Presently, every IT enthusiast wants to learn AWS as this field is fetching high salaries and is expected to grow at a faster pace in the future. The competition is growing at the same rate as the sector’s pace. To get the spotlight, you’ll have to put in a lot of extra work. And, if you want to build your career in this field, AWS Solutions Architect Professional (SAP-C01) Exam is the right choice for you.
The AWS Solutions Architect Professional (SAP-C01) exam has retired and is replaced with AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional exam (SAP-C02)
The AWS Solutions Architect Professional (SAP-C01) Exam is designed for professionals in a solutions architect role with at least two years of hands-on experience managing and operating systems on AWS. But, before you decide to sit for any exam it is important to get an idea of the difficulty level of the exam along with some other details. Let us get started with the basic exam details.
About AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional Certification:
The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional exam is for those who work as solutions architects and have at least two years of practical experience in managing and operating systems on AWS.
Skills Validated:
The certification validates the following abilities of the candidates –
- Firstly, Design and deploy dynamically scalable, highly available, fault-tolerant, and reliable applications on AWS
- Secondly, Select appropriate AWS services to design and deploy an application based on given requirements
- Also, Migrate complex, multi-tier applications on AWS
- Subsequently, Design and deploy enterprise-wide scalable operations on AWS
- Lastly, Implement cost-control strategies
Recommended Knowledge and Experience:
Amazon recommends the set of following skills before anyone decides to sit for the exam –
- Firstly, Two or more years of hands-on experience designing and deploying cloud architecture on AWS
- Next, the skill to assess cloud application needs and provide architectural suggestions for implementing, deploying, and setting up applications on AWS.
- In addition, Familiarity with AWS CLI, AWS APIs, AWS Cloud Formation templates, the AWS Billing Console, and the AWS Management Console
- Furthermore, Explain and apply the five pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework
- Also, Design a hybrid architecture using key AWS technologies (e.g., VPN, AWS Direct Connect)
- In addition, Ability to provide best practice guidance on the architectural design across multiple applications and projects of the enterprise
- Also, Familiarity with a scripting language
- Furthermore, Familiarity with Windows and Linux environments
- And, Map business objectives to application/architecture requirements
- Lastly, Architect a continuous integration and deployment process
Let us now look at some of the basic details of the exam which are essential for a candidate to know.
Basic Exam Details
Before you begin your preparation lets get all the details which are mentioned in the table below –
| 1. Exam Name AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional | 2. Exam Code SAP-C01 |
| 3. Exam Duration 170 Minutes | 4. Exam Format Multiple Choice and Multi-Response Questions |
| 5. Exam Type Professional | 6. Number of Questions 80 Questions |
| 7. Passing Score 75-80% | 8. Exam Fee $300 |
| 9. Exam Language English, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Japanese | 10. Validity 3 years |
Now that we know about the exam and some basic details let us jump to our main question of how hard the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional exam is after getting an insight of exam course structure.
AWS Solutions Architect Professional Exam Guide
The AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional exam covers the following topics –
Domain 1: Understanding to Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity 26%
1.1 Explain Architect network connectivity strategies.
- AWS global infrastructure (AWS Documentation: Global infrastructure)
- AWS networking concepts (for example, Amazon VPC, AWS Direct Connect, AWS VPN, transitive routing, AWS container services) (AWS Documentation: Network-to-Amazon VPC connectivity options)
- Hybrid DNS concepts (for example, Amazon Route 53 Resolver, on-premises DNS integration) (AWS Documentation: What is Amazon Route 53 Resolver?)
- Network segmentation (for example, subnetting, IP addressing, connectivity among VPCs) (AWS Documentation: Network segmentation and hardening, IP addressing for your VPCs and subnets)
- Network traffic monitoring
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to evaluate connectivity options for multiple VPCs
- Learn to evaluate connectivity options for on-premises, co-location, and cloud integration
- Learn to select AWS Regions and Availability Zones based on network and latency requirements (AWS Documentation: Regions and Zones)
- Learn to troubleshoot traffic flows by using AWS tools (AWS Documentation: Logging IP traffic using VPC Flow Logs)
- Learn to utilize service endpoints for service integrations (AWS Documentation: AWS service endpoints)
1.2 Explain security controls
- AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and AWS Single Sign-On (AWS Documentation: What is IAM Identity Center?)
- Route tables, security groups, and network ACLs (AWS Documentation: Control traffic to subnets using network ACLs)
- Encryption keys and certificate management (for example, AWS Key Management Service [AWS KMS], AWS Certificate Manager [ACM]) (AWS Documentation: AWS Key Management Service, Data protection in AWS Certificate Manager)
- AWS security, identity, and compliance tools (for example, AWS CloudTrail, AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer, AWS Security Hub, Amazon Inspector) (AWS Documentation: Security, identity, and compliance)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to evaluate cross-account access management (AWS Documentation: Cross-account policy evaluation logic)
- Learn to integrate with third-party identity providers (AWS Documentation: Integrate third-party SAML solution providers with AWS)
- Learn to deploy encryption strategies for data at rest and data in transit (AWS Documentation: Encrypting Data-at-Rest and Data-in-Transit)
- Learn to develop a strategy for centralized security event notifications and auditing (AWS Documentation: Security best practices in AWS CloudTrail)
1.3 Explain to design reliable and resilient architectures.
- Recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) (AWS Documentation: Recovery objectives)
- Disaster recovery strategies (for example, using AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery [CloudEndure Disaster Recovery], pilot light, warm standby, and multi-site) (AWS Documentation: Disaster recovery options in the cloud)
- Data backup and restoration (AWS Documentation: Restoring a backup)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to design disaster recovery solutions based on RTO and RPO requirements (AWS Documentation: Disaster recovery options in the cloud)
- Learn to implement architectures to automatically recover from failure (AWS Documentation: Failure management)
- Learn to develop the optimal architecture by considering scale-up and scale-out options (AWS Documentation: Best practices for scaling plans)
- Learn to design an effective backup and restoration strategy (AWS Documentation: Implement a backup strategy)
1.4 Explain Design a multi-account AWS environment.
- AWS Organizations and AWS Control Tower (AWS Documentation: AWS Control Tower and AWS Organizations)
- Multi-account event notifications (AWS Documentation: Sending and receiving Amazon EventBridge events between AWS accounts)
- AWS resource sharing across environments (AWS Documentation: Shareable AWS resources)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to evaluate the most appropriate account structure for organizational requirements (AWS Documentation: Organizing Your AWS Environment Using Multiple Accounts)
- Learn to recommend a strategy for central logging and event notifications
- Learn to develop a multi-account governance model
1.5 Explain to determine cost optimization and visibility strategies.
- AWS cost and usage monitoring tools (for example, AWS Trusted Advisor, AWS Pricing Calculator, AWS Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets) (AWS Documentation: Analyzing your costs with AWS Cost Explorer)
- AWS purchasing options (for example, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, Spot Instances) (AWS Documentation: Instance purchasing options)
- AWS right-sizing visibility tools (for example, AWS Compute Optimizer, Amazon S3 Storage Lens)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to monitor cost and usage with AWS tools (AWS Documentation: Monitor costs using AWS tools)
- Learn to develop an effective tagging strategy that maps costs to business units (AWS Documentation: Building a cost allocation strategy)
- Learn to understand how purchasing options affect cost and performance (AWS Documentation: Instance purchasing options)
Domain 2: Understand to Design for New Solutions 29%
2.1 Explain to design a deployment strategy to meet business requirements
- Infrastructure as code (IaC) (for example, AWS CloudFormation) (AWS Documentation: AWS CloudFormation IaC files)
- Continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) (AWS Documentation: CI/CD on AWS)
- Change management processes (AWS Documentation: Change management in the cloud)
- Configuration management tools (for example, AWS Systems Manager) (AWS Documentation: Configuration management)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to determine an application or upgrade path for new services and features (AWS Documentation: Perform an automated upgrade)
- Learn to select services to develop deployment strategies and implement appropriate rollback mechanisms (AWS Documentation: Deployment strategies)
- Learn to adopt managed services as needed to reduce infrastructure provisioning and patching overhead (AWS Documentation: What is AWS Managed Services?)
- Learn to make advanced technologies accessible by delegating complex development and deployment tasks to AWS (AWS Documentation: Design principles)
2.2 Explain to Design a solution to ensure business continuity.
- AWS global infrastructure (AWS Documentation: Global infrastructure)
- AWS networking concepts (for example, Route 53, routing methods) (AWS Documentation: What is Amazon Route 53?)
- RTOs and RPOs (AWS Documentation: Recovery objectives)
- Disaster recovery scenarios (for example, backup and restore, pilot light, warm standby, multi-site) (AWS Documentation: Disaster recovery options in the cloud)
- Disaster recovery solutions on AWS (AWS Documentation: Disaster recovery options in the cloud)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to configure disaster recovery solutions (AWS Documentation: Getting started with AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery)
- Learn to configure data and database replication (AWS Documentation: Setting up replication for AWS Database Migration Service)
- Learn to perform disaster recovery testing (AWS Documentation: Testing disaster recovery)
- Learn to architect a backup solution that is automated, is cost-effective, and supports business continuity across multiple Availability Zones and/or AWS Regions
- Learn to design an architecture that provides application and infrastructure availability in the event of a disruption (AWS Documentation: Disaster recovery options in the cloud)
- Learn to leverage processes and components for centralized monitoring to proactively recover from system failures
2.3 Explain to determine security controls based on requirements.
- IAM
- Route tables, security groups, and network ACLs (AWS Documentation: Control traffic to subnets using network ACLs)
- Encryption options for data at rest and data in transit (AWS Documentation: Encrypting Data-at-Rest and Data-in-Transit)
- AWS service endpoints (AWS Documentation: AWS service endpoints)
- Credential management services (AWS Documentation: AWS security credentials)
- AWS managed security services (for example, AWS Shield, AWS WAF, Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Security Hub)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to specify IAM users and IAM roles that adhere to the principle of least privilege access (AWS Documentation: Security best practices in IAM)
- Learn to specify inbound and outbound network flows by using security group rules and network ACL rules (AWS Documentation: Control traffic to subnets using network ACLs)
- Learn to develop attack mitigation strategies for large-scale web applications (AWS Documentation: Mitigation techniques)
- Learn to develop encryption strategies for data at rest and data in transit (AWS Documentation: Encrypting Data-at-Rest and Data-in-Transit)
- Lean to specify service endpoints for service integrations
- Learn to develop strategies for patch management to remain compliant with organizational standards
2.4 Explain to design a strategy to meet reliability requirements.
- AWS global infrastructure (AWS Documentation: Global infrastructure)
- AWS storage services and replication strategies (for example Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, Amazon ElastiCache) Multi-AZ and multi-Region architectures (AWS Documentation: Disaster recovery options in the cloud)
- Auto scaling policies and events (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling)
- Application integration (for example, Amazon Simple Notification Service [Amazon SNS], Amazon Simple Queue Service [Amazon SQS], AWS Step Functions) (AWS Documentation: Application integration)
- Service quotas and limits
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to design highly available application environments based on business requirements (AWS Documentation: Understand business requirements to make cost-optimized design decisions per environment)
- Learn to leverage advanced techniques to design for failure and ensure seamless system recoverability
- Learn to implement loosely coupled dependencies (AWS Documentation: Implement loosely coupled dependencies)
- Learn to operate and maintaining high-availability architectures (for example, application failovers, database failover) (AWS Documentation: High availability for Amazon Aurora)
- Learn to leverage AWS managed services for high availability
- Learn to implement DNS routing policies (for example, Route 53 latency-based routing, geolocation routing, simple routing) (AWS Documentation: Choosing a routing policy)
2.5 Explain Design a solution to meet performance objectives.
- Performance monitoring technologies (AWS Documentation: Monitoring DB load with Performance Insights on Amazon RDS)
- Storage options on AWS
- Instance families and use cases (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 instance types)
- Purpose-built databases
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to design large-scale application architectures for a variety of access patterns
- Learn to design an elastic architecture based on business objectives (AWS Documentation: Adopting a consistent design decision approach)
- Learn to apply design patterns to meet performance objectives with caching, buffering, and replicas (AWS Documentation: Performance Design Patterns for Amazon S3)
- Learn to develop a process methodology for selecting purpose-built services for required tasks
- Learn to design a right-sizing strategy (AWS Documentation: Tips for Right Sizing)
2.6 Explain and determine a cost optimization strategy to meet solution goals and objectives.
- AWS cost and usage monitoring tools (for example, Cost Explorer, Trusted Advisor, AWS Pricing Calculator) (AWS Documentation: Analyzing your costs with AWS Cost Explorer)
- Pricing models (for example, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans) (AWS Documentation: Savings Plans)
- Storage tiering
- Data transfer costs (AWS Documentation: Understanding data transfer charges)
- AWS managed service offerings
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to identify opportunities to select and right size infrastructure for cost-effective resources (AWS Documentation: Identifying Opportunities to Right Size)
- Learn to identify appropriate pricing models
- Learn to perform data transfer modeling and selecting services to reduce data transfer costs (AWS Documentation: Perform data transfer modeling)
- Learn to develop a strategy and implementing controls for expenditure and usage awareness
Domain 3: Understand to Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions 25%
3.1 Explain determine a strategy to improve overall operational excellence
- Alerting and automatic remediation strategies (AWS Documentation: AMS automatic remediation of alerts)
- Disaster recovery planning (AWS Documentation: Disaster recovery options in the cloud)
- Monitoring and logging solutions (for example, Amazon CloudWatch)
- CI/CD pipelines and deployment strategies (for example, blue/green, all-at-once, rolling) (AWS Documentation: Blue/Green Deployments)
- Configuration management tools (for example, Systems Manager) (AWS Documentation: Configuration management)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to determine the most appropriate logging and monitoring strategy (AWS Documentation: Designing and implementing logging and monitoring with Amazon CloudWatch)
- Learn to evaluate current deployment processes for improvement opportunities
- Learn to prioritize opportunities for automation within a solution stack
- Learn to recommende the appropriate AWS solution to enable configuration management automation (AWS Documentation: AWS Systems Manager Automation)
- Learn to engineer failure scenario activities to support and exercise an understanding of recovery actions
3.2 Explain to determine a strategy to improve security.
- Data retention, data sensitivity, and data regulatory requirements (AWS Documentation: Data security and risk management)
- Automated monitoring and remediation strategies (for example, AWS Config rules) (AWS Documentation: Remediating Noncompliant Resources with AWS Config Rules)
- Secrets management (for example, Systems Manager, AWS Secrets Manager) (AWS Documentation: What is AWS Secrets Manager?)
- Principle of least privilege access
- Security-specific AWS solutions
- Patching practices (AWS Documentation: AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager)
- Backup practices and methods (AWS Documentation: What is AWS Backup?)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to evaluate a strategy for the secure management of secrets and credentials (AWS Documentation: What is AWS Secrets Manager?)
- Learn to auditi an environment for least privilege access (AWS Documentation: Security best practices in IAM)
- Learn to review implemented solutions to ensure security at every layer
- Learn to review comprehensive traceability of users and services (AWS Documentation: Trace Analytics for Amazon OpenSearch Service)
- Learn to prioritize automated responses to the detection of vulnerabilities (AWS Documentation: Assess and prioritize security findings)
- Learn to design and implementing a patch and update process (AWS Documentation: Patching process)
- Learn to design and implementing a backup process
- Learn to employ remediation techniques (AWS Documentation: Remediating Noncompliant Resources with AWS Config Rules)
3.3 Explain determine a strategy to improve performance.
- High-performing systems architectures (for example, auto scaling, instance fleets, and placement groups) (AWS Documentation: Placement groups)
- Global service offerings (for example, AWS Global Accelerator, Amazon CloudFront, and edge computing services)
- Monitoring tool sets and services (for example, CloudWatch) (AWS Documentation: What is Amazon CloudWatch?)
- Service level agreements (SLAs) and key performance indicators (KPIs)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to translate business requirements to measurable metrics
- Learn to test potential remediation solutions and making recommendations (AWS Documentation: GuardDuty EC2 finding types)
- Learn to propose opportunities for the adoption of new technologies and managed services (AWS Documentation: Design principles)
- Learn to assess solutions and applying right sizing based on requirements (AWS Documentation: Tips for Right Sizing)
- Learn to identify and examining performance bottlenecks
3.4 Explain determine a strategy to improve reliability
- AWS global infrastructure (AWS Documentation: Global infrastructure)
- Data replication methods (AWS Documentation: Data replication using AWS Database Migration Service)
- Scaling methodologies (for example, load balancing, auto scaling) (AWS Documentation: What is Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling?)
- High availability and resiliency (AWS Documentation: Resiliency, and the components of reliability)
- Disaster recovery methods and tools
- Service quotas and limits (AWS Documentation: AWS service quotas)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to understand application growth and usage trends (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 usage reports)
- Learn to evaluate existing architecture to determine areas that are not sufficiently reliable
- Learn to remediate single points of failure
- Learn to enable data replication, self-healing, and elastic features and services (AWS Documentation: What is Elastic Disaster Recovery?)
3.5 Identify opportunities for cost optimizations.
- Cost-conscious architecture choices (for example, utilizing Spot Instances, scaling policies, and right-sizing resources) (AWS Documentation: Spot Instances)
- Price model adoptions (for example, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans) (AWS Documentation: Savings Plans)
- Networking and data transfer costs (AWS Documentation: Understanding data transfer charges)
- Cost management, alerting, and reporting
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to analyze usage reports to identify underutilized and overutilized resources (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 usage reports)
- Learn to utilize AWS solutions to identify unused resources (AWS Documentation: Identify your unused resources)
- Learn to design billing alarms based on expected usage patterns
- Learn to investigate AWS Cost and Usage Reports at a granular level (AWS Documentation: What are AWS Cost and Usage Reports?)
- Learn to utilize tagging for cost allocation and reporting
Domain 4: Explain to accelerate Workload Migration and Modernization 20%
4.1 Explain to select existing workloads and processes for potential migration.
- Migration assessment and tracking tools (for example, AWS Migration Hub) (AWS Documentation: What Is AWS Migration Hub?)
- Portfolio assessment (AWS Documentation: Application portfolio assessment guide for AWS Cloud migration)
- Asset planning
- Prioritization and migration of workloads (for example, wave planning) (AWS Documentation: Prioritization and migration strategy)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to complete an application migration assessment (AWS Documentation: Application portfolio assessment guide for AWS Cloud migration)
- Learn to evaluate applications according to the seven common migration strategies (7Rs) (AWS Documentation: About the migration strategies)
- Learn to evaluate total cost of ownership (TCO) (AWS Documentation: AWS Pricing/TCO Tools)
4.2 Explain to determine the optimal migration approach for existing workloads.
- Data migration options and tools (for example, AWS DataSync, AWS Transfer Family, AWS Snow Family, S3 Transfer Acceleration) (AWS Documentation: AWS managed migration tools)
- Application migration tools (for example, AWS Application Discovery Service, AWS Application Migration Service [CloudEndure Migration], AWS Server Migration Service [AWS SMS]) (AWS Documentation: Migration and transfer)
- AWS networking services and DNS (for example, Direct Connect, AWS Site-to-Site VPN, Route 53)
- Identity services (for example, AWS SSO, AWS Directory Service) (AWS Documentation: Single sign-on)
- Database migration tools (for example, AWS Database Migration Service [AWS DMS], AWS Schema Conversion Tool [AWS SCT])
- Governance tools (for example, AWS Control Tower, Organizations) (AWS Documentation: AWS Control Tower and AWS Organizations)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to select the appropriate database transfer mechanism (AWS Documentation: Data Migration Mechanism)
- Learn to select the appropriate application transfer mechanism
- Learn to select the appropriate data transfer service and migration strategy (AWS Documentation: About the migration strategies)
- Learn to apply the appropriate security methods to migration tools
- Learn to select the appropriate governance model (AWS Documentation: Management and governance)
4.3 Explain to determine a new architecture for existing workloads.
- Compute services (for example, Amazon EC2, AWS Elastic Beanstalk) (AWS Documentation: Compute services)
- Containers (for example, Amazon Elastic Container Service [Amazon ECS], Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service [Amazon EKS], AWS Fargate, Amazon Elastic Container Registry [Amazon ECR]) (AWS Documentation: Choosing an AWS container service)
- AWS storage services (for example, Amazon Elastic Block Store [Amazon EBS], Amazon Elastic File System [Amazon EFS], Amazon FSx, Amazon S3, Volume Gateway) (AWS Documentation: Storage)
- Databases (for example, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon OpenSearch Service [Amazon Elasticsearch Service], Amazon RDS, self-managed databases on Amazon EC2) (AWS Documentation: Databases)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to select the appropriate compute platform (AWS Documentation: Compute services)
- Learn to select the appropriate container hosting platform (AWS Documentation: Choosing an AWS container service)
- Learn to select the appropriate storage service
- Learn to select the appropriate database platform (AWS Documentation: Choosing an AWS database service)
4.4 Explain to determine opportunities for modernization and enhancements.
- Serverless compute offerings (for example, AWS Lambda) (AWS Documentation: What is AWS Lambda?)
- Containers (for example, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS, AWS Fargate) (AWS Documentation: Amazon ECS on AWS Fargate)
- AWS storage services (for example, Amazon S3, Amazon EFS)
- Purpose-built databases (for example, DynamoDB, Amazon Aurora Serverless, ElastiCache) (AWS Documentation: Databases)
- Integration service (for example, Amazon SQS, Amazon SNS, Amazon EventBridge [Amazon CloudWatch Events], Step Functions)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to identify opportunities to decouple application components (AWS Documentation: Decouple by using a standalone API)
- Learn to identify opportunities for serverless solutions
- Learn to select the appropriate service for containers (AWS Documentation: Choosing an AWS container service)
- Learn to identify opportunities for purpose-built databases
- Learn to select the appropriate application integration service (AWS Documentation: Application integration)
How hard is AWS Solutions Architect Professional Exam?
The AWS Solutions Architect Professional (SAP-C01) Exam is recognized as one of the toughest in the IT sector. To pass it, you have to invest ample effort and use the appropriate resources. The challenge lies in the need for additional research beyond the official resources to cover all the topics outlined in the course.
We have curated some of the important resources that will help you plan and prepare better. Also, you can refer to exam policies and preparation guide AWS Solutions Architect Professional Online Tutorial.
AWS Solutions Architect Professional Study Guide
Due to the growing competition in this sector and its allied exam, cracking the certifications is a difficult task. With the right set of resources and the right strategy, you can easily pass the exam. There are numerous resources that you can choose for preparation. Let us have a look –
1. AWS Exam guide
Hands-on experience is the best way to prepare. You can use various AWS Training courses and resources to gain more knowledge and skills for certification. Additionally, review the exam guide for details on the competencies evaluated in the certification exam.
2. Online Training
There are a number of websites that offer online preparation for this exam. The best method to study for the test while having a good comprehension of the subjects is to use online instruction. The online classes also give you useful reading material, such as notes or book recommendations that may be of interest to you.
3. Using AWS Exam Practice Test
Your practice will have an impact on your future. You should attempt to practice as often as possible since it will never fail you. Practicing will help you figure out where you need to improve your performance and will also help you gain confidence on exam day by eliminating your dumb blunders. AWS Solutions Architect Professional free practice test
