Which AWS Certification Should I Get First?

Wondering Which AWS Certification should I get first? AWS certification validates your skills & advance your career as aws solutions architect associate. But everyone thinks which AWS certification should I get first & which AWS certification should one choose for career.

What is the position of AWS in the world?

AWS or Amazon Web Services is a large division of the massive Amazon company. It is the largest as well as the leading cloud services provider in the world. It is extremely dominant in the cloud services provider sector and occupies no less than 33% of the total market share in the world. It is an extremely competitive sector; so AWS’ widespread success is even more astonishing. As more and more businesses and organizations look to the cloud services provider sector to solve their various technological problems, the position of AWS appears even more surprising. AWS is actually poised to host and assist most of the businesses and organizations in the world with their technological requirements and unique cloud services demands. This is the reason that the number of AWS solutions architect associates in the world is growing at such a rapid rate.

Why Are AWS Certifications So Important?

The AWS platform is vast beyond imagining and absolutely massive. It is a beast of a platform and boasts of hundreds and hundreds of services. So it is extremely difficult to learn how to use the AWS services, what to speak of mastering them. As a result, anyone hoping to learn to use AWS services and operate them some day has to first look at the prospect of going through extensive certification training and getting certified to use the AWS platform and operate the services on it. This means going through Amazon’s certification process beforehand and afterwards being tested and examined by Amazon extensively.

Their skills and knowledge will be put to the test and they will have to pass the grueling and rigorous screening process conducted by Amazon. They will have to bring all of their talent to bear to pass the tests and exams that Amazon sets for them. This is no small thing. This is a very non-trivial process and very few make it past it. Less than 30% of candidates who take the Amazon AWS certification exams pass it. This means that more than 70% of the candidates who take the AWS certification exam fail to clear it. Now, this is a daunting figure. But the AWS certifications are necessary to acquire. This is especially true for the AWS architect associate certification.

How Do AWS Certifications Help?

Without them, there would be no way of holding IT professionals to a common and global standard of excellence. This standardized process of educating IT professionals and putting them through a standardized and rigorous screening and testing process ensures that those who claim to be competent in operating the AWS platform actually possess skills and knowledge of a high quality. They have passed all the tests that AWS instructors have thrown in their way and are ready to tackle the real-world problems and challenges that companies around the world face. As full-fledged AWS certified professionals, they are the best party to turn to when problems assail companies. This is why so many companies sponsor their employees for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate Certification.

The AWS certifications also provide IT professionals with a common language through which they can communicate with each other and discuss the problems affecting their respective employers. They can carry out migrations, launch new AWS services, clone instances of AWS services running on different machines, and even write code for and develop entire software applications on their own so that they are compatible with the AWS platform. They can do all this only because they have taken aws certification training and are thus battle-ready and well-equipped to meet any demand that their employers make of them.

What Are Some Popular AWS Certifications?

1. AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate -

This AWS certification training is for individuals who have 1 or more years of professional experience in designing solutions on the AWS platform which have some distinct characteristics. The characteristics are that they should be available, cost-efficient, fault-tolerant, and scalable. What available means is that they should always be running and in operation. They should have zero percent downtime and should not experience any failures or crashes. Cost-efficient means that they should involve an optimum number of AWS services and should not use more AWS services than what is absolutely necessary so that the cost for the client is minimum.

2. AWS Certified Developer – Associate -

This AWS certification training is meant for individuals who are full-fledged software developers. Many times companies don’t require AWS services per se but desire to develop software applications which are tied in with the AWS platform for hosting, backup, security etc. So they require software developers who know how to build their software application in such a way that it is fully integrated with the AWS platform. Or sometimes they have a software application which already exists in the company inventory but which is not integrated with the AWS platform. In such a case, the company requires a software developer who has knowledge of the AWS platform and can migrate the existing application on to it.

3. AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate -

This AWS certification training is intended for system administrators who are involved in system operations such as the design, deployment, and management of available, cost-efficient, fault-tolerant, and scalable cloud solutions. These can be a variety of software applications such as virtual desktops, cloud infrastructure which deliver media services, gaming applications, music applications, linux virtual machine instances, Windows instances, and much more. Sysops administrators are also responsible for managing and controlling the flow of data to and from AWS services. This includes the service requests, queries, insertion and deletion commands, and the monitoring and tracking of data over the AWS network.

4. AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional -

This AWS certification training is intended for individuals who are experts at evaluating and analyzing a company’s business requirements and drawing up a list of AWS services which the company will require. They are called solutions architects because they are responsible for designing and deploying cloud-based solutions for the varied business requirements of the companies. They have to build a cloud-based solution piece by piece, by carefully adding and subtracting components to it in the form of AWS services.

5. AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional -

This AWS certification training is intended for individuals who are full-fledged software developers and network engineers to boot. They have the responsibility of establishing the best practices which an organization should implement, follow, and uphold throughout their cloud infrastructure and throughout their various software development projects.

6. AWS Certified Security – Specialty -

This AWS certification training is intended for individuals who have at least 2 or more years of prior experience in conducting security evaluation and in managing security operations. They must have set up and enforced security best practices in an organization’s infrastructure in the past. They must also have programmed and implemented data protection mechanisms on the AWS platform at a deep and fundamental level.

Which One AWS Should I get First?

The AWS solutions architect associate certification is the best certification to get first. This is because the difficulty of the AWS architect associate certification is at a medium level. The AWS certification training is neither too difficult nor is it an absolute cakewalk. Therefore it is an ideal certification for beginners to the AWS platform. It also increases the chances of getting a job in the cloud technology sector significantly.