AWS Solutions Architect Associate study guide

By awstalk October 3, 2023 #aws, #aws saa-c03, #certification

updated for SAA-C03

So you want to achieve the AWS SAA certification? That’s great! Lets take a look at another typical study guide.

Exam content

The exam contains two types of questions, multiple choice and multiple response. You may be presented with a longer case study or a shorter “what service would you recommend”-type of question.

I would also like to pause here and have something said at an early stage. One thing I see from different content creators is that “the important thing about certifications is to remember the answers”. I always get surprised when I hear it, nothing could be more wrong in my world.

You take a certification to prove that you know what you’re doing, you do NOT certify yourself to prove that you can remember questions and/or answers. In my opinion, the most optimal certification is the one you dont need to study for, because then you’ve got so much actual experience that your technical knowledge is on a level where you actually deserve the title.

So, with my point of view laid out, lets move on.

The AWS SAA exam contains four domains, these are:
Domain 1: Design Secure Architectures
Domain 2: Design Resilient Architectures
Domain 3: Design High-Performing Architectures
Domain 4: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures

To clear the exam you’ll need a score of >720 out of 1000 points. You are not told how many points a question is worth. Below are the details, what you need to know. There are some links to AWS documentation aswell to make it more easy for you, and more will be added and updated day by day.

Domain 1: Design Secure Architectures

Task 1: Design secure access to AWS resources

You’ll be expected to have knowledge of:

Access controls and management across multiple accounts
AWS federated access and identity services (for example, AWS Identity and Access
Management [IAM], AWS Single Sign-On [AWS SSO])
AWS global infrastructure (for example, Availability Zones, AWS Regions)
AWS security best practices (for example, the principle of least privilege)
The AWS shared responsibility model

And skills in:

Applying AWS security best practices to IAM users and root users (for example, multi-factor authentication [MFA])
Designing a flexible authorization model that includes IAM users, groups, roles, and policies
Designing a role-based access control strategy (for example, AWS Security Token Service [AWS
STS], role switching, cross-account access)
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
Determining when to federate a directory service with IAM roles

Task 2: Design secure workloads and applications

You’ll be expected to have knowledge of:

Application configuration and credentials security
AWS service endpoints
Control ports, protocols, and network traffic on AWS
Secure application access
Security services with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon Cognito, Amazon
GuardDuty, Amazon Macie)
Threat vectors external to AWS (for example, DDoS, SQL injection)

And skills in:

Designing VPC architectures with security components (for example, security groups, route
tables, network ACLs, NAT gateways)
Determining network segmentation strategies (for example, using public subnets and private
subnets)
Integrating AWS services to secure applications (for example, AWS Shield, AWS WAF, AWS
SSO, AWS Secrets Manager)
Securing externa

Task 3: Determine appropriate data security controls

You’ll be expected to have knowledge of:

Data access and governance
Data recovery
Data retention and classification
Encryption and appropriate key management

And skills in:

Aligning AWS technologies to meet compliance requirements
Encrypting data at rest (for example, AWS Key Management Service [AWS KMS])
Encrypting data in transit (for example, AWS Certificate Manager [ACM] using TLS)
Implementing access policies for encryption keys
Implementing data backups and replications
Implementing policies for data access, lifecycle, and protection
Rotating encryption keys and renewing certificates

Domain 2: Design Resilient Architectures

Task 1: Design scalable and loosely coupled architectures

You’ll be expected to have knowledge of:

API creation and management (for example, Amazon API Gateway, REST API)
AWS managed services with appropriate use cases (for example, AWS Transfer Family, Amazon
Simple Queue Service [Amazon SQS], Secrets Manager)
Caching strategies
Design principles for microservices (for example, stateless workloads compared with stateful
workloads)
Event-driven architectures
Horizontal scaling and vertical scaling
How to appropriately use edge accelerators (for example, content delivery network [CDN])
How to migrate applications into containers
Load balancing concepts (for example, Application Load Balancer)
Multi-tier architectures
Queuing and messaging concepts (for example, publish/subscribe)
Serverless technologies and patterns (for example, AWS Fargate, AWS Lambda)
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])
When to use read replicas
Workflow orchestration (for example, AWS Step Functions)

And skills in:

Designing event-driven, microservice, and/or multi-tier architectures based on requirements
Determining scaling strategies for components used in an architecture design
Determining the AWS services required to achieve loose coupling based on requirements
Determining when to use containers
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

Task 2: Design highly available and/or fault-tolerant architectures

You’ll be expected to have knowledge of:

AWS global infrastructure (for example, Availability Zones, AWS Regions, Amazon Route 53)
AWS managed services with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon Comprehend,
Amazon Polly)
Basic networking concepts (for example, 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])
Distributed design patterns
Failover strategies
Immutable infrastructure
Load balancing concepts (for example, Application Load Balancer)
Proxy concepts (for example, Amazon RDS Proxy)
Service quotas and throttling (for example, how to configure the service quotas for a workload
in a standby environment)
Storage options and characteristics (for example, durability, replication)
Workload visibility (for example, AWS X-Ray)

And skills in:

Determining automation strategies to ensure infrastructure integrity
Determining the AWS services required to provide a highly available and/or fault-tolerant
architecture across AWS Regions or Availability Zones
Identifying metrics based on business requirements to deliver a highly available solution
Implementing designs to mitigate single points of failure
Implementing strategies to ensure the durability and availability of data (for example, backups)
Selecting an appropriate DR strategy to meet business requirements
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

Domain 3: Design High-Performing Architectures

Task 1: Determine high-performing and/or scalable storage solutions

You’ll be expected to have knowledge of:

Hybrid storage solutions to meet business requirements
Storage services with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon S3, Amazon Elastic File
System [Amazon EFS], Amazon Elastic Block Store [Amazon EBS])
Storage types with associated characteristics (for example, object, file, block)

And skills in:

Determining storage services and configurations that meet performance demands
Determining storage services that can scale to accommodate future needs

Task 2: Design high-performing and elastic compute solutions

You’ll be expected to have knowledge of:

AWS compute services with appropriate use cases (for example, AWS Batch, Amazon EMR,
Fargate)
Distributed computing concepts supported by AWS global infrastructure and edge services
Queuing and messaging concepts (for example, publish/subscribe)
Scalability capabilities with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling,
AWS Auto Scaling)
Serverless technologies and patterns (for example, Lambda, Fargate)
The orchestration of containers (for example, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS)

And skills in:

Decoupling workloads so that components can scale independently
Identifying metrics and conditions to perform scaling actions
Selecting the appropriate compute options and features (for example, EC2 instance types) to
meet business requirements
Selecting the appropriate resource type and size (for example, the amount of Lambda
memory) to meet business requirements

Task 3: Determine high-performing database solutions

You’ll be expected to have knowledge of:

AWS global infrastructure (for example, Availability Zones, AWS Regions)
Caching strategies and services (for example, Amazon ElastiCache)
Data access patterns (for example, read-intensive compared with write-intensive)
Database capacity planning (for example, capacity units, instance types, Provisioned IOPS)
Database connections and proxies
Database engines with appropriate use cases (for example, heterogeneous migrations,
homogeneous migrations)
Database replication (for example, read replicas)
Database types and services (for example, serverless, relational compared with non-relational,
in-memory

And skills in:

Configuring read replicas to meet business requirements
Designing database architectures
Determining an appropriate database engine (for example, MySQL compared with
PostgreSQL)
Determining an appropriate database type (for example, Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB)
Integrating caching to meet business requirements

Task 4: Determine high-performing and/or scalable network architectures

You’ll be expected to have knowledge of:

Edge networking services with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon CloudFront, AWS
Global Accelerator)
How to design network architecture (for example, subnet tiers, routing, IP addressing)
Load balancing concepts (for example, Application Load Balancer)
Network connection options (for example, AWS VPN, Direct Connect, AWS PrivateLink)

And skills in:

Creating a network topology for various architectures (for example, global, hybrid, multi-tier)
Determining network configurations that can scale to accommodate future needs
Determining the appropriate placement of resources to meet business requirements
Selecting the appropriate load balancing strategy

Task 5: Determine high-performing data ingestion and transformation solutions

You’ll be expected to have knowledge of:

Data analytics and visualization services with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon
Athena, AWS Lake Formation, Amazon QuickSight)
Data ingestion patterns (for example, frequency)
Data transfer services with appropriate use cases (for example, AWS DataSync, AWS Storage
Gateway)
Data transformation services with appropriate use cases (for example, AWS Glue)
Secure access to ingestion access points
Sizes and speeds needed to meet business requirements
Streaming data services with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon Kinesis)

And skills in:

Building and securing data lakes
Designing data streaming architectures
Designing data transfer solutions
Implementing visualization strategies
Selecting appropriate compute options for data processing (for example, Amazon EMR)
Selecting appropriate configurations for ingestion
Transforming data between formats (for example, .csv to .parquet)

Domain 4: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures

Task 1: Design cost-optimized storage solutions

You’ll be expected to have knowledge of:

Access options (for example, an S3 bucket with Requester Pays object storage)
AWS cost management service features (for example, cost allocation tags, multi-account
billing)
AWS cost management tools with appropriate use cases (for example, AWS Cost Explorer,
AWS Budgets, AWS Cost and Usage Report)
AWS storage services with appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon FSx, Amazon EFS,
Amazon S3, Amazon EBS)
Backup strategies
Block storage options (for example, hard disk drive [HDD] volume types, solid state drive [SSD]
volume types)
Data lifecycles
Hybrid storage options (for example, DataSync, Transfer Family, Storage Gateway)
Storage access patterns
Storage tiering (for example, cold tiering for object storage)
Storage types with associated characteristics (for example, object, file, block)

And skills in:

Designing appropriate storage strategies (for example, batch uploads to Amazon S3 compared
with individual uploads)
Determining the correct storage size for a workload
Determining the lowest cost method of transferring data for a workload to AWS storage
Determining when storage auto scaling is required
Managing S3 object lifecycles
Selecting the appropriate backup and/or archival solution
Selecting the appropriate service for data migration to storage services
Selecting the appropriate storage tier
Selecting the correct data lifecycle for storage
Selecting the most cost-effective storage service for a workload

Task 2: Design cost-optimized compute solutions

You’ll be expected to have knowledge of:

AWS cost management service features (for example, cost allocation tags, multi-account
billing)
AWS cost management tools with appropriate use cases (for example, Cost Explorer, AWS
Budgets, AWS Cost and Usage Report)
AWS global infrastructure (for example, Availability Zones, AWS Regions)
AWS purchasing options (for example, Spot Instances, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans)
Distributed compute strategies (for example, edge processing)
Hybrid compute options (for example, AWS Outposts, AWS Snowball Edge)
EC2 Instance types, families, and sizes (for example, memory optimized, compute optimized,
virtualization)
Optimization of compute utilization (for example, containers, serverless computing,
microservices)
Scaling strategies (for example, auto scaling, hibernation)

And 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)
Determining appropriate scaling methods and strategies for elastic workloads (for example,
horizontal compared with vertical, EC2 hibernation)
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)
Selecting the appropriate instance family for a workload
Selecting the appropriate instance size for a workload

Task 3: Design cost-optimized database solutions

You’ll be expected to have knowledge of:

AWS cost management service features (for example, cost allocation tags, multi-account
billing)
AWS cost management tools with appropriate use cases (for example, Cost Explorer, AWS
Budgets, AWS Cost and Usage Report)
Caching strategies
Data retention policies
Database capacity planning (for example, capacity units)
Database connections and proxies
Database engines with appropriate use cases (for example, heterogeneous migrations,
homogeneous migrations)
Database replication (for example, read replicas)
Database types and services (for example, relational compared with non-relational, Aurora,
DynamoDB)

And skills in:

Designing appropriate backup and retention policies (for example, snapshot frequency)
Determining an appropriate database engine (for example, MySQL compared with
PostgreSQL)
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)
Migrating database schemas and data to different locations and/or different database engines

Task 4: Design cost-optimized network architectures

You’ll be expected to have knowledge of:

AWS cost management service features (for example, cost allocation tags, multi-account
billing)
AWS cost management tools with appropriate use cases (for example, Cost Explorer, AWS
Budgets, AWS Cost and Usage Report)
Load balancing concepts (for example, Application Load Balancer)
NAT gateways (for example, NAT instance costs compared with NAT gateway costs)
Network connectivity (for example, private lines, dedicated lines, VPNs)
Network routing, topology, and peering (for example, AWS Transit Gateway, VPC peering)
Network services with appropriate use cases (for example, DNS)

And 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)
Configuring appropriate network connections (for example, Direct Connect compared with
VPN compared with internet)
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
Reviewing existing workloads for network optimizations
Selecting an appropriate throttling strategy
Selecting the appropriate bandwidth allocation for a network device (for example, a single
VPN compared with multiple VPNs, Direct Connect speed)

Resources

The most important thing when learning the cloud is hands on experience. You will not be able to read your way through skills in this field, but you should combine reading, video and labs. There are many video courses out there for this exam. My personal recommendation would be Adam Cantrills AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate course. He combines short and informative videos with hands on labs. The entire course is built around Animals4Life.org and your mission during the course is to help them design and build their infrastructure. Very clever way of learning and it’s really helpful for you as a student aswell.

Below are some other links to courses for AWS Solutions Architect Associate.

PluralSight (and A Cloud Guru): https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/aws-certified-solutions-architect—associate-saa-c03

Cloud Academy: https://cloudacademy.com/learning-paths/aws-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c03-certification-preparation-for-aws-1-7446/

Stephane Maarek on Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c03/

Neal Davis on Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-hands-on/

Besides video courses I can really recommend to take practice exams. They are created to give you a similiar experience as the real exam will give you. There are some really high quality practice exams out there, some of the most popular ones includes Tutorials Dojo and Neal Davis. Stephane Maarek does also offer AWS Solutions Architect Associate practice exams here. Take your time and read through the reviews before you decide which to buy.

Also, don’t forget to check out https://www.aws.training/, and there’s AWS Solutions Architect books (ad) to buy at Amazon.

Youtubers

There are many creators out there that give you tips and tricks on how to pass the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam. Here’s a video from Valario White (who creates quite a few cool videos from time to time actually). Another one from Trevor Spires, and then we have a video from the channel Here Is Cloud.

You’ll have to find what works for you, but remember to not stress it. This learning path should be organic and filled with hands on experience. Anyone can memorize the questions for AWS SAA-C03, but the good ones knows why the answer really is the answer.

Out-of-scope AWS services for AWS SAA-C03

As you can see there’s a lot to cover and study for, but some services are out of scope for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam and wont be covered. It’s still cool to know them ofcourse but there wont be any questions about them.

Conclusion

Well this was a long one..This study guide is just containing tips on how to pass the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam and what topics that the exam covers. There’s no guarantees that the resources I listed will work for you, we all have different taste and preferences on how to do things.

I wish you all the best when you sit your exam. Take your time and read the questions carefully. Feel free to leave a comment on how it went.

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2 thoughts on “AWS Solutions Architect Associate study guide”

sr. Slicke Frill says:

October 13, 2023 at 6:14 am

thanks but any specific book? i like to read the old way

Reply
1. awstalk says:
  
  October 18, 2023 at 6:27 am
  
  I’m not a big book reader myself, the only one I got (and liked) is AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Training Notes by Neil Davis
  
  Reply

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