take services like S3, Lambda, and DynamoDB for granted, but once you understand what they’re replacing, you start to see the power of abstraction. You’re not just saving time; you’re handing off entire categories of complexity so you can focus on the real problem.
Cloud security is not just a checkbox
It’s embedded in the architecture itself. Using IAM policies well, segmenting networks properly, encrypting by default: these aren’t “extra steps.” They’re core to how AWS expects you to design systems.
Resilience is designed, not added later
Multi-AZ, backups, failovers and health checks: the exam forces you to think about how your app behaves when things go wrong. It’s a shift in mindset that sticks with you, even on small projects.
Things That Surprised Me
- AWS has multiple ways to do everything. Understanding why you’d choose one over another was often more important than knowing how to configure it.
- Learning cloud isn’t just technical. It’s strategic. It changes how you think about building and scaling products.
- I was surprised by how accessible AWS is to businesses of any size. You don’t need a huge budget or a dedicated ops team to use powerful infrastructure. With the necessary skill and knowledge, you can spin up services that used to require full IT departments, and only pay for what you use. AWS really lowers the barrier to entry, making serious tech available to startups, freelancers, and solo projects just as much as big enterprises.
What’s Next?
As a data professional, I’ve long understood that continuous learning is part of the game. This certification isn’t an end point, but more like a foundation I’ll keep building on. My focus now is on using this knowledge in real-world projects: helping clients make smart cloud decisions, building better data pipelines, and exploring how cloud can unlock value for businesses that don’t have in-house cloud teams.
If you’re thinking about learning AWS, I would strongly recommend that you go for it. You don’t have to become an expert overnight. Just start small, get curious, and don’t be afraid to pause and ask why. To me, that mindset was more valuable than any cheat sheet or exam tip.