Overview
The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) is one of the most sought-after cloud certifications. It tests your ability to design resilient, cost-optimised, and well-architected solutions on AWS.
The exam has 65 questions (multiple choice and multiple response), a 130-minute time limit, and a passing score of 720/1000.
Exam Domains
| Domain | Weight |
|---|---|
| Design Secure Architectures | 30% |
| Design Resilient Architectures | 26% |
| Design High-Performing Architectures | 24% |
| Design Cost-Optimised Architectures | 20% |
Key Services to Know
Compute
- EC2: Instance types, purchasing options (On-Demand, Reserved, Spot, Savings Plans), Auto Scaling Groups, Launch Templates
- Lambda: Serverless functions, triggers, concurrency limits, layers
- ECS / EKS / Fargate: Container orchestration options and when to use each
Storage
- S3: Storage classes, lifecycle policies, versioning, replication, encryption options
- EBS: Volume types (gp3, io2, sc1), snapshots, encryption
- EFS: Shared filesystem for multi-AZ workloads
- FSx: High-performance file systems (Windows, Lustre, NetApp)
Databases
Relational → RDS (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server), Aurora
NoSQL → DynamoDB (on-demand vs provisioned, DAX, Global Tables)
Caching → ElastiCache (Redis vs Memcached)
Data Warehouse → Redshift
Networking
- VPC: Subnets, route tables, Internet Gateway, NAT Gateway, VPC Peering, Transit Gateway
- Security Groups vs NACLs: Stateful vs stateless, evaluation order
- Route 53: Routing policies (Simple, Weighted, Latency, Failover, Geolocation)
- CloudFront: CDN, origins, cache behaviours, signed URLs
Security
- IAM: Users, roles, policies, permission boundaries, SCP in AWS Organizations
- KMS: Customer-managed keys, key policies, envelope encryption
- Secrets Manager vs Parameter Store: When to use each
Architecture Patterns
High Availability
Always spread across at least 2 Availability Zones. Use:
- Multi-AZ RDS for database failover
- ALB with Auto Scaling Groups for compute
- S3 with cross-region replication for critical data
Well-Architected Framework Pillars
- Operational Excellence: Automate everything, learn from failures
- Security: Defence in depth, least privilege
- Reliability: Recover from failures, scale horizontally
- Performance Efficiency: Use the right resource types and sizes
- Cost Optimisation: Avoid waste, use managed services
- Sustainability: Minimise environmental impact
Common Exam Traps
- NAT Gateway vs NAT Instance: Gateway is managed, preferred for HA
- S3 Transfer Acceleration vs CloudFront: TA for uploads, CF for downloads
- Multi-AZ vs Read Replicas: Multi-AZ for HA/failover, Read Replicas for read scaling
- SQS Standard vs FIFO: FIFO for ordered/exactly-once, Standard for throughput
Study Plan (6 Weeks)
| Week | Focus |
|---|---|
| 1 | IAM, EC2, VPC fundamentals |
| 2 | S3, Storage services, Databases |
| 3 | Networking deep dive, Route 53, CloudFront |
| 4 | Serverless (Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB) |
| 5 | High availability patterns, disaster recovery |
| 6 | Practice exams, review weak areas |
Practice Exam Strategy
- Read all answer options before choosing
- Eliminate obviously wrong answers first
- Look for keywords: "most cost-effective", "least operational overhead", "highly available"
- Flag difficult questions and return to them
Use our SAA-C03 practice sets to test your knowledge with realistic exam-style questions. Aim for 80%+ consistently before booking your real exam.
Good luck! ☁️