Three years have passed since certifying the rather painful SAP-C01 on my second try. My certification has since expired and I thought lets challenge myself to DOP-C02.

• Block time in Calendar
• Buy the exam slot
• Arrange learning resource (videos)
• Practice Exam

I’ve given myself a solid week to prepare since I’m not assigned to a client project. Confident by the fact I re-certified SAA-C03 & obtained a 50% exam discount last week and with my SAA-C03 learning notes that helped me pass first time.

Furthermore:

Get a FREE exam retake (if you need it) when you book your AWS Certification exam through Pearson VUE through July 15, 2023.

Lets checkout what Reddit has to say.

• READ THE QUESTION Cost effective/low overhead/operational efficiency parameters will shape the answer.
• KNOW THE CODE* suite
• When in doubt, the answer is either Config or EventBridge

Bought the 96USD @adriancantrill learning resource https://learn.cantrill.io/, since it came recommended on Reddit:

And of course I bought TD Jon-Bonso’s Practice Exams:

I also have access to https://learn.acloud.guru/search?query=DOP-C02&page=1 which I will use too.

Learning process

I like TD’s Review mode and taking notes for incorrect answers. I dip into Cantrill’s course as and when I feel like being a bit more passive / absorbant. I typically time box about 4 hours a day to revision.

I take notes on paper and then write them up on my blog to re-enforce the learning / memorisation. I’ve scheduled this exam for a morning 8AM slot when my brain is the freshest, after a good nights sleep.

Exam day 2023-07-05

I failed, with candidate score of 735, annoyingly I needed 15 points more to reach the passing score of 750!

This is like my SAP-C01 experience. 💩

Now I want to take the exam ASAP, but I am struggling to book with the AWSRETAKE code.

@PearsonVUE Hi, the first available retake for my exam is in the 19th of July, I'm happy to do the exam this week but I don't have a choice! pic.twitter.com/C4oYVQYwEa

— Kai Hendry (@kaihendry) July 10, 2023

Some areas which I need to improve on:

• AWS S3 replication - need to try this out
• Cloudformation templates / stacksets
• Running through a scenario like how to check for untagged resources across regions/accounts
• Rolling update ASG examples
• When and where to use Cloudwatch alarms vs Eventbridge
• How logging works on the ALB, is it done with the target groups?
• ForAllValues policy condition
• AWS EC2 warm pools
• How failure works in an ASG
• Run through scenario of settings up operations Admins across an organisation’s accounts

Exam day 2023-07-28

Sadly I wasn’t able to use the AWSRETAKE code!

As we can see you scheduled the first exam which was partially paid for with a discount coupon and credit card. As per policy, no other scheme can be combined with this scheme. but you used a discount code, hence free retake scheme is not applicable to you.

Nonetheless I booked a retake with an older 50% discount and this time I passed! 🎉