Deep Dive: Earning All Three AWS Associate Certifications (Solutions Architect, Developer, SysOps)
Over the past few months, I completed the full set of AWS Associate-level certifications: Solutions Architect, Developer, and SysOps Administrator. These are comprehensive courses created by Adrian Cantrill, and I didn’t just study for the exams. I built real infrastructure, deployed production-ready stacks, automated operations, and explored how AWS services work together in real-world environments.
Many people treat these certifications as simple checkboxes, but my experience was very different. They pushed me to design, build, and manage cloud-native systems at scale while improving my skills across networking, compute, storage, security, and automation.
Designing Secure and Scalable Infrastructure (Solutions Architect)
I architected and deployed VPCs with public and private subnets, NAT gateways, and VPC endpoints for both IPv4 and IPv6. These endpoints provided secure private access to services like S3, Systems Manager, and CloudWatch Logs without exposing anything to the public internet.
To ensure fault tolerance and high availability, I built globally accessible applications using:
CloudFront to distribute static assets from S3
Application Load Balancers to handle traffic across EC2 instances in multiple availability zones
Multi-AZ RDS deployments with automatic failover
AWS Backup for cross-region recovery and protection
I also worked with IAM policies, roles, and trust relationships, including setting up federated access using Active Directory with SAML. This helped me understand secure access management and cross-account permissions. For storage, I implemented S3 lifecycle rules, versioning, and cross-region replication to simulate disaster recovery.
Building and Automating with Code (Developer Associate)
The Developer Associate path focused on automation and serverless design. I built complete CI/CD pipelines using CodePipeline and CodeBuild to automatically test, build, and deploy services to Lambda and ECS. This setup included manual approval and rollback steps, creating a reliable and repeatable delivery process.
I also developed event-driven systems using Lambda, SQS, SNS, and Kinesis. For example, I created a media processing pipeline where uploading a file to S3 triggered an SNS topic that fanned out to multiple SQS queues. Separate EC2 and Lambda processors then consumed these queues, processed the media, and saved the results back to S3. This approach scaled easily, isolated failures, and processed workloads in parallel.
Operational Excellence and Automation (SysOps Administrator)
The SysOps certification gave me hands-on experience with monitoring, compliance, and automation. I built CloudWatch metrics, dashboards, and alarms for RDS, ECS, EC2, and Lambda. I used AWS X-Ray to trace performance issues and configured CloudTrail and AWS Config to track changes and enforce compliance across environments.
One of the most powerful tools I used was AWS Systems Manager (SSM). With SSM, I was able to:
Patch EC2 fleets automatically
Use Session Manager for secure access without bastion hosts
Automate recovery and backup workflows
Manage configuration secrets with Parameter Store
These tools dramatically reduced operational overhead while improving reliability and security.
Containers and Infrastructure as Code
I deployed APIs and microservices into ECS and Kubernetes clusters using ECR for image management. I also set up auto scaling policies based on CPU, memory, and queue depth metrics to keep systems efficient under varying loads.
All infrastructure was managed with CloudFormation using nested stacks, cross-stack references, and parameterized templates to support multiple environments (dev, staging, production). This approach allowed for full version control, minimized drift, and made it easy to spin up new environments from scratch.
Beyond the Exams
Even after completing all three certifications, there’s still a lot more to explore in AWS. Topics like advanced networking with Transit Gateway, large-scale VPC peering, EBS performance tuning, and security tools like GuardDuty, Inspector, and Macie go much deeper.
That’s what I appreciate most about this process. These certifications aren’t just about passing an exam. They build real-world experience and give you the confidence to design and operate production-grade systems with clarity and purpose.
Final Thoughts
If you’re thinking about pursuing the AWS Associate certifications, don’t stop at the theory. Do the labs. Experiment. Break things and rebuild them.
For me, this wasn’t about collecting badges. It was about building the confidence and skill to design, automate, and operate systems in the cloud—and that’s exactly what it delivered.