I recently passed my first AWS certification exam and am now an AWS Certified Developer Associate. I want to quickly share the resources I used to prepare.

First, we had a three-day in-company training to get a quick overview of AWS. It did not provide many details, so you should be fine without booking something like that.

Then, to practice, I watched the entire 34 hour DVA-C02 (when I started it was still DVA-C01) course by Stephane Maarek. It’s often on sale, but I was able to watch it for free because my company provides access to Udemy Business where this course is included. The tests after each section are quite useful to get a feeling if you understood everything.

Although the course also recommends getting some hands-on experience, I did not because I thought it would be too time consuming. But at work I have touched one or two AWS services.

After completing the entire course, I took the practice exam at the end and also took five other practice exams that Stephane published on Udemy. This is also included in Udemy Business, so check with your company to see if you can get free access to it if you want to take this course as well.

I also took a look at the official training material and did the practice test there as well.

And the last few days before the exam, I also studied this cheat sheet I found online to refresh my memory about all the different services and especially the limits, which I heard are important to know for the exam (I wasn’t asked any though).

In the end, it took me about six months to prepare for the exam, but I didn’t study that regularly.