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How to become an AWS Solutions Architect Associate?

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How to become an AWS Solutions Architect Associate?

Let’s cut to the chase. You want to break into cloud computing and everyone’s telling you that getting AWS certified is the first step. But the moment you start making a study plan, you are flooded with YouTube playlists, Reddit threads, paid courses, whitepapers, FAQs, and forums that leave you more confused than confident. Don’t worry you are stuck in what we call the “cloud overwhelm.” Too many tabs open, too many opinions, and still no idea how to actually start. But don’t worry, you are not alone. Thousands of aspiring cloud professionals hit this wall when trying to become an AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate. There’s a clear way through it, and this guide is built to take you there. So lets walk you through –

  • What does the exam cover?
  • What skills do you need?
  • What are the best resources to use?
  • And how to go from total beginner to certified — step by step

This is not just about passing an exam. It’s about launching your cloud career with confidence and clarity. So if you are tired of scattered advice and want a straight path to your AWS certification.

What is the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam?

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect — Associate is tailored for individuals possessing a degree of expertise in designing distributed applications. Aspirants are required to exhibit their proficiency in constructing, overseeing, and executing applications through tools and services within the AWS environment. If your objective is to showcase your adeptness in crafting and deploying systems within the AWS cloud, this assessment should be your initial choice.

The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner examination delves into cloud-based solutions that adhere to stringent benchmarks, demanding a thorough grasp of architectural best practices. To meet the criteria for qualification, a substantial command over deploying, networking, storage, configuration, and administration of computational and database services on AWS is imperative. Furthermore, a robust comprehension of security protocols and adherence to regulatory standards is equally pivotal.

Exam Prerequisites

AWS recommends that you spend at least one year implementing distributed systems at scale using AWS cloud services. The most straightforward method to pass the test is to have as much practical and hands-on experience as possible. Above all, you can review the following principles to assist you in passing the AWS certification test.

Exam Format
  • Format: Multiple choice, multiple answer
  • Time: 130 minutes (based on the new exam)
  • Cost: 150 USD
Areas Covered
  • Network technologies and how they work in AWS
  • Then, The manner in which client interfaces establish connections with the AWS platform and the functioning of applications built upon the AWS infrastructure.
  • Developing robust and well-protected applications within the AWS ecosystem
  • Implementing hybrid systems, integrating on-premises data centers with AWS components.

The examination domains encompass the creation of systems that are both highly available and scalable. This necessitates a comprehensive understanding of AWS infrastructure and concepts, as well as proficiency in implementing and deploying within the AWS framework. Furthermore, the exam delves into AWS-centric data security measures, strategies for disaster recovery, and adeptness in troubleshooting.

AWS Solution Architect Associate Learning Path

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) Course Outline

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:

Skills in:

Task Statement 2: Design secure workloads and applications.

Knowledge of:

Skills in:

Task Statement 3: Determine appropriate data security controls.

Knowledge of:

Skills in:

Domain 2: Design Resilient Architectures (26%)
Task Statement 1: Design scalable and loosely coupled architectures.

Knowledge of:

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:

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:

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

Knowledge of:

Skills in:

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:

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:

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)

AWS Certified Solution Architect Associate Preparation Resources

1. Training:

The official AWS website offers a three-day classroom training program for all AWS certification exams. This training is accessible through a free tier account sign-up, providing you with the opportunity to grasp fundamental concepts crucial for exam preparation. These training sessions serve as a robust cornerstone, enhancing your understanding of the key concepts required for the examination.

2. Blueprints:

Acquire the AWS study guide and exam blueprints generously furnished by AWS. Engage in a comprehensive perusal of the blueprints while diligently jotting down notes. This approach not only aids in cementing vital information for the exam but also furnishes you with a valuable reference point during your study sessions.

  • Design Secure Architectures 30%
  • Design Resilient Architectures 26%
  • Designing High-Performing Architectures 24%
  • Design Cost-Optimized Architectures 20%
3. Books:

In readiness for the exam, AWS suggests consulting the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Official Study Guide. This resource can serve as your reference point, allowing you to jot down pertinent notes. Acquiring a thorough grasp of AWS concepts will greatly enhance your preparedness.

4. White Papers:

On the AWS Official website, go through the recommended white papers. To prepare for the exam white papers are a great resource.

5. Videos:

There are days and days of technical discussions and tech talks. So, make use of AWS’s YouTube channel Reinvent. You can make notes for the latest developments and view these videos.

6. Practice Tests:

Testprep training offers a selection of commercial practice exams available for purchase. These resources play a pivotal role in acquainting you with the nuances of the actual test. Additionally, engaging with these practice exams fosters a sense of assurance and preparedness for the real examination.

User forums and discussion groups serve as invaluable assets. Delving into past discussions can yield insights into key topics from individuals who have previously undergone the test. Engaging with individuals who have successfully passed the exam can provide clarifications for any lingering doubts and offer valuable tips for the day of the exam.

For a complete training guide on AWS certifications read this article Prepare for AWS Solutions Architect Exam here

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