AWS Solutions Architect Professional Exam has separate popularity among the professionals when it comes to creating a good career with a high earning salary. That is to say, the majority of people and professionals put becoming a Solutions Architect Professional on their wishlist. And nowadays, earning a certification is like getting a key that unlocks the door to more advanced professional options, whether in the office or in business.
But passing this certification test is not simple. In light of these observations, we will concentrate on various study methods and concepts in this blog post to assist you in developing skills and becoming a Solutions Architect Professional.
AWS Solutions Architect Professional Exam: Overview
Solutions architects are the target audience for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) exam. The exam verifies a candidate’s expertise and advanced technical knowledge in developing distributed systems and applications on the AWS platform.
The exam also certifies a candidate’s proficiency in the following tasks:
- Creating and deploying applications that are fault-tolerant, highly available, and scalable dynamically on AWS.
- Designing and deploying an application based on the requirements provided, and choosing the right AWS services.
- Migrating complex, multi-tier applications to AWS.
- Creating and implementing scalable business operations on AWS.
- Putting cost-cutting measures into action.
Knowledge Required For This Exam:
Those with two or more years of practical experience developing and delivering cloud architecture on AWS might consider becoming an AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional. We recommend you to have the following before taking this test:
- Knowledge of Windows and Linux systems, a programming language, the AWS CLI, AWS APIs, AWS CloudFormation templates, and the AWS Billing and Management Consoles.
- Ability to relate business goals to application/architecture requirements, as well as the ability to give best practice advice on architectural design across different corporate applications and projects.
- Thirdly, the ability to assess architectural proposals for the implementation, deployment, and provisioning of cloud application needs on AWS.
- Having the ability to create hybrid architectures using important AWS technologies (such as VPNs and AWS Direct Connect) and a continuous integration and deployment approach
- Then, the ability to assess architectural suggestions for application implementation, deployment, and provisioning on AWS.
- Skills to offer best practice advice on architectural design for a wide range of applications, projects, or a company.
- Understanding and knowledge of:
- AWS Well-Architected Framework’s five pillars
- Connecting business goals to application and architectural needs.
- Utilizing essential AWS technologies, create a hybrid architecture.
- Creating an architecture for a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) operation.
Above we have covered the knowledge area and basic skills for the exam, it’s time for exploring advanced study resources.
Preparing for AWS Solution Architect Professional Exam
Being a professional-level exam, you will have to work a lot on skills and knowledge to earn this certification. Considering the difficulty level of the AWS Solution Architect Professional exam, you must stick to the suggested test preparation strategy if you want to pass an exam. Here are some strategies and study resources for passing the exam.
1. Understand the Exam Format
Consider this step as a basic exam page visit that you should do before starting your preparation. This will let you know the number and types of questions and other basic details for the exam.
- The AWS Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) exam has a time limit of 180 minutes to finish 75 questions of type multiple-choice or multiple-response. Additionally, a score of 750 is required to pass the test. The test will cost $300 USD and can be taken online with a proctor or in person at a testing facility.
- English, French (France), German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Simplified Chinese, and Spanish (Latin America) are the accessible language versions of this test.
2. Pass the Associate Level Exams (Recommended, not compulsory)
It is highly advised to pass the three previous associate tests, Solutions Architect, Developer, and SysOps Administrator Associate exam, before showing up for the Solution Architect Professional Exam, even if achieving so is not required by AWS. This will be really helpful in clarifying the fundamental ideas behind the main AWS services. If you succeed in these exams, you will be equipped to take on the professional level.
Check out the exam details for:
3. Utilizing the Exam Study Guide to Understand the Topics
You must start your exam preparation by using the AWS study guide if you want to be thoroughly conversant with the topic. With the assistance of this guide, you can more clearly understand the main concepts and objectives of the test. This guide will provide you with a complete overview of the subjects you should concentrate on when studying for the exam. Furthermore, you will also be able to understand all exam topics and discover study advice. All you need to do is carefully follow them in order to pass the certification exam. The subjects are:
Domain 1: Understanding to Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
1.1 Explain Architect network connectivity strategies.
- AWS global infrastructure
- AWS networking concepts (for example, Amazon VPC, AWS Direct Connect, AWS VPN, transitive routing, AWS container services)
- Hybrid DNS concepts (for example, Amazon Route 53 Resolver, on-premises DNS integration)
- Network segmentation (for example, subnetting, IP addressing, connectivity among VPCs)
- 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
- Learn to troubleshoot traffic flows by using AWS tools
- Learn to utilize service endpoints for service integrations
1.2 Explain security controls
- AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and AWS Single Sign-On
- Route tables, security groups, and network ACLs
- Encryption keys and certificate management (for example, AWS Key Management Service [AWS KMS], AWS Certificate Manager [ACM])
- AWS security, identity, and compliance tools (for example, AWS CloudTrail, AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer, AWS Security Hub, Amazon Inspector)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to evaluate cross-account access management
- Learn to integrate with third-party identity providers
- Learn to deploy encryption strategies for data at rest and data in transit
- Learn to develop a strategy for centralized security event notifications and auditing
1.3 Explain to design reliable and resilient architectures.
- Recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs)
- Disaster recovery strategies (for example, using AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery [CloudEndure Disaster Recovery], pilot light, warm standby, and multi-site)
- Data backup and restoration
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to design disaster recovery solutions based on RTO and RPO requirements
- Learn to implement architectures to automatically recover from failure
- Learn to develop the optimal architecture by considering scale-up and scale-out options
- Learn to design an effective backup and restoration strategy
1.4 Explain Design a multi-account AWS environment.
- AWS Organizations and AWS Control Tower
- Multi-account event notifications
- AWS resource sharing across environments
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to evaluate the most appropriate account structure for organizational requirements
- 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 purchasing options (for example, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, Spot Instances)
- 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
- Learn to develop an effective tagging strategy that maps costs to business units
- Learn to understand how purchasing options affect cost and performance
Domain 2: Understand to Design for New Solutions
2.1 Explain to design a deployment strategy to meet business requirements
- Infrastructure as code (IaC) (for example, AWS CloudFormation)
- Continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD)
- Change management processes
- Configuration management tools (for example, AWS Systems Manager)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to determine an application or upgrade path for new services and features
- Learn to select services to develop deployment strategies and implement appropriate rollback mechanisms
- Learn to adopt managed services as needed to reduce infrastructure provisioning and patching overhead
- Learn to make advanced technologies accessible by delegating complex development and deployment tasks to AWS
2.2 Explain to Design a solution to ensure business continuity.
- AWS global infrastructure
- AWS networking concepts (for example, Route 53, routing methods)
- RTOs and RPOs
- Disaster recovery scenarios (for example, backup and restore, pilot light, warm standby, multi-site)
- Disaster recovery solutions on AWS
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to configure disaster recovery solutions
- Learn to configure data and database replication
- Learn to perform disaster recovery testing
- 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
- 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
- Encryption options for data at rest and data in transit
- AWS service endpoints
- Credential management services
- 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
- Learn to specify inbound and outbound network flows by using security group rules and network ACL rules
- Learn to develop attack mitigation strategies for large-scale web applications
- Learn to develop encryption strategies for 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 storage services and replication strategies (for example Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, Amazon ElastiCache) Multi-AZ and multi-Region architectures
- Auto scaling policies and events
- Application integration (for example, Amazon Simple Notification Service [Amazon SNS], Amazon Simple Queue Service [Amazon SQS], AWS Step Functions)
- Service quotas and limits
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to design highly available application environments based on business requirements
- Learn to leverage advanced techniques to design for failure and ensure seamless system recoverability
- Learn to implement loosely coupled dependencies
- Learn to operate and maintaining high-availability architectures (for example, application failovers, database failovers)
- 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)
2.5 Explain Design a solution to meet performance objectives.
- Performance monitoring technologies
- Storage options on AWS
- Instance families and use cases
- 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
- Learn to apply design patterns to meet performance objectives with caching, buffering, and replicas
- Learn to develop a process methodology for selecting purpose-built services for required tasks
- Learn to design a right-sizing strategy
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)
- Pricing models (for example, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans)
- Storage tiering
- Data transfer costs
- AWS managed service offerings
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to identify opportunities to select and right size infrastructure for cost-effective resources
- Learn to identify appropriate pricing models
- Learn to perform data transfer modeling and selecting services to reduce data transfer costs
- Learn to develop a strategy and implementing controls for expenditure and usage awareness
Domain 3: Understand to Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions
3.1 Explain determine a strategy to improve overall operational excellence
- Alerting and automatic remediation strategies
- Disaster recovery planning
- Monitoring and logging solutions (for example, Amazon CloudWatch)
- CI/CD pipelines and deployment strategies (for example, blue/green, all-at-once, rolling)
- Configuration management tools (for example, Systems Manager)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to determine the most appropriate logging and monitoring strategy
- 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
- 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
- Automated monitoring and remediation strategies (for example, AWS Config rules)
- Secrets management (for example, Systems Manager, AWS Secrets Manager)
- Principle of least privilege access
- Security-specific AWS solutions
- Patching practices
- Backup practices and methods
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to evaluate a strategy for the secure management of secrets and credentials
- Learn to auditi an environment for least privilege access
- Learn to review implemented solutions to ensure security at every layer
- Learn to review comprehensive traceability of users and services
- Learn to prioritize automated responses to the detection of vulnerabilities
- Learn to design and implementing a patch and update process
- Learn to design and implementing a backup process
- Learn to employ remediation techniques
3.3 Explain determine a strategy to improve performance.
- High-performing systems architectures (for example, auto scaling, instance fleets, and placement groups)
- Global service offerings (for example, AWS Global Accelerator, Amazon CloudFront, and edge computing services)
- Monitoring tool sets and services (for example, 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
- Learn to propose opportunities for the adoption of new technologies and managed services
- Learn to assess solutions and applying right sizing based on requirements
- Learn to identify and examining performance bottlenecks
34 Explain determine a strategy to improve reliability
- AWS global infrastructure
- Data replication methods
- Scaling methodologies (for example, load balancing, auto scaling)
- High availability and resiliency
- Disaster recovery methods and tools
- Service quotas and limits
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to understand application growth and usage trends
- 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
3.5 Identify opportunities for cost optimizations.
- Cost-conscious architecture choices (for example, utilizing Spot Instances, scaling policies, and right-sizing resources)
- Price model adoptions (for example, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans)
- Networking and data transfer costs
- Cost management, alerting, and reporting
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to analyze usage reports to identify underutilized and overutilized resources
- Learn to utilize AWS solutions to identify unused resources
- Learn to design billing alarms based on expected usage patterns
- Learn to investigate AWS Cost and Usage Reports at a granular level
- Learn to utilize tagging for cost allocation and reporting
Domain 4: Explain to accelerate Workload Migration and Modernization
4.1 Explain to select existing workloads and processes for potential migration.
- Migration assessment and tracking tools (for example, AWS Migration Hub)
- Portfolio assessment
- Asset planning
- Prioritization and migration of workloads (for example, wave planning)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to complete an application migration assessment
- Learn to evaluate applications according to the seven common migration strategies (7Rs)
- Learn to evaluate total cost of ownership (TCO)
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)
- Application migration tools (for example, AWS Application Discovery Service, AWS Application Migration Service [CloudEndure Migration], AWS Server Migration Service [AWS SMS])
- 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)
- 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)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to select the appropriate database transfer mechanism
- Learn to select the appropriate application transfer mechanism
- Learn to select the appropriate data transfer service and migration strategy
- Learn to apply the appropriate security methods to migration tools
- Learn to select the appropriate governance model
4.3 Explain to determine a new architecture for existing workloads.
- Compute services (for example, Amazon EC2, AWS Elastic Beanstalk)
- Containers (for example, Amazon Elastic Container Service [Amazon ECS], Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service [Amazon EKS], AWS Fargate, Amazon Elastic Container Registry [Amazon ECR])
- AWS storage services (for example, Amazon Elastic Block Store [Amazon EBS], Amazon Elastic File System [Amazon EFS], Amazon FSx, Amazon S3, Volume Gateway)
- Databases (for example, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon OpenSearch Service [Amazon Elasticsearch Service], Amazon RDS, self-managed databases on Amazon EC2)
Skills Evaluated
- Learn to select the appropriate compute platform
- Learn to select the appropriate container hosting platform
- Learn to select the appropriate storage service
- Learn to select the appropriate database platform
4.4 Explain to determine opportunities for modernization and enhancements.
- Serverless compute offerings (for example, AWS Lambda)
- Containers (for example, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS, AWS Fargate)
- AWS storage services (for example, Amazon S3, Amazon EFS)
- Purpose-built databases (for example, DynamoDB, Amazon Aurora Serverless, ElastiCache)
- 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
- Learn to identify opportunities for serverless solutions
- Learn to select the appropriate service for containers
- Learn to identify opportunities for purpose-built databases
- Learn to select the appropriate application integration service
4. Get AWS Training
The AWS training will help you have a better understanding of the test subjects. This comprises
Exam Readiness: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional:
Advanced technical expertise and experience in creating distributed applications and systems on the AWS platform are validated by the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional exam. Before completing this course, we advise participants to have two or more years of hands-on experience building and implementing cloud architecture on AWS. To assist test-takers in reducing wrong answers, it provides example exam questions from each domain and descriptions of the ideas being assessed.
Further, you’ll discover how to:
- Familiarize yourself with the logistics of the exam.
- Recognize the formats and types of test questions.
- Determine how a question relates to the architectural principles of AWS.
- Analyze the ideas that an exam question is trying to assess.
Architecting on AWS:
Reference: https://aws.amazon.com/training/classroom/architecting-on-aws/
You will learn to recognize services and features to develop robust, secure, and highly available IT systems on the AWS Cloud through a series of use case scenarios and hands-on learning. Expert AWS Instructors walk you through the process of developing the finest IT solutions based on real-world scenarios, emphasizing best practices while utilizing the AWS Well-Architected Framework. You’ll practice creating a solution at the conclusion of the course and confidently use what you’ve learned.
Further, you will learn how to:
- Identify the fundamental AWS architecture approaches.
- Create durable, secure, and highly available IT solutions on the AWS Cloud, and identify the services and features you need.
- Use the AWS Well-Architected Framework to develop the best IT solutions based on actual use cases.
- Investigate AWS offerings for backup and recovery, serverless architecture, edge services, monitoring, automation, computation, storage, databases, networking, and account security.
Advanced Architecting on AWS:
Reference: https://aws.amazon.com/training/classroom/advanced-architecting-aws/?devops=sec&sec=prep
You will learn about AWS services that may be used to address architectural issues through a variety of use case scenarios and hands-on learning. Opportunities will present themselves for you to apply your new knowledge and critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. To reinforce the material you’ve learned over the course of the three days, this course concludes with a final review assignment.
Further, you will learn:
- Process of protecting Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) virtual private cloud (VPC) endpoint connections in a lab environment.
- The best practices for what services to use and the process of implementing permissions management.
- AWS hybrid network designs for addressing traffic increases and streamlining remote work while ensuring FIPS 140-2 Level 2 or Level 3 security compliance.
- Solutions and products that are available for designing a hybrid infrastructure.
5. Make Use Of The AWS Whitepapers
Officials publish and create AWS whitepapers to educate the public about specific subjects and hasten the implementation of specific strategies. For expertise and information on essential topics like security, architecture, and economics, this might be a great source. Some of the well-known AWS Whitepapers are included below, and they might help you prepare for the AWS Solution Architect Professional Exam:
6. Start Doing Practice Exams Tests
This is yet another crucial element of the study guide that will help you not only identify your areas of weakness but also develop a strong degree of revision. In other words, by using the practice exams, you may sharpen your answer-writing abilities while also saving a tonne of time. You can use practice exams as part of your study once you’ve gone over a section or a few subjects.
7. Join Online Study Communities and Groups
A helpful resource for preparing for the certification exam is online study groups. They make it possible for you to be surrounded by test-takers. You can pick up thoughts and ideas that will help you comprehend the material more rapidly. Moreover, you could come across additional study materials and other tools that might help in your appropriate comprehension of the ideas tested on the exam. You can participate in the discussion by contributing your exam-related queries and doubts.
Some Exam Tips:
- Firstly, to dive into the fundamentals of the key AWS services, try to pass three preceding associate examinations.
- Avoid rushing during exam preparation. Spend at least three months reading in preparation for this test.
- Further, you may divide the time you have for studying and the course information into smaller portions that you can memorize by following simple steps if you have a plan in mind.
- Lastly, decide on the date when you will take the test. Attend the test only when you have completely studied and grasped all of the material.
Final Words
You must put a lot of effort into developing your knowledge and expertise in order to successfully pass the AWS Solution Architect Professional test on your first attempt. The key to a high-paying position in the workforce that also qualifies you for a variety of different professions is this certification. Make use of the knowledge above to develop a study schedule and routine to assist in your preparation. Spend time reviewing by taking practice exams after that. Pass the exam after successfully completing the preparation.
