Detailed Review Of Preparation

My Approach

The Length of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level course on Linux Academy (LA) is 54:22:31 at the time of this review.  However, I probably spent more than 100 hours learning from this course.  On average, I would say I spent between 3-4 hours studying every day for about 30 days.  Here are more specifics that helped me pass this exam:  

Steps

1. Main Monitor => Microsoft OneNote
2. Monitor 2 => LA Training Course
3. Monitor 3 => One of the following: One of my personal AWS Account(s), a LA Playground AWS Account, or a LA lab AWS Account.
4. Watch, take notes, and practice.
5. For each practice exam/quiz, I wouldn't allow myself to use my notes or search Google for answers.
6. When I missed a question on the practice exam/quiz I dedicated more time to learn that topic.
7. After about 30 days, many practice exam/quiz reviews and retakes, I felt ready.

Tips

• I really took my time to practice, research, and learn anything that Adrian, the training architect, covered.
• If I didn't completely understand what Adrian was explaining, I would restart the topic he was describing and watch it over. 
• I made sure I completed each practice exam/quiz after each section.
• I really took my time to review most of the material Adrian suggested to review outside of the course. 
• It's actually a good thing to miss questions on the LA practice exam/quiz - This means you need to learn more about that topic so don't try to memorize the LA practice exam/quiz questions.  Really focus on the topics that you miss so you are better prepared for exam day.  

Additional Thoughts

In my opinion, the $50/month subscription for Linux Academy is a steal.    

• The labs were fantastic - Even the labs that were a bit outdated as they required me to solve a few additional problems which helped me retain more information. 
• My favorite labs were "Building a Serverless Application Using Step Functions, API Gateway, Lambda, and S3", "Implementing an Auto Scaling Group and Application Load Balancer in AWS", and "Custom Logging Using CloudWatch and CloudWatch Logs".
• The interactive diagram for the course helps visualize new content after you finish the lesson.
• Having the ability to spin-up an environment for practice was very helpful. 

Based on how each of us has "grown-up" in our IT careers we may find different sections to be more challenging than others.

• For me, the initial VPC section was far more challenging compared to the advanced VPC section or any other section.  I watched the initial VPC section at least twice and made sure I understood the differences between Internet Gateways, NAT instances, NAT Gateways, and the impacts of security groups and NACLs. 
• In my opinion, Adrian does a fantastic job reviewing "Product Fundamentals" towards the beginning of the course. I recommend that all IT professionals, interested or working with AWS, complete this course. 

This was my first review submission for reviewnprep.com I hope this review was helpful to others in the community.