Shaun Abram
Technology and Leadership Blog
Passed AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate
I just completed my “AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate”.
If you’re interested in AWS Certification, this AWS Certification Roadmap gives an overview of the certifications available, and this post from New Relic has details on the order you may want to take the exams in.
The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam I started with is a tough exam. I’d estimate I spent over 100 hours preparing, and I used every one of the 130 minutes available in the exam to answer all 65 questions.
I’ve included a few exam prep tips below.
Tags: aws, awscertification, AWSCertifiedSolutionsArchitectAssociate
Setting up a VPC in AWS
In the previous blog post, we created a simple HelloWorld example in AWS. We did the bare minimum (as any HelloWorld example should!) by taking advantage of a default VPC, Subnet, NACL, and Internet Gateway but, by necessity for our example, creating a custom Security Group.
In this tutorial, we will shy away from defaults and create a VPC from scratch. Again, this is done in the guise of HelloWorld.
Tags: apache, aws, helloworld
HelloWorld on an AWS EC2 instance
This is a basic “HelloWorld” tutorial for AWS EC2. We create an EC2 instance, enable the required access, and install Apache to serve a trivial HelloWorld html file.
Tags: apache, aws, helloworld
AWS Best Practices Architecting for the Cloud – Concise Summary
The following is a concise summary of Architecting for the Cloud: AWS Best Practices. The original is about 13,000 words; There is an abridged version of about 4,000 words, and this is an even more concise version, at about 1,500 words.
AWS Best Practices Architecting for the Cloud – Abridged
The following is an abridged version of Architecting for the Cloud: AWS Best Practices.This is essentially a cut and paste of the most salient parts (the original is about 13,000 words; this is about 4,000). For an even more concise version, see the concise summary (about 1,500 words).
AWS Well-Architected Framework – Abridged
This is an abridged version of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. It is essentially a cut and paste of the most salient parts (the original is about 18,000 words; this is about 4,000).
Certified ScrumMaster
I became a Certified ScrumMaster today via the Scrum Alliance. I know certifications are worth very little, but the training and exam prep was definitely very useful and, more importantly, I’m implementing Scrum techniques on the new project I’m working on: Planning the sprint ahead, daily scrums, sprint reviews and trying to remove obstacles for the team.
Tags: agile, Certification, scrum
Details of the new Sun Java Programmer Plus Certification
I posted previously about the new Sun certification exam announced at Java One, but there weren’t many details at the time. However, I found this blog post which points to Sun’s web site where they announce and give details of the new Sun Java Programmer Plus Certification. Apparently is will launch on July 22. No word on when the old SCJP will be retired, but I suspect it will be soon. Sun say that they will “provide a public notification of at least 90 days in advance of any exam retirement”.
Tags: Certification, Oracle, Sun
Is Sun’s Java Certification Model changing?
Although I was unfortunately unable to attend Java One last month, I did spot this post on TheServerSide about how Sun announced the Java Certification process may be changing from a rote memorization approach to a more hands-on coding approach.
As someone who has taken the SCJP and SCEA exams, and blogged about it’s pros and cons, I am interested to hear about any changes or improvements.
Unfortunately the only info on the web I can find is this blog posting linked to from the article. There doesn’t seem to be anything posted on the certification part of Sun’s web site. If anyone has any information of the new format, I’d love to hear it!
Tags: Certification, Sun
Sun Certified Java Programmer for Java 6
I recently passed my Sun Certified Java Programmer for Java 6 exam. Although I am already a Sun Certified Enterprise Architect and I had already taken the 1.2 version of the Programmer exam several years ago, I thought it would be good to get a refresher. Although it is always good to go over the basics of Java again, I think this is the last time I will take it. My biggest gripe is that a lot of the material covered is something I’d simply check the Java API docs for in my your day to day work. But perhaps that is a necessary evil and it has forced me to learn some of the topics I hadn’t been paying enough attention to including Generics, Enumerations and Assertions, as well as reviewing older material such as threads and inner classes. Also it never does any harm to go over the fundamentals of OO again: encapsulation, polymorphism, inheritance and coupling/cohesion.
I have put together some thoughts on The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of SCJP.
Tags: Certification