I'm studying hard to get my ducks in a row to write one of the AWS exams, and it seems like its a lot of wasted work. I actually spent some good time and went through a prep course (which was helpful and had some good labs), but it isn't enough it seems. I'm currently sweating through some sample exams, and they are hard. The thing I'm a bit miffed about is that the prep course didn't even touch on some of the material in the tests. (In fairness, its by 2 seperate providers, but they both target the current test. I don't expect 100% coverage, but it would be nice if they could mention what else would be helpful). My blues here isn't a funk so much as a comment on the process. I'm fine with tough questions and an overall challenging exam, but on some level this feels more about knowing as many aws service names then how things function. VPC, Cloudformation, and a bunch of security and network things seem core, but more peripheral services are mixed in for ... marketing coverage? I know they aren't, but I do feel that knowing 2 dozen services and what they do, inside and out, is already challenging. Throwing useful but not well covered services (xray, redshift), which might have good use cases for one of the exam questions ... seems silly. Even Glacier, which I've actually used a bit in the past so I know many answers, seems over represented in the question mix. So, I guess while you do gain and demonstrate some knowledge in the exam, I'm a bit disappointed its not a range of toughness rather than a range of every AWS service out there.