SAA-C01 vs SAA-C02 Plus Developing Story: Expiry Date for SAA-C01 Extended to June 30, 2020

Last updated on December 15, 2023

SAA-C01 vs SAA-C02 Plus Expiry Date for SAA-C01 Extended to June 30, 2020

I took the BETA exam of the AWS Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C02 last November and got the results 3 months after. Here’s my experience and I hope this may help you when you take the actual SAA-C02 exam soon.

I would say that the new exam version SAA-C02 is at par with the SAA-C01 in terms of exam difficulty and format. It still has two types of questions:

Multiple choice (one correct response and three incorrect responses or distractors) and Multiple response (two or more correct responses out of five or more options).

The minimum passing score is unchanged at 720/1000.

I can say, based on my experience, that there is very little difference between the current and new exam version. Around 80% of the current exam coverage will still be relevant to the new version based on the Beta exam that I took.

List of new SAA-C02 AWS Services that you should study:

– AWS Global Accelerator

– Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA)

– Elastic Network Adapter (ENA)

– AWS ParallelCluster

– Amazon FSx

– AWS DataSync

– AWS Directory Service

– High Performance Computing

– Aurora Serverless

… plus a few more services that we have recently added to our AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Practice Exams.

For everyone’s convenience, we have also tagged all questions that are only relevant for the new exam version in our AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Practice Exam course. You’ll see them tagged as [SAA-C02] before the actual question:

In the Tutorials Dojo Portal:

In Udemy:

Just one final and VERY IMPORTANT NOTE:

For those questions that are not tagged, it doesn’t mean that they are not relevant to the new exam version. All untagged questions are relevant for BOTH current (SAA-C01) and new (SAA-C02) exam versions so please do not skip on any untagged questions whether preparing for the current or new exam.

As mentioned, the new exam was not too different from the current version except for the presence of the new services listed above so anything not tagged is especially crucial in your exam preparations. Our practice tests can therefore be used to prepare for both current and new exam versions and you can choose to discard the questions tagged as SAA-C02 if you’re still preparing for the SAA-C01 exam.

You might also want to check out these related posts:

And don’t forget to check out Tutorials Dojo’s AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam study guide here.

New Expiry Date for AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C01 exam— June 30, 2020

Due to the recent wave of exam cancellations brought by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, it seems that AWS is moving the official expiry date of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C01 exam from the original March 22, 2020 deadline to June 30, 2020:

Check out the mock booking I made in this article:

https://medium.com/@jonbonso/new-expiry-date-for-aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c01-exam-june-30-2020-67797b13864e

Based on this Reddit thread, it would seem like this is not yet available in all testing centers:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AWSCertifications/comments/fkjsrn/saac01_new_expiry_date/

We are on the lookout for the official announcement from AWS and we will keep everyone posted once we get more information.

UPDATE as of March 20, 2020 – The expiry date of AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam version SAA-C01 has officially been extended to June 30, 2020 as per AWS certification site (https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-solutions-architect-associate/). Meanwhile, the new version SAA-C02 can be taken starting March 23, 2020, however, it seems like a lot of testing centers have closed and cancelled exam schedules due to Covid-19.

Feel free to let us know if you have any other questions. Stay safe everyone!

Cheers,

Jon Bonso @ Tutorials Dojo

Written by: Jon Bonso

Jon Bonso is the co-founder of Tutorials Dojo, an EdTech startup and an AWS Digital Training Partner that provides high-quality educational materials in the cloud computing space. He graduated from Mapúa Institute of Technology in 2007 with a bachelor's degree in Information Technology. Jon holds 10 AWS Certifications and is also an active AWS Community Builder since 2020.