Today I passed my AWS Advanced Networking Specialty exam; I won’t say by how much I passed, suffice to say, that a pass, is a pass :-). This exam is tough, definitely a BIG step up from the associate level courses. Below I have listed all of the study resources I used to fail initially and then pass the exam. I have put them in descending order from what I view as the most useful for the exam, too least useful.
The exam is 180 minutes long and consists of 65 questions; the exam took me about 120 minutes, both times I sat it. The questions seem a lot less wordy than the professional level practise questions, I ended up spending less time reading paragraph-long questions and more time picking apart the wording. All the questions are multiple choice and scenario-based, you have to pay much attention to the specific wording of the question, as multiple answers work, but one answer is the “best” and therefore the correct answer.
1 - Networking Fundamentals
I would advise you have (or get) an excellent understanding of networking fundamentals such as Ipv4, subnetting, routing & switching and the 7 layer OSI model. It is essential (in my opinion) to have these core fundamentals understood before attempting to sit this exam. To gain such knowledge I have purchased quite a few networking courses from Udemy.com which I have found very beneficial.
2 - ACloudGuru - Advanced Networking Specialty Course
The aCloudGuru “Advanced Networking Specialty” course I cannot recommend enough. It goes into great technical depth and covers almost everything you could need for the exam, plus a healthy amount of the history of networking (which helped me understand some of the core concepts). This course is my number one recommendation for passing this exam (apart from networking fundamentals), do. This. Course.
3 - Linux Academy (LA) - AWS Advanced Networking Course
With many hands-on walkthroughs; the Linux Academy course is excellent, I would say it covers the AWS side of things (for this exam) quite substantially. I would also say this course has the best hands-on labs, which are essential to understanding a product/service properly. However, it comes up a bit short on the basic networking knowledge needed to pass this exam, for this reason, I have ranked it 3rd.
4 - Re:Invent lectures
These were invaluable, I would suggest watching the following videos over and over again untill you fully understand all the concepts contained within:
-re:Invent 2015 NET406 - Deep Dive in AWS Direct Connect and VPNs
-re:Invent 2016 NET305 - Extending Datacenters to the Cloud
-re:Invent 2016 NET402 - AWS Direct Connect and VPNs
-re:Invent 2017 NET301 - Extending Data Centers to the Cloud
-re:Invent 2017 NET403 - Deep Dive: AWS Direct Connect and VPNs
I cannot stress enough how good these videos are for the exam.
5 - WhitePapers
Personally, I really struggle with WhitePapers and how dry they can be, one of my biggest downfalls. For this exam I studied the following AWS whitepapers:
-aws-amazon-vpc-connectivity-options.pdf
-hybrid-cloud-dns-options-for-vpc.pdf
-integrating-aws-with-multiprotocol-label-switching.pdf
6 - Documentation
Going through the documenatation of the following topics really helped me solidify my knowledge leading up to the exam.
-ELB Documentation
-Hybrid connectivity Documentation
-VPC Networking Documentation
-Direct Connect Documentation
7 - General Study Guides
Last but not least I found the guide below to be quite useful as this exam is relatively new and there isn’t much info on it out there. https://acloud.guru/forums/aws-certified-advanced-networking-specialty/discussion/-Kri4imXe4eBsSu6c36U/pass
Hopefully, this guide has given you a good idea on where to start studying for this exam, let me know if there is anything you think I have missed or left out, I am always open to feedback.
Until next time…