AWS is the most popular cloud computing service utilized by businesses and organizations throughout the world. AWS has clearly become a one-stop option for firms searching for methods to manage their operations more effectively, from content delivery to database transfer. As a result, the value of its certifications has risen. And, with both small and large businesses adopting AWS, the need for certified AWS Solutions Architect Associate has skyrocketed.
However, one of the best decisions you can make is to follow this path of Solution Architect. That is to say, it’s really profitable, and if you take your AWS certification path seriously, you’ll have a good opportunity of working for global corporations and further your career. And, in order to help you achieve this role, we will follow a step-by-step path to learn and understand the requirements for this role with suitable references. So, let’s begin with understanding the role of an AWS Solutions Architect Associate.
AWS Solutions Architect: Roles & Responsibilities
An AWS Solutions Architect is an IT professional who is in charge of delivering applications to AWS cloud infrastructure. However, they are mostly in charge of:
- Choosing the software’s design and assuring that the infrastructure and architecture are in good working order.
- Secondly, monitoring systems on a regular basis to verify that all business objectives are satisfied.
- With technology implementation, finding a solution to business difficulties.
- Then, choosing the appropriate platform, programming language, and framework for a solution.
- Making decisions on system upkeep and future scaling.
- After that, identifying and mitigating the threats of third-party platforms.
- Lastly, ensuring configuration management’s long-term sustainability.
Pathway to becoming an AWS Solutions Architect
The first and last way to enter this role is to get certified by preparing and passing the AWS Solutions Architect Associate level examination.
1. Understanding the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam
Those who work as solutions architects should take the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) exam. However, the exam verifies your ability to use AWS technologies to create safe and reliable solutions. This exam further validates your ability for:
- Creating a solution based on requirements by utilizing relevant AWS services and adhering to architectural principles.
- Secondly, providing the company with implementation recommendations based on best practices throughout the workload lifetime.
Knowledge Requirement for the Exam:
- Anyone with one or more years of hands-on experience for building cost-effective, fault-tolerant, and scalable distributed systems on AWS is eligible for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate certification. However, it is recommended that you have the following factors for this exam:
- One year of practical AWS experience, including using computing, networking, storage, and database AWS services, as well as AWS deployment and administration services.
- Secondly, experience with AWS workload deployment, management, and operation, as well as security controls and compliance needs.
- Thirdly, an understanding of using both the AWS Management Console and the AWS Command Line Interface is required.
- AWS Well-Architected Framework, AWS networking, security services, and the AWS global infrastructure are all things you should know.
- Lastly, the ability to determine whether AWS services are appropriate for a particular technical requirement and to create technical requirements for an AWS-based application.
➼ AWS Solution Architect Associate: Exam Format
- The AWS Solution Architect Associate certification is an intermediate-level exam with 65 multiple-choice and multiple-response questions. The test will have a time limit of 130 minutes to complete. The exam costs $150 and is accessible in the following languages: English, French (France), German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Simplified Chinese, and Spanish (Latin America).
2. Getting familiarity with the Exam Content
The AWS Solution Architect Exam Guide covers a broad range of topics that are both current and relevant. To have a better knowledge of the subject, each section must be read. Start with the most difficult topics and, after you’ve mastered them, you’ll be able to set your learning progress for the rest of the topics. The topics are as follows:
New AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) Exam Course Outline
Domain 1: Design Secure Architectures
Task Statement 1: Design secure access to AWS resources.
Knowledge of:
- Access controls and management across multiple accounts (AWS Documentation: Delegate access across AWS)
- AWS federated access and identity services (for example, AWS Identity and Access Management [IAM], AWS Single Sign-On [AWS SSO]) (AWS Documentation: Identity providers and federation)
- AWS global infrastructure (for example, Availability Zones, AWS Regions) (AWS Documentation: Regions, Availability Zones, and Local Zones)
- AWS security best practices (for example, the principle of least privilege) (AWS Documentation: Security best practices in IAM)
- The AWS shared responsibility model (AWS Documentation: Shared responsibility model)
Skills in:
- Applying AWS security best practices to IAM users and root users (for example, multi-factor authentication [MFA]) (AWS Documentation: Best practices to protect your account’s root user)
- Designing a flexible authorization model that includes IAM users, groups, roles, and policies (AWS Documentation: IAM Identities (users, user groups, and roles))
- Designing a role-based access control strategy (for example, AWS Security Token Service [AWS STS], role switching, cross-account access) (AWS Documentation: Define permissions to access AWS resources , Delegate access across AWS)
- Designing a security strategy for multiple AWS accounts (for example, AWS Control Tower, service control policies [SCPs])
- Determining the appropriate use of resource policies for AWS services (AWS Documentation: Identity-based policies and resource-based policies)
- Determining when to federate a directory service with IAM roles
Task Statement 2: Design secure workloads and applications.
Knowledge of:
- Application configuration and credentials security (AWS Documentation: Configuration and credential file settings)
- AWS service endpoints (AWS Documentation: Service endpoints and quotas)
- Control ports, protocols, and network traffic on AWS (AWS Documentation: Control traffic to subnets using Network ACLs)
- Secure application access
- Security services with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon Cognito, Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Macie) (AWS Documentation: Amazon Macie, Amazon GuardDuty, Cognito)
- Threat vectors external to AWS (for example, DDoS, SQL injection) (AWS Documentation: AWS Shield)
Skills in:
- Designing VPC architectures with security components (for example, security groups, route tables, network ACLs, NAT gateways) (AWS Documentation: VPC with public and private subnets (NAT))
- Determining network segmentation strategies (for example, using public subnets and private subnets) (AWS Documentation: VPC with public and private subnets (NAT))
- Integrating AWS services to secure applications (for example, AWS Shield, AWS WAF, AWS SSO, AWS Secrets Manager) (AWS Documentation: AWS Shield Advanced, Authenticating requests)
- Securing external network connections to and from the AWS Cloud (for example, VPN, AWS Direct Connect) (AWS Documentation: AWS Virtual Private Network, AWS Direct Connect)
Task Statement 3: Determine appropriate data security controls.
Knowledge of:
- Data access and governance (AWS Documentation: Management and Governance)
- Data recovery (AWS Documentation: Elastic Disaster Recovery)
- Data retention and classification (AWS Documentation: Data Classification)
- Encryption and appropriate key management (AWS Documentation: AWS Key Management Service)
Skills in:
- Aligning AWS technologies to meet compliance requirements (AWS Documentation: Security and compliance)
- Encrypting data at rest (for example, AWS Key Management Service [AWS KMS]) (AWS Documentation: AWS KMS concepts)
- Encrypting data in transit (for example, AWS Certificate Manager [ACM] using TLS) (AWS Documentation: Using SSL/TLS to encrypt a connection to a DB instance)
- Implementing access policies for encryption keys
- Implementing data backups and replications (AWS Documentation: Replicating automated backups to another AWS Region)
- Implementing policies for data access, lifecycle, and protection
- Rotating encryption keys and renewing certificates (AWS Documentation: Rotating your SSL/TLS certificate)
Domain 2: Design Resilient Architectures
Task Statement 1: Design scalable and loosely coupled architectures.
Knowledge of:
- API creation and management (for example, Amazon API Gateway, REST API) (AWS Documentation: Amazon API Gateway)
- AWS managed services with appropriate use cases (for example, AWS Transfer Family, Amazon Simple Queue Service [Amazon SQS], Secrets Manager) (AWS Documentation: AWS Secrets Manager, AWS Transfer Family (AMS SSPS))
- Caching strategies Caching strategies)
- Design principles for microservices (for example, stateless workloads compared with stateful workloads)
- Event-driven architectures (AWS Documentation: Event-driven architectures)
- Horizontal scaling and vertical scaling
- How to appropriately use edge accelerators (for example, content delivery network [CDN]) (AWS Documentation: Content Delivery Networks (CDNs))
- How to migrate applications into containers (AWS Documentation: Migrate your Applications to Containers at Scale)
- Load balancing concepts (for example, Application Load Balancer) (AWS Documentation: Application Load Balancer)
- Multi-tier architectures (AWS Documentation: multi-tier application)
- Queuing and messaging concepts (for example, publish/subscribe) (AWS Documentation: Pub/Sub Messaging)
- Serverless technologies and patterns (for example, AWS Fargate, AWS Lambda) (AWS Documentation: serverless saga pattern by using AWS Step Functions)
- Storage types with associated characteristics (for example, object, file, block)
- The orchestration of containers (for example, Amazon Elastic Container Service [Amazon ECS], Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service [Amazon EKS]) (AWS Documentation: Orchestrating the containers)
- When to use read replicas
- Workflow orchestration (for example, AWS Step Functions) (AWS Documentation: AWS Step Functions)
Skills in:
- Designing event-driven, microservice, and/or multi-tier architectures based on requirements (AWS Documentation: Event-Driven Architecture)
- Determining scaling strategies for components used in an architecture design
- Determining the AWS services required to achieve loose coupling based on requirements (AWS Documentation: Loosely Coupled Scenarios)
- Determining when to use containers (AWS Documentation: Determining task size)
- Determining when to use serverless technologies and patterns
- Recommending appropriate compute, storage, networking, and database technologies based on requirements
- Using purpose-built AWS services for workloads (AWS Documentation: Database)
Task Statement 2: Design highly available and/or fault-tolerant architectures.
Knowledge of:
- AWS global infrastructure (for example, Availability Zones, AWS Regions, Amazon Route 53) (AWS Documentation: AWS Global Infrastructure, Regions and Availability Zones)
- AWS managed services with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon Comprehend, and Amazon Polly) (AWS Documentation: Machine Learning (ML))
- Basic networking concepts (for example, route tables) (AWS Documentation: Configure route tables)
- Disaster recovery (DR) strategies (for example, backup and restore, pilot light, warm standby, active-active failover, recovery point objective [RPO], recovery time objective [RTO]) (AWS Documentation: Plan for Disaster Recovery (DR))
- Distributed design patterns (AWS Documentation: Design Interactions in a Distributed System to Prevent Failures)
- Failover strategies (AWS Documentation: Active-active and active-passive failover)
- Immutable infrastructure (AWS Documentation: Use immutable infrastructure with no human access)
- Load balancing concepts (for example, Application Load Balancer) (AWS Documentation: Application Load Balancer)
- Proxy concepts (for example, Amazon RDS Proxy) (AWS Documentation: Using Amazon RDS Proxy)
- Service quotas and throttling (for example, how to configure the service quotas for a workload in a standby environment) (AWS Documentation: AWS service quotas)
- Storage options and characteristics (for example, durability, replication) (AWS Documentation: Replicating objects)
- Workload visibility (for example, AWS X-Ray) (AWS Documentation: AWS X-Ray)
Skills in:
- Determining automation strategies to ensure infrastructure integrity (AWS Documentation: Protecting Compute)
- Determining the AWS services required to provide a highly available and/or fault-tolerant architecture across AWS Regions or Availability Zones (AWS Documentation: Architecture guidelines and decisions)
- Identifying metrics based on business requirements to deliver a highly available solution
- Implementing designs to mitigate single points of failure (AWS Documentation: Withstand Component Failures)
- Implementing strategies to ensure the durability and availability of data (for example, backups)
- Selecting an appropriate DR strategy to meet business requirements (AWS Documentation: Plan for Disaster Recovery (DR))
- Using AWS services that improve the reliability of legacy applications and applications not built for the cloud (for example, when application changes are not possible)
- Using purpose-built AWS services for workloads (AWS Documentation: Database)
Domain 3: Design High-Performing Architectures
Task Statement 1: Determine high-performing and/or scalable storage solutions.
Knowledge of:
- Hybrid storage solutions to meet business requirements (AWS Documentation: Hybrid Cloud Storage)
- Storage services with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon S3, Amazon Elastic File System [Amazon EFS], Amazon Elastic Block Store [Amazon EBS]) (AWS Documentation: Storage)
- Storage types with associated characteristics (for example, object, file, block)
Skills in:
- Determining storage services and configurations that meet performance demands (AWS Documentation: Storage Architecture Selection)
- Determining storage services that can scale to accommodate future needs (AWS Documentation: Storage)
Task Statement 2: Design high-performing and elastic compute solutions.
Knowledge of:
- AWS compute services with appropriate use cases (for example, AWS Batch, Amazon EMR, Fargate) (AWS Documentation: AWS Batch on AWS Fargate, Compute Services)
- Distributed computing concepts supported by AWS global infrastructure and edge services (AWS Documentation: Global infrastructure)
- Queuing and messaging concepts (for example, publish/subscribe) (AWS Documentation: Pub/Sub Messaging)
- Scalability capabilities with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, AWS Auto Scaling) (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling)
- Serverless technologies and patterns (for example, Lambda, Fargate) (AWS Documentation: Serverless)
- The orchestration of containers (for example, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS) (AWS Documentation: Orchestrating the containers)
Skills in:
- Decoupling workloads so that components can scale independently (AWS Documentation: Event-Driven Architecture)
- Identifying metrics and conditions to perform scaling actions (AWS Documentation: Monitor CloudWatch metrics)
- Selecting the appropriate compute options and features (for example, EC2 instance types) to meet business requirements (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 Instance Types)
- Selecting the appropriate resource type and size (for example, the amount of Lambda memory) to meet business requirements
Task Statement 3: Determine high-performing database solutions.
Knowledge of:
- AWS global infrastructure (for example, Availability Zones, AWS Regions) (AWS Documentation: Global infrastructure)
- Caching strategies and services (for example, Amazon ElastiCache) (AWS Documentation: Caching strategies)
- Data access patterns (for example, read-intensive compared with write-intensive) (AWS Documentation: Best practices for Amazon RDS)
- Database capacity planning (for example, capacity units, instance types, Provisioned IOPS)
- Database connections and proxies (AWS Documentation: Using Amazon RDS Proxy)
- Database engines with appropriate use cases (for example, heterogeneous migrations, homogeneous migrations) (AWS Documentation: Heterogeneous database migration)
- Database replication (for example, read replicas) (AWS Documentation: Working with read replicas)
- Database types and services (for example, serverless, relational compared with non-relational, in-memory) (AWS Documentation: Database)
Skills in:
- Configuring read replicas to meet business requirements
- Designing database architectures (AWS Documentation: Database Architecture Selection)
- Determining an appropriate database engine (for example, MySQL compared with PostgreSQL) (AWS Documentation: Best practices for Amazon RDS)
- Determining an appropriate database type (for example, Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB)
- Integrating caching to meet business requirements
Task Statement 4: Determine high-performing and/or scalable network architectures.
Knowledge of:
- Edge networking services with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon CloudFront, AWS Global Accelerator) (AWS Documentation: Edge networking with AWS)
- How to design network architecture (for example, subnet tiers, routing, IP addressing) (AWS Documentation: VPC with public and private subnets (NAT))
- Load balancing concepts (for example, Application Load Balancer) (AWS Documentation: Application Load Balancer)
- Network connection options (for example, AWS VPN, Direct Connect, AWS PrivateLink) (AWS Documentation: AWS Direct Connect)
Skills in:
- Creating a network topology for various architectures (for example, global, hybrid, multi-tier) (AWS Documentation: Plan your Network Topology)
- Determining network configurations that can scale to accommodate future needs (AWS Documentation: AWS Foundational Security Best Practices controls)
- Determining the appropriate placement of resources to meet business requirements
- Selecting the appropriate load balancing strategy (AWS Documentation: Application Load Balancer)
Task Statement 5: Determine high-performing data ingestion and transformation solutions.
Knowledge of:
- Data analytics and visualization services with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon Athena, AWS Lake Formation, Amazon QuickSight) (AWS Documentation: Amazon QuickSight, Use Amazon Athena and Amazon QuickSight to build custom reports)
- Data ingestion patterns (for example, frequency) (AWS Documentation: Data ingestion patterns)
- Data transfer services with appropriate use cases (for example, AWS DataSync, AWS Storage Gateway) (AWS Documentation: AWS DataSync)
- Data transformation services with appropriate use cases (for example, AWS Glue) (AWS Documentation: What is AWS Glue?)
- Secure access to ingestion access points (AWS Documentation: Managing data access with Amazon S3 access points)
- Sizes and speeds needed to meet business requirements
- Streaming data services with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon Kinesis) (AWS Documentation: AWS Streaming Data Solution for Amazon Kinesis)
Skills in:
- Building and securing data lakes (AWS Documentation: Securing, protecting, and managing data)
- Designing data streaming architectures (AWS Documentation: Build Modern Data Streaming Analytics Architectures on AWS)
- Designing data transfer solutions
- Implementing visualization strategies (AWS Documentation: Visualizing data in Amazon QuickSight)
- Selecting appropriate compute options for data processing (for example, Amazon EMR)
- Selecting appropriate configurations for ingestion (AWS Documentation: Data ingestion methods)
- Transforming data between formats (for example, .csv to .parquet)
Domain 4: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures
Task Statement 1: Design cost-optimized storage solutions.
Knowledge of:
- Access options (for example, an S3 bucket with Requester Pays object storage) (AWS Documentation: Using Requester Pays buckets for storage transfers and usage)
- AWS cost management service features (for example, cost allocation tags, multi-account billing) (AWS Documentation: Using Cost Allocation Tags)
- AWS cost management tools with appropriate use cases (for example, AWS Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets, AWS Cost and Usage Report) (AWS Documentation: Analyzing your costs with AWS Cost Explorer)
- AWS storage services with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon FSx, Amazon EFS, Amazon S3, Amazon EBS) (AWS Documentation: Storage)
- Backup strategies (AWS Documentation: AWS Backup)
- Block storage options (for example, hard disk drive [HDD] volume types, solid state drive [SSD] volume types) (AWS Documentation: Amazon EBS volume types)
- Data lifecycles (AWS Documentation: Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager)
- Hybrid storage options (for example, DataSync, Transfer Family, Storage Gateway)
- Storage access patterns
- Storage tiering (for example, cold tiering for object storage) (AWS Documentation: Using Amazon S3 storage classes)
- Storage types with associated characteristics (for example, object, file, block) (AWS Documentation: Storage)
Skills in:
- Designing appropriate storage strategies (for example, batch uploads to Amazon S3 compared with individual uploads) (AWS Documentation: Best practices design patterns: optimizing Amazon S3 performance)
- Determining the correct storage size for a workload (AWS Documentation: Tips for Right Sizing)
- Determining the lowest cost method of transferring data for a workload to AWS storage
- Determining when storage auto scaling is required (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling)
- Managing S3 object lifecycles (AWS Documentation: Managing your storage lifecycle)
- Selecting the appropriate backup and/or archival solution (AWS Documentation: Choosing AWS services for data protection)
- Selecting the appropriate service for data migration to storage services
- Selecting the appropriate storage tier
- Selecting the correct data lifecycle for storage (AWS Documentation: Managing your storage lifecycle)
- Selecting the most cost-effective storage service for a workload (AWS Documentation: Cost-effective resources)
Task Statement 2: Design cost-optimized compute solutions.
Knowledge of:
- AWS cost management service features (for example, cost allocation tags, multi-account billing) (AWS Documentation: Using Cost Allocation Tags)
- AWS cost management tools with appropriate use cases (for example, Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets, AWS Cost and Usage Report) (AWS Documentation: AWS Cost Explorer)
- AWS global infrastructure (for example, Availability Zones, AWS Regions) (AWS Documentation: Global infrastructure)
- AWS purchasing options (for example, Spot Instances, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans) (AWS Documentation: Instance purchasing options)
- Distributed compute strategies (for example, edge processing) (AWS Documentation: Amazon SageMaker Distributed Training Libraries)
- Hybrid compute options (for example, AWS Outposts, AWS Snowball Edge) (AWS Documentation: Compute Services)
- Instance types, families, and sizes (for example, memory optimized, compute optimized, virtualization) (AWS Documentation: Memory optimized instances)
- Optimization of compute utilization (for example, containers, serverless computing, microservices)
- Scaling strategies (for example, auto scaling, hibernation) (AWS Documentation: Warm pools for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling)
Skills in:
- Determining an appropriate load balancing strategy (for example, Application Load Balancer [Layer 7] compared with Network Load Balancer [Layer 4] compared with Gateway Load Balancer) (AWS Documentation: Elastic Load Balancing FAQs)
- Determining appropriate scaling methods and strategies for elastic workloads (for example, horizontal compared with vertical, EC2 hibernation) (AWS Documentation: Best practices for EC2 Spot)
- Determining cost-effective AWS compute services with appropriate use cases (for example, Lambda, Amazon EC2, Fargate)
- Determining the required availability for different classes of workloads (for example, production workloads, non-production workloads) (AWS Documentation: Workloads)
- Selecting the appropriate instance family for a workload
- Selecting the appropriate instance size for a workload (AWS Documentation: Tips for Right Sizing)
Task Statement 3: Design cost-optimized database solutions.
Knowledge of:
- AWS cost management service features (for example, cost allocation tags, multi-account billing) (AWS Documentation: Using Cost Allocation Tags)
- AWS cost management tools with appropriate use cases (for example, Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets, AWS Cost and Usage Report) (AWS Documentation: AWS Cost Explorer)
- Caching strategies (AWS Documentation: Caching strategies)
- Data retention policies
- Database capacity planning (for example, capacity units) (AWS Documentation: Read/write capacity mode)
- Database connections and proxies (AWS Documentation: Using Amazon RDS Proxy)
- Database engines with appropriate use cases (for example, heterogeneous migrations, homogeneous migrations) (AWS Documentation: Heterogeneous database migration)
- Database replication (for example, read replicas) (AWS Documentation: Working with read replicas)
- Database types and services (for example, relational compared with non-relational, Aurora, DynamoDB) (AWS Documentation: Database)
Skills in:
- Designing appropriate backup and retention policies (for example, snapshot frequency)
- Determining an appropriate database engine (for example, MySQL compared with PostgreSQL) (AWS Documentation: Best practices for Amazon RDS)
- Determining cost-effective AWS database services with appropriate use cases (for example, DynamoDB compared with Amazon RDS, serverless)
- Determining cost-effective AWS database types (for example, time series format, columnar format) (AWS Documentation: AWS Cloud Databases)
- Migrating database schemas and data to different locations and/or different database engines (AWS Documentation: Best practices for AWS Database Migration Service)
Task Statement 4: Design cost-optimized network architectures.
Knowledge of:
- AWS cost management service features (for example, cost allocation tags, multi-account billing) (AWS Documentation: Using Cost Allocation Tags)
- AWS cost management tools with appropriate use cases (for example, Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets, AWS Cost and Usage Report) (AWS Documentation: AWS Cost Explorer)
- Load balancing concepts (for example, Application Load Balancer) (AWS Documentation: Application Load Balancer)
- NAT gateways (for example, NAT instance costs compared with NAT gateway costs) (AWS Documentation: Compare NAT gateways and NAT instances)
- Network connectivity (for example, private lines, dedicated lines, VPNs) (AWS Documentation: Network-to-Amazon VPC connectivity options)
- Network routing, topology, and peering (for example, AWS Transit Gateway, VPC peering) (AWS Documentation: Transit gateway design best practices)
- Network services with appropriate use cases (for example, DNS) (AWS Documentation: Networking and Content Delivery)
Skills in:
- Configuring appropriate NAT gateway types for a network (for example, a single shared NAT gateway compared with NAT gateways for each Availability Zone) (AWS Documentation: NAT gateways)
- Configuring appropriate network connections (for example, Direct Connect compared with VPN compared with internet) (AWS Documentation: AWS Direct Connect FAQs)
- Configuring appropriate network routes to minimize network transfer costs (for example, Region to Region, Availability Zone to Availability Zone, private to public, Global Accelerator, VPC endpoints)
- Determining strategic needs for content delivery networks (CDNs) and edge caching (AWS Documentation: Working with Content Delivery Networks (CDNs))
- Reviewing existing workloads for network optimizations (AWS Documentation: Optimize over time)
- Selecting an appropriate throttling strategy (AWS Documentation: Throttle API requests for better throughput)
- Selecting the appropriate bandwidth allocation for a network device (for example, a single VPN compared with multiple VPNs, Direct Connect speed) (AWS Documentation: Site-to-Site VPN single and multiple connection)
Time to get prepared for the AWS Solution Architect Associate exam sing the various training methods.
3. Exploring the AWS Study Resources
You’ve started walking in the direction of your goal. Now is the chance to expand your knowledge and abilities in order to advance your career. That is to say, use the AWS Training and Certification resources for AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate that is relevant for preparation. These recommended resources provide opportunities to learn with having the support of AWS’s expertise.
➼ Exam Readiness: Solutions Architect Associate (Digital)
The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam verifies technical knowledge in designing and deploying scalable, highly available, and fault-tolerant systems on Amazon Web Services. Learn how to prepare for the exam by exploring the exam’s topic areas and how they map to AWS architecting and specific areas to study in this half-day intermediate-level training. The course goes over sample exam questions for each topic area and teaches you how to analyze the topics being assessed so you can remove incorrect answers more quickly.
Further, in this, you will learn the process of:
- Firstly, handling the examination process’s logistics
- Understanding the exam structure and question types.
- Then, identifying how questions relate to AWS architectural concepts.
- Interpreting the concepts being tested by an exam question.
- Lastly, allocating your time studying for the exam.
➼ AWS Technical Essentials
AWS Technical Essentials walks you through the essential AWS services and solutions such as AWS principles of computation, database, storage, networking, monitoring, and security. Using hands-on training experiences, you will begin working in AWS. Moreover, the course covers the principles you’ll need to improve your understanding of AWS services so you can make well-informed decisions about solutions that match your needs. Further, you’ll learn how to create, compare, and implement highly available, fault-tolerant, scalable, and cost-effective cloud systems throughout the course.
➼ AWS Power Hour: Architecting
Reference: https://pages.awscloud.com/traincert-twitch-power-hour-architecting.html?saa=sec&sec=prep
Learn how to create AWS Cloud architectures that are robust, high-performing, secure, and cost-effective. This will walk you through the subject with demos and real-world examples, whether you just want to learn more about architecting or are studying for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam. However, this covers various detailed episodes. Some of them are:
- Resilient Architectures
- High-Performing Architectures
- Secure Applications and Architectures
- Cost-Optimized Architectures
➼ Architecting on AWS
Reference: https://aws.amazon.com/training/classroom/architecting-on-aws/?saa=sec&sec=prep
You’ll learn to discover services and features to develop robust, secure, and highly available IT solutions on the AWS Cloud through a series of use case scenarios and hands-on learning. Expert AWS Instructors highlight best practices and walk you through the process of developing optimum IT solutions based on real-life scenarios using the AWS Well-Architected Framework. Moreover, you’ll experience constructing a solution at the conclusion of the course and be able to confidently use what you’ve learned.
Further, you will gain knowledge in:
- Identifying AWS architecting basic practices
- Secondly, discovering services and features for creating resilient, secure, and highly available IT solutions in the AWS Cloud
- Process of planning optimal IT solutions using the AWS Well-Architected Framework
- Lastly, exploring AWS services for,
- account security, networking, and compute
- storage, databases, and monitoring
- automation
- containers
- serverless architecture
- edge services, and backup and recovery
➼ AWS Whitepapers
Explore AWS whitepapers relevant to your exam to learn about AWS services and best practices. For the AWS Solution Architect Associate exam, include:
AWS Well-Architected Framework
Cloud architects can use AWS Well-Architected to create secure, high-performing, robust, and efficient infrastructure for a variety of applications and workloads. AWS Well-Architected is a consistent strategy for customers and partners to analyze architectures and build scalable designs, built around six pillars: operational excellence, security, dependability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability.
Further, domain-specific lenses, hands-on labs, and the AWS Well-Architected Tool are all part of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. The AWS Well-Architected Tool, which is accessible for free in the AWS Management Console, allows you to evaluate workloads on a regular basis, identify high-risk concerns, and track progress.
➼ Proficiency with AWS Services
There are a few AWS services that will appear often on the exam, and you’ll need a firm grasp on them to pass. Using them with hands-on experiments is the greatest approach to learning what you need to know. Some of them are:
- Amazon VPC
- AWS S3
- Amazon RDS
- Amazon Kinesis
- AWS Lambda
4. Get yourself enrolled in Online Course
You will need a thorough grasp of how to use the AWS cloud for developing the most secure cloud environment for passing the AWS Solution Architect Exam. For AWS Solutions Architect job and certification examinations, you’ll need to learn the necessary skills. And, this can be achieved by taking the professional AWS Solutions Architect Training online course. It will also assist you in studying for the AWS Solutions Architect – Associate test. Additionally, there will be expert-level assistance to assist you in resolving any of your problems and questions.
Here are a few online courses providers to help you become well-versed and equipped with in-depth knowledge to pass the exam.
- Udemy
- Coursera
- Testprep Training
- Simplilearn
5. Evaluate using the Practice Tests
Practice Tests assist you in gaining a strong revision by allowing you to solve questions in a short amount of time. Furthermore, practice exams can assist you in focusing on single-domain subjects, which is a smart step to begin while preparing for a test. However, when you’ve understood the topic, start taking full-length practice examinations to pinpoint your weak and strong regions to increase your revision abilities. So, use the online course provider listed above to obtain the greatest and most unique practice exam tests and begin taking them.
6. Scheduling the AWS exam
For scheduling the AWS Solutions Architect examination:
- Visit aws.amazon.com/certification/. Then, look for “Architect.”
- Secondly, click on “Register Now.”
- Thirdly, click on the “AWS Certification Account.” Now, sign in using your Amazon account crednetials or create a new one.
- After signing in, click on “Schedule Examination.”
- Look for AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate and click “Schedule Exam.”
- Then, click on “Continue.” Next, choose language and region.
- After that, choose the month of the examination and look for the exam center using search. Then, from the exam center select the relevant location.
- In the next setp, select the test date and slo. Then, click continue.
- Lastly, you have to pay the exam registration fee.
What’s next after passing the exam and earning the certification?
➼ Gain Industry experience using projects and start applying for jobs
The next step after earning certification is to take up some professional projects to boost up your knowledge and abilities. Doing this will make you ready for productive performance. AWS certification, on the other hand, may lead to a variety of high-paying professions. With some job experience and certification, you will be able to further your career by earning greater pay and working in a more interesting position. According to market research, there is a shortage of experienced AWS. This is, without a doubt, the best time to get certified and begin a career in AWS.
Talking about the Salary:
The average yearly pay for an AWS Solutions Architect Associate in India is 8.8 lakhs, with a salary range of 2.4 lakhs to 16.0 lakhs. And, some of the top companies hiring for this role include:
- Accenture
- IBM
- CSG
- PWC
- Airtel India
- Deloitte
However, the other option can be:
➼ Preparing for the AWS Solutions Architect Professional Exam
After you’ve worked as an AWS Solution Architect for more than two years, you can prepare for the AWS Solution Architect Professional Exam. This will not only help you in advancing your skills but will also provide a huge benefit for your career as well.
Final Words
The path to becoming an AWS Architect is extremely basic for newcomers. To put it another way, all you have to do is get a comprehensive understanding of the topic, pass the AWS Associate-level certification test, and earn some work experience. Almost every company, large or small, is seeking AWS experts that can help them with personalized and secure solutions. So, don’t wait and start preparing to become AWS Solution Architect now.
