Which AWS Certification Should One Choose For Career?

19-Jan-2021

AWS is a vast platform with dozens of services that have been built on the foundation that Amazon has created. AWS is the world’s leading cloud services provider. It controls more than one-third of the total cloud services market share of the world. In fact, the amount of market share which AWS controls is more than the combined market share of its two closest competitors, Microsoft Azure, and Google cloud platform. AWS’ Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS offerings have made it a household name in the corporate world. This is the reason why so many professionals now seek AWS Solutions Architect Associate Certification courses.

Let us look at some of the AWS certifications which are available for a professional and which will make his career grow in a holistic and profitable way -

List of AWS Certifications -

1. AWS Cloud Practitioner/Fresher certification -

AWS cloud practitioner is a professional who possesses some basic knowledge about the cloud infrastructure of AWS. He is generally not given any tasks which involve technical details such as development, architecture, administration, etc. but regardless of that, he possesses rudimentary knowledge of all the various domains of the AWS.

Exam Objectives -

• One should be able to explain the AWS cloud and its widespread global infrastructure in detail.
• One should be able to define the different principles of AWS cloud architecture.
• One should have a good understanding of AWS cloud value proposition.
• One should have a solid knowledge of AWS services and their common use cases.

Domains Covered -

• Technology – 33% 
• Cloud Concepts – 26% 
• Security and Compliance – 25% 
• Billing and Pricing – 16% 

Eligibility Criteria -

• One must have a minimum of 6 months of experience from working in a cloud-related field such as financial, managerial, technical, sales, etc.
• One must have a solid foundation of knowledge in the field of IT and cloud services and their applications through the AWS platform.

2. AWS Solutions Architect certification -

AWS certified solutions architect is a professional who possesses skills and knowledge related to the AWS platform to an advanced degree. He is capable of deploying cost-effective, robust, scalable, and secure software applications on the AWS platform. He also has the skills and knowledge to ensure that those software applications have extremely high performance and that they are very efficient. In order to enter this career path, one should undergo AWS solutions architect associate certification training and get an AWS Solutions Architect Associate Certification online. 

Exam Objectives -

• One should be able to design and deploy cost-effective, robust, scalable, and secure software applications on the AWS platform.
• One should be able to migrate an existing software application to the AWS platform.
• One should be able to transfer data to and retrieve data from the AWS platform.
• One should be able to implement AWS architecture and services according to best practices and international standards.
• One should be able to implement cost control techniques and estimate the total cost of developing software applications on the AWS platform or migrating existing software applications to the AWS platform.

Domains Covered -

• Designing Resilient Architectures – 34% 
• Defining Performant Architectures – 24% 
• Designing Cost-Optimized Architectures – 10% 
• Specifying Secure Applications and Architectures – 26% 
• Defining Operationally Excellent Architectures – 6% 

Eligibility Criteria -

• One should possess one or more years of experience related to the design and deployment of software applications on the AWS platform.
• One should be able to correctly identify the requirements of designing a software application on the AWS platform comprehensively.
• One should be proficient in at least one high-level programming language. 

It should be noted that one will be able to pass the AWS solutions architect certification exam easily if they take AWS training and certification online.

3. AWS developer certification -

An AWS developer is a software developer or software programmer who has the responsibility of seeing to the setup, maintenance, and evolution of the cloud infrastructure of web applications. AWS developers are expected to have full knowledge and be up to date about the best practices related to security and scalability on the AWS platform. They should also be well-versed with most of the major services on the AWS platform.

Exam Objectives -

• One should know how to use AWS services and how to write programs using AWS APIs.
• One should be able to design the cloud architecture surrounding a software application developed to be hosted by the AWS platform.
• One should be well-versed with most of the major AWS services and the architectural best practices related to them. The services include Amazon S3, DynamoDB, SQS, SNS, SWS, Elastic Beanstalk, and CloudFormation.
• One should be able to authenticate AWS services and should be able to utilize AWS SDKs to connect a web application to the AWS platform.
• Building security into a web application at the level of the underlying code. This includes building in credential checking, IAM roles, building in encryption, etc.

Domains Covered -

• Development with AWS services – 30% 
• Security – 26% 
• Deployment – 22% 
• Monitoring and Troubleshooting – 12% 
• Refactoring – 10% 

Eligibility Criteria -

• One should have a minimum of one year of experience in designing and developing web applications for the AWS platform and the cloud architecture to go along with them.
• One should be able to write optimal code and optimize existing code in order to draw out high performance from the web application.
• One should be able to migrate existing legacy applications to both make them web-enabled and to have them hosted on the AWS platform.

4. AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional certification -

The AWS DevOps engineer is a role in which the professional has to provision, operate, and manage AWS environments. It is a role that requires a very high level of technical knowledge of the AWS platform. It also requires a very high level of programming skill and in-depth knowledge of software design principles and software architecture methodologies. One can take the AWS DevOps training to learn more about this job role practically.

Exam Objectives -

• One should be able to design and implement continuous delivery systems on the AWS platform.
• One should be able to assess the requirements of a web application and recommend an appropriate software architecture design methodology for it.
• One should be able to understand, implement, and automate governance processes and security controls.
• One should be able to program the web application in such a way that it complies with all the standards and regulations of the AWS platform. This means validating all the authentication factors such as login details.

Domains Covered -

• Configuration management and infrastructure code – 19% 
• SDLC automation – 22% 
• Incident and event response – 18% 
• Monitoring and Logging – 15% 
• High availability, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery – 16% 
• Policies and standards automation – 10%

Eligibility Criteria -

• One should have two or more years of experience in the operations, provisioning, and management of web applications designed to be hosted on the AWS platform.
• One must have written a sizable and non-trivial web application in a high-level programming language.
• One must have a solid foundation of knowledge of how to automate and test programs using programmer tools and scripting languages.

One can fulfill all these eligibility criteria by taking authorized training and becoming a full-fledged AWS certified DevOps engineer.

5. AWS Administrator certification -

An AWS administrator is a professional who has the responsibility to configure AWS cloud management services. He also has to carefully monitor the performance and state of other AWS services. In order to do this, he establishes several metrics that enable him to keep track of the utilization of resources by the AWS platform and the web application too.

Eligibility Criteria -

• One should know how to monitor services and track performance through metrics using the highly sophisticated Amazon CloudWatch.
• One should be very active in performing regular backups of the web application and its various modules as they run on the AWS platform.
• One should know how to optimize resources by making use of resource tagging and named allocation. This also includes working on budgeting, governance, and reporting.
• One should know how to create and manage VPC, URL proxies, C2S access points, and Bastion Hosts.
• One should know how to monitor billing and design cost optimization strategies.

6. AWS Security Specialist certification -

An AWS security specialist is a professional who has the responsibility of implementing security policies across the entire AWS platform. He also has to perform extensive audits of the web application in order to make sure that it is safe and free of dangerous backdoors or other such exploits and that it can be hosted on the AWS platform safely.

Exam Objectives -

• One must be able to assess and modify security mechanisms in order to make the AWS platform safe against attack vectors and threats.
• One must be able to implement data encryption methods in order to secure AWS workloads that are carried out over the internet or which go through off-premise sites.
• One should be able to introduce a level of deployment complexity sufficient to nullify risks through the method known as ‘security through obscurity.’

Domains Covered -

• Infrastructure security – 26% 
• Data protection – 22% 
• Logging and monitoring – 20% 
• Identity and access management – 20% 
• Incident response – 12% 

Eligibility Criteria -

• One should have a minimum of 5 years of experience working in the field of IT security and in implementing security solutions.
• In addition to the above, one should have a minimum of 2 years of experience in the matter of making AWS workloads secure.

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