AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03)
Amazon Web Services (AWS), houses a collection of cloud computing services, that have opened up hot career prospects in the world of cloud computing. With more than 70 services, spanning a wide range, including compute, networking, database, storage, analytics, application services, management, mobile deployment, developer tools, and the Internet of things are there in AWS. Also, AWS offers cloud certifications that assert your ability to operate on the cloud. AWS offers different certifications at different levels and each of them opens the floodgates to enhanced career opportunities. Depending on your interest and career goals, you yourself can choose to engage in any of the two certification tracks prescribed by AWS. AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate is an entry-level exam specifically designed for professionals wanting to build a career in this field.
The AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam is for candidates who are capable of executing the function of solutions architect. They must have at least one year of hands-on experience creating AWS distributed systems that are available, cost-effective, fault-tolerant, and scalable. This exam verifies a candidate’s competence to develop and deliver safe and resilient applications using Amazon Web Services technology. Moreover, it increases your earning potential as the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate salary is at an average annual of $118,266.
Abilities Validated by the Certification
The AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate certification validates the following abilities
- Demonstrating knowledge of how to architect and deploy secure and robust applications on AWS technologies
- Defining a solution using architectural design principles on the basis of customer requirements
- Providing implementation guidance on the basis of best practices to the organization throughout the life cycle of the project
Recommended AWS Knowledge
Before you proceed to prepare for the exam you must know about the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate prerequisites :
- Candidates must have one year of hands-on experience in designing available, cost-effective, fault-tolerant, and scalable distributed systems on AWS.
- They should have hands-on experience using compute, networking, storage, and database AWS services as well as with AWS deployment and management services.
- Candidates should have the ability to identify and define technical requirements for an AWS-based application.
- They must have skills to identify which AWS services meet a given technical requirement.
- They should have knowledge of recommended best practices for building secure and reliable applications on the AWS platform.
- Further, candidates must have an understanding of the basic architectural principles of building in the AWS Cloud. This also includes knowledge and understanding in AWS global infrastructure and network technologies.
- Lastly, they must be familiar with security features and tools that AWS provides and how they relate to traditional services
AWS Architect Learning Path
AWS has designed an Architect learning path for solution architect, solution design engineers and individuals who wants to learn designing applications and system on AWS.
Solutions Architect Associate Exam Overview
While you are preparing for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam it is very important to thoroughly go through the exam details, exam pattern, scoring methods, exam format so that you are prepared in advance and able to take the final exam without any hassles. So let us start understanding each and every aspect of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam format before you begin your preparation.
Exam Pattern
The AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam questions are in multiple choice format. Moreover, this exam covers 65 questions that are to be completed in 130 minutes. The exam is available in English, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese languages. Moreover, the type of questions can be further nderstood as follows:
- Multiple choice questions: in this you have select one correct option out of four options.
- Multiple response questions: in this there can be multiple correct answers from the options given.
Also, the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam cost is $ 150 USD. You need a passing score of 70-75% to clear the exam. This exam has a validity of 3 years.
Exam Objective
- Individuals in this exam are examined using the following structure.
- Defining solution based on user requirement by using architectural design principles.
- Designing and deploying robust and secure applications using AWS technologies.
- Preparing guidance for implementation using best practice to the organization in the project.
- Ability to design cost-effective, scalable distributed system on AWS.
Exam Registration
In case you are planning to register here are to steps to begin the registration process
- You have to sign in to aws.training.
- After that click on Certification on the top.
- Then click on AWS Certification account, Schedule new exam.
- Check for the exam you want to take and click schedule at Pearson VUI button or PSI.
Exam Scoring
The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) examination is a pass-or-fail exam. The examination is scored against a minimum standard established by AWS professionals who are guided by the certification industry’s best practices and guidelines.
The exam’s results are given on a scale of 100 to 1000, with a minimum passing score of 720. Your score indicates how well you did on the entire exam and whether or not you passed. Scaled scoring models are used to average marks across numerous test forms with varying degrees of difficulty.
A categorization table of your performance at each part level is included in the exam score report. In addition, this data is intended to offer overall comments on your exam performance. The test employs a compensatory scoring mechanism, which means you only need to “pass” the entire exam, not the individual portions. Furthermore, each component of the exam is weighted differently, so some sections contain more questions than others. The table includes general information about you, as well as your strengths and shortcomings. When analyzing section-level feedback, be cautious.
- Individuals giving the exam have to select one or more best suitable answers based on the type of question.
- There is no negative marking in the exam.
- Questions that are not answered will be marked as incorrect.
- There can also be some content that hasn’t assigned any score or no score will be given on that.
Prepare for AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) Interview now!
Exam Result
- The exam score is scaled between 100 to 1000.
- On percentage basis you need to get a minimum 65%.
- The score report for the exam is in a table format with every section listed performance wise.
- There is no rule for passing each section, you just have to get the overall passing score.
- Every section in this exam has a varying weighting, with differ in number of questions listed against each section in the exam.
- AWS Solution Architect Associate Exam is based pass or fail format.
- Scoring in the exam is done by minimum standards established by AWS professionals as per the good guidelines and practice.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Course Outline
The Solutions Architect Associate exam guide demonstrates the weightings, test domains, and objectives only. Even though it is not a comprehensive listing of the content on this examination. The table of content lists the main content domains and their weightings
New AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) Exam Course Outline
Domain 1: Design Secure Architectures (30%)
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 (26%)
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 (24%)
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 (20%)
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)
Clearing this certification will give you access to advanced-level certifications and enhance your skills. We suggest the preparation guide which will be helpful for you to crack certification exam.
Step 1- Make a Blueprint
Before starting to study for the exam do some research on AWS concepts and its exams pattern with optics. Then make a topic wise chart mentioning the weakest and the strongest area.
Step 2 – Understands the concepts
- This is the important part for passing the certification,
- You need to visualize and understand the concepts instead of cramming it.
- Try to get practical knowledge on the topics to get more information about it.
Step 3 – Reference Books
The AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Books are a great way to diversify your study guide. Some of these books you must refer to are:
- Fisrtly, AWS Certified Solutions Architect – The Definitive Study Guide by Zeal Vora
- Secondly, Serverless Architectures on AWS by Peter
- Thirdly, AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Complete Study Guide: 100+ Exam Practice Questions by IP Specialist
Step 4 – AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Training
There are many free training that is provided by AWS for Solutions Architect Professional exam athttps://aws.amazon.com/training/. These trainings required registration and are available at zero cost. AWS also gives access to variousLearning librariesto get to know more about the AWS services. It also includes AWS APN partner which helps you to accelerate your business on AWS.
“Get updated AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional tutorial by experts with the latest information about AWS Service”
Step 5 – Evaluate your skills
- Practicing on a daily basis will help you learn and understand the concepts more easily.
- The AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate practice test will help you know about you weak areas and then you can give time to make that part strong.
- After completing one topic, give it a revision and try to assess yourself on that topic.
- Boost your confidence with a Aws Certified Solutions Architect Associate free practice tests!
Start Preparing for AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam Now!
Step 6 – Be punctual
Make a schedule for studying and practicing questions. This will help you cover the topics quickly with giving time for practice.
Step 7 – Give the exam
After completion of the syllabus, take the mock test and try to practice as many times as possible. Practice, understand and give the exam. All the best for the final exam. Happy Learning!
Learning Resources AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate
Unit 1 – Introduction to Amazon Web Services
Unit 2 – Amazon Storage Services
- Object Storage vs Traditional Block & File Storage Service
- Basics of Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
- Amazon S3 Advanced Features
- Amazon Glacier Storage Service
Unit 3 – Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS
Unit 4 – Amazon VPC
- Introduction to Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC)
- Network Address Translation (NAT) Instances and NAT Gateways
- Virtual Private Gateways (VPGs) and Customer Gateways (CGWs)
Unit 5 – Elastic Load Balancing and Auto Scaling
Unit 6 – AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
- AWS Identity and Access Management Principals
- IAM Authentication and Authorization
- IAM Policies with Principals
- Key Features of IAM
Unit 7 – AWS and Databases
Unit 8 – Amazon SQS, SWF, and SN
- Introduction to Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)
- Amazon Simple Workflow Service (Amazon SWF)
- Introduction to Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)
Unit 9 – Domain Name System (DNS) and Amazon Route 53
Unit 10 – Amazon ElastiCache
Unit 11 – Amazon Web Services Security