Detailed Review Of Preparation

Adobe Experience Manager(AEM) is a Sling/OSGI based enterprise grade content management system which is one of the most sought after CMS in Fortune 500 companies. 

AEM was earlier know as Day CQ or Day Communique and was acquired by Adobe. Since then the product has evolved by leaps and bounds and is now one of preferred choice for top brands to implement their digital properties and integrate it with personalisation and marketing automation engines.

You can get the details around AEM architect certification here: https://spark.adobe.com/page/t8ASQanIS7sFg/

AEM Architect exam test your on following areas of the product:

1. Understanding client requirements and converting them into a technical solution design.
2. Architecture & Deployment
3. Security
4. Performance
5. Solution Design
6. Integration with external systems
7. Multi country/ Multi Tenant/ Multi Region/ Multi language deployments

Someone who has been working on AEM for sometime should know most of the above mentioned areas. These are basic principles of implementing any enterprise level web project and AEM is no different. 

The difference however is how to achieve the above said principles using AEM architecture which is slight different then other traditional CMS as it has a 3 Tier infrastructure to actually serve content to the end user. 

I read through the topics listed here: helpx.adobe.com , it took me approx 40-45 days to cover most of the topics as the documentation is quite detailed.

Main topics that one must know to attempt this exam are:

1. AEM Deployment Patterns.(Very important)
2. TarMK vs MongoMk.(Very important)
3. FileDatastore vs S3Datastore.
4. User management - includes authentication using external IDP and syncing user/groups to AEM repository.
5. Search & Indexing.
6. AEM maintenance and OAK repository concepts. Example - Online vs Offline compaction, version purge, audit log purge etc. (Very important)
7. Performance tuning using code structuring like using clientlibs etc.
8. Load balancing & Security using dispatcher configurations (Very important)

Spend some time implementing the things you read on your own by setting up servers locally. You can also look through your current project implementations to get deeper understanding of AEM concepts. 

Exam details:

• 60 questions
• 120 minutes
• 60% required to clear
• Can be taken onsite or online proctored

I will not recommend you to take this exam if you dont have enough AEM architecture experience(It's quite expensive at $180) as most of the questions are quite specific to AEM architecture and how you will handle certain client requirements.

For more details, please write to me directly, I will be more then happy to help you guys.

Cheers

Raman