Stepwise Preparation Approach for AWS Certified Data Analytics Specialty (DAS-C01) Certification
AWS Data Analytics Specialty certificate validates your knowledge in Big Data and Analytics domain. It’s extremely difficult to achieve on the basis of theoretical knowledge only without hands on experience in AWS Big Data and Analytical services such as Glue, EMR, Redshift, Kinesis, AWS Managed Kafka services, DynamoDB. It’s not mandatory to take any other AWS certification as per prerequisite for this but I suggest taking AWS Solution Architect — Associate or AWS Certified Developer — Associate before taking any specialty certification as it helps to make AWS fundamentals strong and acclimatize with certification environment. If there are not enough working experience with various AWS Big Data offerings, I recommend taking hands on practice using own AWS account. There is no point to aim for this certification without hands on experience. If there are enough hands on experience on a particular tool or tools among plethora of AWS big data services, it’s better to taking hands on practice with less familiar services. Identify your weakness and prepare accordingly. Don’t take this certification in haste. Take your time to prepare and be confident. Certification is the process to validate the knowledge. So, concentrate to clear your concepts. Please follow below stepwise approach for preparation which I have come up with my own experience. I have achieved DAS-C01 certification on June,2020:
Prerequisite of this certification (though not mandatory from AWS but it will enable to grab subsequent concepts in depth)
· AWS Security Fundamentals and Best Practices (STS, Identity Federation, KMS, Cloud HSM, S3 Encryption, VPC Endpoint)
· AWS Networking Components (VPC, VPN, Storage Gateway, NACL Security Group, Routing Table, NAT Gateway)
· AWS Storage Types and corresponding patterns/antipatterns
Step 1: Go with Official certification guide from AWS.
Step2: Take test on free sample questions from AWS. Write it down the score somewhere and don’t look into the explanation for answers.
Step3: Enroll for the online course. I personally recommend for Udemy Course By Stephane Maarek and Kane Frank.
AWS Certified Data Analytics Specialty 2020 — Hands On! by Stephane Maarek and Frank Kane
https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-big-data/ (cost 12$ USD)
Step4: Watch out the video tutorials meticulously. Pause if you face any difficulty to grasp any concept. Don’t move further until you understand fully. Refer AWS documentation or google to clear your doubt. If you still can’t figure out, please note it down. You can post it in Udemy community for response from author of the course or fellow course takers. Don’t compromise until 100% understanding on the concept. Make note during watching online course. These notes will be useful to revision key points before a day of certification.
Step5: Please keep doing hands on along with the course as it’s instructed in each section of the course. This hand on will incur cost as many of the services do not offer free tier access. Be diligent about shutting down all services after hands on, otherwise you have to be prepared for paying good amount as AWS billing at the end of the month. Take the practice test which is free with the course and try to understand your area of weakness. Don’t expect common question in certification exam from this practice test but it will surely help you to gauge your preparation on different section.
Step6: After completion of the course, please watch AWS re:Invent and Summit videos to strengthen the concept and to get introduced with different architectural patterns and use cases.
Big Data Architecture Pattern
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovPheIbY7U8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5lkNHib7bw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U74vOMzUBoI
Redshift
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj8oaSpCFTc
Lake Formation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk9Hf4cwUFM
Kinesis Families (Kinesis Data Stream, Kinesis Data Firehose, Kinesis Data Analytics)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAkcRD6OxPw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MELPeni0p04
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKPlGznbfZ0
Amazon Managed Streaming for Kafka
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhsVfsykBHc
EMR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIwJlfEAlHQ&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbrGF56oeCY&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfgNzzaakNs&feature=youtu.be
Glue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4JBNf9ny70&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzoXRRCVmIQ
Amazon Elasticsearch Service
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfgNzzaakNs&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8yaocQZpr0&feature=youtu.be
Quicksight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m3iJayTpxI
DynamoDB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yqfmXiZTlM
Athena
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzoXRRCVmIQ&feature=youtu.be
Step7: Please go through couple of big data and analytics related “My Architecture” videos from AWS YouTube channel to familiar with large scale Big Data Solutions in AWS environment. “My Architecture” is a video series where client explain their respective AWS solutions along with high-level architecture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNWyhkuM5y0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i1tj59pvYw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEOm6aiN4ww
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8xtR3-ZQs8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBV0N_FUCG4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxZJqpiY1Ws
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNAmsoLed1E
Step8: Take WhizLabs practice test for AWS-DAS certification. Don’t depend on this test too much and don’t expect any common question in certification exam from these practice tests. This test is good for recapitulate your learning and identify your area of weakness. Refer AWS Documentation and blog during validating your answers for these practice tests.
https://www.whizlabs.com/aws-certified-data-analytics-specialty/ (cost 40$)
Blog/Documentation/White Paper Links:
· Lambda Architecture for Batch and Stream Processing
· Streaming Data Solutions on AWS with Amazon Kinesis
· Kinesis Data Analytics — Streaming SQL Concepts
· Teaching Big Data Skills with Amazon EMR
· Best Practices for Securing Amazon EMR
· Amazon EMR Migration Guide: How to Move Apache Spark and Apache Hadoop From On-Premises to AWS
· Reference Architecture: SQL Based Data Processing in Amazon ECS
· Comparing the Use of Amazon DynamoDB and Apache HBase for NoSQL
· Best practices for Amazon Redshift Federated Query
· Amazon Redshift Best Practices
· Glue — Performing Complex ETL Activities Using Workflows in AWS Glue
· Process data with varying data ingestion frequencies using AWS Glue job bookmarks
Step 9: Take free Digital courses from AWS.
· Exam Readiness: AWS Certified Data Analytics — Specialty
· Deep Dive into Concepts and Tools for Analyzing Streaming Data on AWS
· Best Practices for Data Warehousing with Amazon Redshift
· Introduction to Amazon Kinesis Analytics
· Introduction to Amazon Quicksight
· Data Analytics Fundamentals (Very basic learning on analytics)
Step 10: Take same test which you have taken as step 1 on free sample questions from AWS. Compare your score now and go through the answer explanation.
Step 11: Take AWS DAS-P01 Practice exam from AWS certification portal before 7 days of examination. It cost 40$ but it’s free if you have practice test coupon which you earned along with previous AWS certification.
· Go to your AWS Certification account and register for practice exam: AWS Data Analytics — Specialty Practice (DAS-P01)
This will help you to be familiar with exam like question types.
Reference Blog on DAS-C01 Certification
https://towardsdatascience.com/becoming-an-aws-certified-data-analytics-new-april-2020-4a3ef0d9f23a
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNhM5S7N0go
https://ashwin.cloud/blog/aws-certified-big-data-specialty/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaK1EjbF3Hc
Activities to be done in last 2 days before exam day
· Go through the notes which you created during go through the video tutorial.
· Read FAQ from AWS for respective services.
o Amazon Kinesis Video Streams
o Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
o Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics
o Amazon ElasticSearch Service
o Amazon Managed Service for Kafka (MSK)
o AWS Glue
· Go through practice exam’s answer and corresponding explanation. Read the explanation from AWS documentation to hash out any bit of confusion.
· Watch video tutorial selectively as per your area of weakness.
· Take adequate sleep and relax your mind to release the pressure created due to prolonged preparation.
Keep positive attitude and believe in yourself. Failure in certification exam is not end of anything, knowledge gathered throughout the preparation process is an absolute value addition to your professional life, So, there is nothing to lose. You can always take certification after 15 days in case of failure.
Tips on Examination:
· Time Management — Key to success
· Effective exam duration is 170 minutes. 65 questions need to be answers.
· Don’t spend more than 2 minutes on a particular question. Answer it as your best guess and mark review flag and come back after answering all the questions.
· You should attempt all 65 questions in 130 minutes by spending 2 minutes on each. So, 40 minutes will be there with you to think through the difficult questions which you marked as review.
· Many irrelevant information will be there in question, but you need to skim through and choose keywords to find the correct option.
· Don’t try to think about best practice using your knowledge base. You. have to choose best possible answer from given options.
· Don’t forget to put your laptop in charge if you are taking certification examination from home through Pearson Vue. I know the instance where people couldn’t complete certification exam as laptop battery drained out completely.
Best Wishes to Everyone for Certification! You will definitely ace this!
Thanks!
Dipayan