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My Journal for AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C03

Resources / Materials to be used:

Video Resources:

Udemy:

Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C03 by Stephane Maarek - length 27 Hours

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Training SAA-C03 by Neal Davis - length 24 Hours

A Cloud Guru:

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) by ACloudGuru - length 44 Hour

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction

Introduction

Exam Content Breakdown:

Domain % of Exam
Domain 1: Design Secure Architectures 30%
Domain 2: Design Resilient Architectures 26%
Domain 3: Design High-Performing Architectures 24%
Domain 4: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures 20%

Domain Scopes:

Domain 1: Design Secure Architectures
1.1 Design secure access to AWS resources.

Task Statement 1: Design secure access to AWS resources.

  • 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

  • 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
1.2 Design secure workloads and applications

Task Statement 2: Design secure workloads and applications.

  • 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)

  • 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 external network connections to and from the AWS Cloud (for example, VPN, AWS Direct Connect)
1.3 Determine appropriate data security controls

Task Statement 3: Determine appropriate data security controls.

  • Knowledge of:
    • Data access and governance
    • Data recovery
    • Data retention and classification
    • Encryption and appropriate key management
  • 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
2.1 Design scalable and loosely coupled architectures.

Task Statement 1: Design scalable and loosely coupled architectures.

  • 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)

  • 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
2.2 Design highly available and/or fault-tolerant architectures.

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 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)
  • 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
3.1 Determine high-performing and/or scalable storage solutions

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

  • 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)
  • Skills in:
    • Determining storage services and configurations that meet performance demands
    • Determining storage services that can scale to accommodate future needs
3.2 Design high-performing and elastic compute solutions.

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)
    • 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)
  • 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
3.3 Determine high-performing database solutions.

Task Statement 3: Determine high-performing database solutions.

  • 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)

  • 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
3.4 Determine high-performing and/or scalable network architectures.

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)
    • 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)
  • 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
3.5 Determine high-performing data ingestion and transformation solutions.

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)
    • 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)
  • 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
4.1 Design cost-optimized storage solutions.
  • Task Statement 1: Design cost-optimized storage solutions.
    • 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)
  • 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
4.2 Design cost-optimized compute solutions.

Task Statement 2: Design cost-optimized compute solutions.

  • 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)
    • 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)
  • 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
4.3 Design cost-optimized database solutions.

Task Statement 3: Design cost-optimized database solutions.

  • 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)
  • 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
4.4 Design cost-optimized network architectures.

Task Statement 4: Design cost-optimized network architectures.

  • 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)
  • 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 singleVPC compared with multiple VPNs, Direct Connect speed)
Which key tools, technologies, and concepts might be covered on the exam?
  • Compute
  • Cost management
  • Database
  • Disaster recovery
  • High performance
  • Management and governance
  • Microservices and component decoupling
  • Migration and data transfer
  • Networking, connectivity, and content delivery
  • Resiliency
  • Security
  • Serverless and event-driven design principles
  • Storage
AWS services and features

  • Analytics:

    • Amazon Athena
    • AWS Data Exchange
    • AWS Data Pipeline
    • Amazon EMR
    • AWS Glue
    • Amazon Kinesis
    • AWS Lake Formation
    • Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)
    • Amazon OpenSearch Service (Amazon Elasticsearch Service)
    • Amazon QuickSight
    • Amazon Redshift

  • Application Integration:

    • Amazon AppFlow
    • AWS AppSync
    • Amazon EventBridge (Amazon CloudWatch Events)
    • Amazon MQ
    • Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)
    • Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)
    • AWS Step Functions

  • AWS Cost Management:

    • AWS Budgets
    • AWS Cost and Usage Report
    • AWS Cost Explorer
    • Savings Plans

  • Compute:

    • AWS Batch
    • Amazon EC2
    • Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling
    • AWS Elastic Beanstalk
    • AWS Outposts
    • AWS Serverless Application Repository
    • VMware Cloud on AWS
    • AWS Wavelength

  • Containers:

    • Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR)
    • Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
    • Amazon ECS Anywhere
    • Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS)
    • Amazon EKS Anywhere
    • Amazon EKS Distro

  • Database:

    • Amazon Aurora
    • Amazon Aurora Serverless
    • Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility)
    • Amazon DynamoDB
    • Amazon ElastiCache
    • Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra)
    • Amazon Neptune
    • Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (Amazon QLDB)
    • Amazon RDS
    • Amazon Redshift
    • Amazon Timestream

  • Developer Tools:

    • AWS X-Ray

  • Front-End Web and Mobile:

    • AWS Amplify
    • Amazon API Gateway
    • AWS Device Farm
    • Amazon Pinpoint

  • Machine Learning:

    • Amazon Comprehend
    • Amazon Forecast
    • Amazon Fraud Detector
    • Amazon Kendra
    • Amazon Lex
    • Amazon Polly
    • Amazon Rekognition
    • Amazon SageMaker
    • Amazon Textract
    • Amazon Transcribe
    • Amazon Translate

  • Management and Governance:

    • AWS Auto Scaling
    • AWS CloudFormation
    • AWS CloudTrail
    • Amazon CloudWatch
    • AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI)
    • AWS Compute Optimizer
    • AWS Config
    • AWS Control Tower
    • AWS License Manager
    • Amazon Managed Grafana
    • Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus
    • AWS Management Console
    • AWS Organizations
    • AWS Personal Health Dashboard
    • AWS Proton
    • AWS Service Catalog
    • AWS Systems Manager
    • AWS Trusted Advisor
    • AWS Well-Architected Tool

  • Media Services:

    • Amazon Elastic Transcoder
    • Amazon Kinesis Video Streams -Migration and Transfer:
    • AWS Application Discovery Service
    • AWS Application Migration Service (CloudEndure Migration)
    • AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS)
    • AWS DataSync
    • AWS Migration Hub
    • AWS Server Migration Service (AWS SMS)
    • AWS Snow Family
    • AWS Transfer Family

  • Networking and Content Delivery:

    • Amazon CloudFront
    • AWS Direct Connect
    • Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)
    • AWS Global Accelerator
    • AWS PrivateLink
    • Amazon Route 53
    • AWS Transit Gateway
    • Amazon VPC
    • AWS VPN

  • Security, Identity, and Compliance:

    • AWS Artifact
    • AWS Audit Manager
    • AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)
    • AWS CloudHSM
    • Amazon Cognito
    • Amazon Detective
    • AWS Directory Service
    • AWS Firewall Manager
    • Amazon GuardDuty
    • AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
    • Amazon Inspector
    • AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS)
    • Amazon Macie
    • AWS Network Firewall
    • AWS Resource Access Manager (AWS RAM)
    • AWS Secrets Manager
    • AWS Security Hub
    • AWS Shield
    • AWS Single Sign-On
    • AWS WAF

  • Serverless:

    • AWS AppSync
    • AWS Fargate
    • AWS Lambda

  • Storage:

    • AWS Backup
    • Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)
    • Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)
    • Amazon FSx (for all types)
    • Amazon S3
    • Amazon S3 Glacier
    • AWS Storage Gateway

Recommended Reading AWS Documentation:

  1. AWS WellArchitected Framework

    Six Pillars

  2. AWS Technology FAQ's

    AMAZON FAQS