Hi everyone,

I took my AWS SAA-C03 exam yesterday at a physical test center. Everything went smoothly, but I completely mismanaged my time. I spent way too much time on the first 18 questions. When I saw the clock ticking down, I panicked and rushed through the remaining questions very quickly just to finish in time.

16 hours later, I received a "Data Forensics" email from AWS stating that they detected statistical anomalies, invalidated my score, and restricted me to in-person test centers only (which I already used). My pacing was purely a result of time panic.

Questions for the community:

• Has anyone successfully appealed an invalidation from AWS ?
• If the appeal is rejected, how long does AWS usually take to let you reschedule the exam at a physical center?

Thanks for your help and insights.

Hey guys, I'm sure this has been asked many times, but everybody's case is different.

So, I was planning on getting my first aws cert and a friend and I were looking into the Cloud Practitioner, but other people told me that's way too basic. For context, I'm a software developer with 9~ years of experience and around 4-5 years with AWS.

For my particular case, do you recommend Certified Developer Associate, Certified Solutions Architect Associate, or another option?

Should I pick one also based on the Professional cert I would want to do after or I shouldn't worry about that right now?

Thanks!

Hey everyone, I just need to vent because I am feeling really frustrated right now.

I am studying hard for my AWS exam the right way. I chose to go to a real test center because I wanted a stress-free experience. I didn't want to worry about my internet dropping or having webcam issues.

But I talked to some friends recently, and they told me I was working too hard. They said I should just take it at home, skip studying, and cheat.

I thought these exams were watched closely, but apparently, it is super easy to trick them. They told me that even though you have to show the room with your camera at the start, people are literally hiding an extra person under their bed or behind the laptop. Once the exam starts, that person comes out, scans the questions with Google Lens and ChatGPT, and uses hand signs to give the answers.

If they don't have a friend to help, they just hide a second phone right above the laptop keyboard. The webcam can't see it there, and because it is near the screen, it just looks like they are reading the test.

This is so messed up. I know about 30 people who did this and passed easily. Meanwhile, I am spending hours actually learning the topics so I can take the test honestly. I feel so dumb for doing it the hard way when the system is this broken.

Isn't an AWS certification supposed to actually mean something? AWS really needs to improve this. They should make test-takers use their mobile phone camera to show a side view of their desk during the whole exam. That would stop this problem instantly.

Anyway, rant over. Argggggghhh. Has anyone else seen this happening? It’s so annoying to see people cheat to get the exact same certificate I am working so hard for.

ive been taking Stephen's practice exams for the AWS SAA, and im honestly getting a little worried about my scores....

Here are my scores so far:

• Practice Test 1: 56% → 89% on my second attempt
• Practice Test 2: 56% → 91% on my second attempt
• Practice Test 3: 52% on my first attempt (I took this one today)

The thing thats bothering me is that I keep getting around the 50–56% range on my first attempts.....

im not sure how to interpret this. Are Stephen Marek’s exams significantly harder than the actual SAA exam, or am I genuinely not prepared enough yet?????

for anyone who has used these practice exams and taken the actual AWS SAA exam, how did your practice scores compare with your real exam score?

Should I be worried about consistently getting around 50% on my first attempts, or is this normal for these practice tests?

Any advice on how I should proceed would be appreciated.

Hi, i am exploring courses that will help me switch careers and transition into an Aws Solutions Architect. I am look for good courses online which would help me improve my skills and showcase the same along with projects in my portfolio. I don’t want a course that is just theoretical, as i want to fully understand the role, and i feel i will get that experience only via projects and if i am thought by an expert.

If you have transitions to a solutions architect role in your career, could you please share what all you did and if you took a course which one you took and if you know any good ones currently that will help too.

Hey everyone!

I'm working through the hands-on labs on AWS Educate, but I'm getting overwhelmed by the endless steps and services in every project.

There are so many CLI commands, roles, and settings (EC2, Lambda, S3, DynamoDB...) that it feels impossible to memorize or remember the whole flow. I feel like I'm just clicking through instructions without really retaining it.

For anyone who's been through this:

• How do you actually remember and make sense of all these steps?
• Do you take notes, draw diagrams, or use a specific approach so it sticks?

Would love to hear how you deal with this. Thanks!

I’ve taken the AWS SAA exam twice and unfortunately failed both times: 595 on my first attempt and 625 on my second.

I’m planning to take it for the third time next month, but I’m honestly feeling very discouraged and considering postponing it.

Failing twice really hurts, especially after putting so much effort into studying.

I really want to pass this time with a good score, not just barely pass.

If you’ve been in a similar situation, what did you change that helped you finally pass?

I’d really appreciate any study tips, resources, practice exams, or encouragement. Thank you ❤️

So we spent much of last quarter trying to make Security Hub + GuardDuty + Inspector + IAM Analyzer + Config work as a full security stack. Give tools covering posture, threat detection, vuln scanning, identity and compliance. We quickly realized its like having 5 tools each in a separate corner waving at each other.

I mean Guardduty flags an anomalous API call and security hub has no idea which resource was touched or whether the calling role was overprivileged. Meanwhile IAM analyzer finds an overprivileged service account. Inspector has a critical cve on the instance using that account. Basically 3 separate findings in 3 consoles and most of the time someone has to manually join the dots.

What where I stand, the isn’t the detection, the’re very good here. But could have been way better if these tools can pick things like a  guardduty finding + an overprivileged IAM role + an exposed S3 bucket aren't three separate problems. They're one attack path. Multiaccount makes it worse

So here's where i'm stuck, either we completely botched the implementation and there's a way to make these play or AWS built five tools that each do one thing well and left the correlation as an exercise for the user.

Thing is we don't want to throw money at yet at a vendor if the answer cloud be just configure it properly. But I also don't want to keep burning engineering hours stitching together dashboards.

Hey guys today im starting my preparation for AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02,will update further

I’m considering a fully online internship that requires me to pay a fee. There doesn’t seem to be any real company work or proper projects, but they provide a certificate.

Does a certificate from this type of paid internship have any real value to recruiters?

Also, I’m currently learning AWS and aiming for a Cloud Engineer role. Where can I find genuine AWS/Cloud internships with real hands-on experience? Any recommendations for platforms or companies?

Hi folks - I have a paid "AWS Skill Builder" subscription ending in another week or so. What are critical courses/labs/quizzes that I can use to prepare for my AIP-C01 that are not available elsewhere? Thank you for your answers.

For context, this is my re-certification as my SAA expired in July. I also work in tech for a company fully on AWS (and the certification is required by them), so I’m not wholly unfamiliar, though my day to day experience is limited. In the last 6 months I think I have touched ECS, Cloudwatch, Cloudtrail, Route 53, and IAM. The vast majority of services I don’t know and never work with.

Three years ago I barely passed (I think like 726 or something) and my study tool was almost exclusively Stephan Maarek’s course and exams. I also read AWS’ guides on services that Maarek didn’t cover.

I’ve been studying for a couple months now to re-certify. So far I have refreshed Maarek’s course (not the whole course, just parts I had a harder time recalling), bought TD and have been doing those reviews and practice exams. I’m at like 40% on TD exams and am running into questions that make me question how much I know at all… sometimes I encounter something in a service I thought I knew that I don’t recall ever seeing (like a specific configuration). There’s a lot that Maarek didn’t cover.

Anyways, with two weeks to go, I’m a bit stressed about if I’m ready. I’m doing practice questions every day and can’t seem to break past 40-50% scores in TD. I’ll take any advice this group has :) TIA!

Okay y'all...I got to Q63/65 on an SOA practice test this morning on TD and the damn website had an 'unexpected error' and cleared the whole damn thing...kept the ones I had flagged as flagged but cleared all the answers, but didn't lose its place on the timer...anyone else have this experience?