The AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam is widely recognized and desired in the field of cloud computing. It confirms that an individual has the expertise to design and implement scalable, reliable, and fault-tolerant systems on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform. The exam assesses the candidates’ understanding of various AWS services and their ability to design cost-effective, secure, and reliable solutions to meet specific business requirements.
In this blog, we will explore the format of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam, including the exam structure, duration, number of questions, passing score, and the topics covered in the exam. Knowing the exam format is essential for candidates to prepare well and improve their chances of passing the certification exam.
AWS Solutions Architect Associate Glossary
- AWS (Amazon Web Services) – A cloud computing platform that provides a wide range of services for computing, storage, and networking.
- Availability Zone – A physical data center located in a specific geographic region, which contains multiple isolated locations with power, cooling, and networking facilities.
- Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) – This service automatically spreads incoming traffic among several EC2 instances, enhancing the application’s availability and scalability.
- Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) – A service that provides scalable computing capacity in the cloud, allowing customers to launch and manage virtual machines (VMs) on demand.
- Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) – A highly scalable, secure, and durable cloud storage service that allows customers to store and retrieve data from anywhere in the world.
- Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) – It’s a managed service that simplifies the process of establishing, operating, and expanding a relational database in the cloud.
- Auto Scaling – This service automatically changes the count of EC2 instances in a group according to the application’s demand, ensuring performance and cost optimization.
- CloudFormation – A service that helps you model and set up your AWS resources so you can spend less time managing those resources and more time focusing on your applications that run in AWS.
- CloudTrail – This service allows you to manage governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing for your AWS account.
- Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) – A virtual network dedicated to your AWS account, allowing you to launch AWS resources into a virtual network that you’ve defined.
- Route 53 – It’s a scalable and reliable domain name system (DNS) that directs users to your applications, ensuring availability.
- Lambda – It’s a computing service that executes your code when triggered by events and takes care of the necessary computing resources automatically.
- Identity and Access Management (IAM) – A service that enables you to manage access to AWS resources securely.
- Security Group – A virtual firewall that controls inbound and outbound traffic for EC2 instances.
- Simple Notification Service (SNS) – It’s a completely managed messaging service that lets you separate and expand microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications.
Preparation resources for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam
Here are some of the official preparation resources for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam:
- AWS Certification Exam Readiness Workshop: AWS Solutions Architect – Associate: This workshop is offered by AWS and provides an overview of the exam, including the content areas covered and the types of questions you can expect. It also offers tips and strategies for preparing for the exam. You can register for the workshop here: https://aws.amazon.com/training/course-descriptions/aws-certification-exam-readiness-workshop-solutions-architect-associate/
- AWS Solutions Architect Associate Exam Guide: This guide is provided by AWS and covers the key concepts and topics you need to know for the exam. It includes information on designing and deploying scalable, highly available, and fault-tolerant systems on AWS, as well as best practices for security and cost optimization. You can download the guide here: https://d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-sa-assoc/AWS-Certified-Solutions-Architect-Associate_Exam-Guide_EN.pdf
- AWS Solutions Architect Associate Sample Questions: AWS offers a collection of example questions that you can utilize to assess your understanding and get ready for the exam. The questions cover a range of topics, including EC2, S3, RDS, and Route 53. You can access the sample questions here: https://d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-sa-assoc/AWS-Certified-Solutions-Architect-Associate_Sample-Questions.pdf
- AWS Training and Certification: AWS offers a range of training and certification options for those preparing for the Solutions Architect Associate exam. These include classroom training, online courses, and practice exams. You can explore the available options here: https://aws.amazon.com/training/
Prerequisite for AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam
- You must have at least one year of expertise creating scalable and available distributed systems on AWS. It will help you develop a comprehensive grasp of AWS.
- Having hands-on expertise with AWS services such as computers and databases, as well as AWS deployment and maintenance.
- You must be able to determine which AWS services are appropriate for a particular technological demand.
- Lastly, you must understand AWS’ security features and tools, as well as how they connect to traditional services.
Furthermore, it’s also crucial to understand what abilities and information you’ll earn as a result of this certification. In a cloud context, the AWS exam will help you install, manage, and monitor identity, governance, storage, compute, and virtual networks, as well as provide, scale, monitor, and change resources as needed. This study route is constructed in such a way that it evaluates your knowledge across five distinct topic areas.
AWS Exam Format:
The AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam is made up of 40-60 questions that must be answered in 130 minutes. You must schedule your time well. Furthermore, because there are 40-60 questions in total, it is recommended that you spend no more than 1 minute 30 seconds on each one. You’ll get 30 minutes to revise and verify your answers if you finish the test in 130 minutes on average.
In addition, the test contains a variety of question styles, such as case studies, short answers, multiple-choice, and mark review. Because there are several sorts of questions, you might start with the case study questions. As a result, they are the most time-consuming. Short responses are next, followed by multiple-choice questions. Keep in mind that passing the exam requires a score of 720 or above. In addition, the exam will set you back $150 USD. The test is accessible in English, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese, among other languages.
How to schedule the exam?
Since you have already scrolled down here. The next important step post knowing about the examination is to register for it. Let’s learn the simple ways to get you registered:
- You have to sign in to aws.training.
- After that click on Certification on the top.
- Then click on the AWS Certification account, Schedule a new exam.
- Furthermore, check for the exam you want to take and click schedule at the Pearson VUI button or PSI.
- For Non-Students interested in Technology
- For Students or Instructors
AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Course Structure
Topics and sections assist you in grasping the scope of the test. Without a doubt, we will study and comprehend the main topics that will be beneficial during the preparation for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate certification.
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)
Preparation resources for AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate
We are here to provide you with the greatest studying tools so that you can pass the exam. Furthermore, we will provide a full description to assist you in preparing for the test. Let’s get started:
– Online Tutorials
Online Tutorials can help you improve your knowledge and have a better comprehension of test concepts. They also go through test information and policies. These online courses, on the other hand, give in-depth information about the test. As a result, you will be more prepared for the exam. As a consequence, learning using Online Tutorials will help you improve your preparedness.
Expert Corner
When you first start studying, it’s critical to go over all of the exam objectives. Furthermore, doing so will provide you a clear picture of all the distinct topics and abilities that you will need to master. Furthermore, examining the exam objectives can eliminate any misunderstanding in your mind, allowing you to concentrate on your preparation. Exam objectives can aid in the reinforcement of modules and subtopics. There are other publications available, and you should join the Microsoft community to engage with others who share your interests.
The final stage to success is to put what you’ve learnt into practise. Taking a practise exam is also a terrific method to mix up your study technique and guarantee that you get the greatest scores on the real thing. Furthermore, in order to ensure comprehensive preparation, it is critical to analyse the practise exam. We give free sample papers to assist you in succeeding in the test. Furthermore, these free sample exam papers will give you a feel for a real-life exam. Therefore, start preparing now!
