All posts by Janna Pellegrino

Announcing 7 New Exam Readiness Courses for AWS Certifications

Post Syndicated from Janna Pellegrino original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/announcing-7-new-exam-readiness-courses-for-aws-certifications/

We’re excited to announce the launch of seven Exam Readiness courses to help you prepare for AWS Certification. Built by AWS, these courses are designed to help you prepare for the Solutions Architect, Developer, DevOps Engineer, Big Data, and Advanced Networking exams. Specifically, the Exam Readiness: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate course has been updated to reflect the newest version of the exam released earlier this year.

What You’ll Learn
These new courses complement our technical training courses and focus on enabling you to validate your technical expertise with AWS Certification. We’ll teach you how to interpret exam questions, apply concepts being tested by the exam, and allocate your study time.

You’ll also have a chance to work through sample questions to understand the rationale behind correct and incorrect answer choices. Training is developed by AWS so our courses are current with the latest best practices. Plus, our classes are taught by AWS accredited instructors who have personal experience passing AWS Certification exams, and can help you identify areas for additional work and study.

Watch our video to hear more about these courses from our curriculum development manager.

Ready to Register?
Find and register for a class near you at aws.training. Looking to train several members of your team? You can also contact us for private, onsite training for your team.

Questions? Review our FAQ or contact us.

Announcing the new AWS Certified Security – Specialty exam

Post Syndicated from Janna Pellegrino original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/announcing-the-new-aws-certified-security-specialty-exam/

Good news for cloud security experts: following our most popular beta exam ever, the AWS Certified Security – Specialty exam is here. This new exam allows experienced cloud security professionals to demonstrate and validate their knowledge of how to secure the AWS platform.

About the exam
The security exam covers incident response, logging and monitoring, infrastructure security, identity and access management, and data protection. The exam is open to anyone who currently holds a Cloud Practitioner or Associate-level certification. We recommend candidates have five years of IT security experience designing and implementing security solutions, and at least two years of hands-on experience securing AWS workloads.

The exam validates:

  • An understanding of specialized data classifications and AWS data protection mechanisms.
  • An understanding of data encryption methods and AWS mechanisms to implement them.
  • An understanding of secure Internet protocols and AWS mechanisms to implement them.
  • A working knowledge of AWS security services and features of services to provide a secure production environment.
  • Competency gained from two or more years of production deployment experience using AWS security services and features.
  • Ability to make trade-off decisions with regard to cost, security, and deployment complexity given a set of application requirements.
  • An understanding of security operations and risk.

Learn more and register >>

How to prepare
We have training and other resources to help you prepare for the exam:

AWS Training (aws.amazon.com/training)

Additional Resources

Learn more and register >>

Please contact us if you have questions about exam registration.

Good luck!

New AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Exam: Now in General Availability

Post Syndicated from Janna Pellegrino original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/new-aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-exam-now-in-general-availability/

We’ve updated our AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam to include new services and architectural best practices, including the pillars of the Well-Architected Framework.

About The Exam

The new AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (Released February 2018) exam validates knowledge of how to architect and deploy secure and robust applications on AWS technologies. We recommend candidates have at least one year of hands-on experience designing available, cost-efficient, fault-tolerant, and scalable and distributed systems on AWS before taking the exam. This exam covers:

  • Designing resilient architectures
  • Defining performant architectures
  • Specifying secure applications and architectures
  • Designing cost-optimized architectures
  • Defining operationally excellent architectures

How To Prepare

We also refreshed our exam preparation resources. If you are looking to expand your Architecting knowledge, we recommend the following resources:

AWS Training (aws.amazon.com/training)

AWS Materials

AWS Whitepapers (aws.amazon.com/whitepapers) Kindle and .pdf and Other Materials

  • Architecting for the Cloud: AWS Best Practices whitepaper, February 2016
  • AWS Well-Architected webpage (various whitepapers linked)

Note that if you’ve already started preparing, you also have the option to take the previous version of the exam through August 12, 2018.

Next Steps

If you’re interested in taking this new exam, learn more at the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate webpage, or register for the exam today.

 

Announcing our new beta for the AWS Certified Security – Specialty exam

Post Syndicated from Janna Pellegrino original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/announcing-our-new-beta-for-the-aws-certified-security-specialty-exam/

Take the AWS Certified Security – Specialty beta exam for the chance to be among the first to hold this new AWS Certification. This beta exam allows experienced cloud security professionals to demonstrate and validate their expertise. Register today – this beta exam will only be available from January 15 to March 2!

About the exam

This beta exam validates that the successful candidate can effectively demonstrate knowledge of how to secure the AWS platform. The exam covers incident response, logging and monitoring, infrastructure security, identity and access management, and data protection.

The exam validates:

  • Familiarity with regional- and country-specific security and compliance regulations and meta issues that these regulations embody.
  • An understanding of specialized data classifications and AWS data protection mechanisms.
  • An understanding of data encryption methods and AWS mechanisms to implement them.
  • An understanding of secure Internet protocols and AWS mechanisms to implement them.
  • A working knowledge of AWS security services and features of services to provide a secure production environment.
  • Competency gained from two or more years of production deployment experience using AWS security services and features.
  • Ability to make tradeoff decisions with regard to cost, security, and deployment complexity given a set of application requirements.
  • An understanding of security operations and risk.

Learn more and register >>

Who is eligible

The beta is open to anyone who currently holds an Associate or Cloud Practitioner certification. We recommend candidates have five years of IT security experience designing and implementing security solutions, and at least two years of hands-on experience securing AWS workloads.

How to prepare

We have training and other resources to help you prepare for the beta exam:

AWS Security Fundamentals Digital| 3 Hours
This course introduces you to fundamental cloud computing and AWS security concepts, including AWS access control and management, governance, logging, and encryption methods. It also covers security-related compliance protocols and risk management strategies, as well as procedures related to auditing your AWS security infrastructure.

Security Operations on AWS Classroom | 3 Days
This course demonstrates how to efficiently use AWS security services to stay secure and compliant in the AWS Cloud. The course focuses on the AWS-recommended security best practices that you can implement to enhance the security of your data and systems in the cloud. The course highlights the security features of AWS key services including compute, storage, networking, and database services.

Online resources for Cloud Security and Compliance

Review documentation, whitepapers, and articles & tutorials related to cloud security and compliance.

Learn more and register >>

Please contact us if you have questions about exam registration.

Good luck!

Start off the New Year by earning AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

Post Syndicated from Janna Pellegrino original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/start-off-the-new-year-by-earning-aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate/

Do you design applications and systems on AWS? Want to demonstrate your AWS Cloud skills? Ring in 2018 by becoming an AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate. It’s a way to validate your expertise with an industry-recognized credential and give your career a boost.

Why get certified, you ask? According to the 2017 Global Knowledge IT Skills and Salary Report, cloud certifications, including AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate, generally have salaries well above average. For example, a typical U.S. salary for AWS Certified IT staff is 27.5 percent higher than the normal salary rate. Looking ahead, the report also finds that the IT industry will continue investing heavily in certification as a way to validating employees’ skills and expertise.

Here are our tips for preparing for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam—which we hope you’ll pass with flying colors.

Learn About the Exam

View the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Exam Guide. It covers concepts within the exam and gives you a blueprint of what you need to study.

The exam tests your technical expertise in designing and deploying scalable, highly-available, and fault-tolerant systems on AWS. It’s for anyone with one or more years of hands-on experience designing distributed applications and systems on the AWS platform.

Continue with Digital and Classroom Training

Next, brush up on key AWS services covered in the exam with our new free digital training offerings at aws.training. Our 100+ bite-sized online courses are each 10 minutes long so you learn AWS fundamentals at your own pace.

Just getting started learning the fundamentals of the AWS Cloud? We recommend you take our AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials course, part of our free digital training offerings.

For more in-depth technical training, register for our immersive Architecting on AWS course. It’s three days of instructor-led classroom training, books, and labs, built and taught by AWS experts.

Study with Exam Prep Resources

Once you have an idea of what’s on the exam, and you’ve taken training to prepare, it’s time to prepare for the exam itself.

Dig deeper into the exam’s concepts and topics with the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Exam: Official Study Guide. It provides access to content written by AWS experts, real-world knowledge, key exam essentials, chapter review questions, an interactive online learning environment, and much more.

Next, study AWS whitepapers and FAQs with content related to the exam. You can find links to our suggested whitepapers at FAQs at https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certification-prep/ under the Solutions Architect – Associate tab.

You can also take an Exam Prep Workshop and learn exam strategies from a certified technical instructor.

Once you’re ready, put your knowledge to the (practice) test with sample questions. Register for an online practice exam to test your knowledge in a timed environment.

Schedule Your Exam and Get Certified

Now you’re ready to take the exam! Go to aws.training to schedule an exam at a testing center near you at. Once you’ve passed and are AWS Certified, you’ll enjoy AWS Certification benefits like access to the AWS Certified LinkedIn Community, invitations to AWS Certification Appreciation Receptions, digital AWS Certified badges, access to AWS Certified merchandise, and more.

Learn More

Visit us at aws.amazon.com/training for more information on digital training, classroom training, and AWS Certifications.

Learn about Amazon Redshift in our new Data Warehousing on AWS Class

Post Syndicated from Janna Pellegrino original https://blogs.aws.amazon.com/bigdata/post/Tx16H8DDHXKLCA6/Learn-about-Amazon-Redshift-in-our-new-Data-Warehousing-on-AWS-Class

As our customers look to use their data to drive their missions forward, finding a way to simply and cost-effectively use analytics is increasingly important. Training and Certification now offers Data Warehousing on AWS, a new training course to help you learn how to leverage the AWS Cloud as a platform for data warehousing solutions.

New Course
Data Warehousing on AWS is a designed for database architects, database administrators, database developers, and data analysts/scientists.  It introduces you to concepts, strategies, and best practices for designing a cloud-based data warehousing solution using Amazon Redshift. We teach you how to collect, store, and prepare data for the data warehouse by using other AWS services such as Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon EMR, Amazon Kinesis, and Amazon S3. Additionally, we show you how you can use business intelligence tools to perform analysis on your data. Lab exercises help you get hands-on practice so you can apply what you learn. Organizations looking to get more out of their data by implementing a Data Warehousing solution or expanding their current Data Warehousing practice are encouraged to sign up.

These classes (and many more) are available through AWS and our Training Partners. Find upcoming classes in our global training schedule or learn more at AWS Training.

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