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Certification Prep: AWS SAA — Solutions Architect Associate

Metadata

Field Value
Issuer Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Exam Code SAA-C03
Format Multiple-choice and multiple-response
Duration 130 minutes
Passing Score 720/1000 (scaled scoring)
Cost $150 USD
Retake Policy 14-day wait between attempts
Wiki Coverage ~60%

Exam Domains & Wiki Mapping

Design Secure Architectures (30%)

Objective Topic Pack Coverage
Design secure access to AWS resources (IAM users, roles, policies, federation) aws-iam ✅ Full
Design secure workloads and applications (security groups, NACLs, WAF) aws-networking, firewalls ⚠️ Partial
Determine appropriate data security controls (encryption at rest/transit, KMS, CMKs) secrets-management, tls-pki ⚠️ Partial
Design VPC architecture (subnets, route tables, gateways, peering, endpoints) aws-networking ⚠️ Partial
Apply AWS shared responsibility model security-basics ⚠️ Partial
Implement least-privilege IAM policies aws-iam ✅ Full
Use AWS Organizations and SCPs for multi-account governance aws-iam ❌ Gap
Implement AWS SSO and identity federation aws-iam ❌ Gap
Configure AWS CloudTrail and Config for compliance audit-logging ❌ Gap

Design Resilient Architectures (26%)

Objective Topic Pack Coverage
Design scalable and loosely coupled architectures (ELB, ASG, SQS, SNS) load-balancing, message-queues ⚠️ Partial
Design highly available architectures (Multi-AZ, Multi-Region) disaster-recovery, cloud-deep-dive ⚠️ Partial
Choose appropriate resilient storage (S3 tiers, EBS, EFS, FSx) aws-s3-deep-dive ⚠️ Partial
Design disaster recovery strategies (backup/restore, pilot light, warm standby, active-active) disaster-recovery, backup-restore ✅ Full
Use Auto Scaling to handle demand fluctuations aws-ec2 ⚠️ Partial
Design with Aurora, DynamoDB, and RDS for resilience database-ops ❌ Gap
Implement caching strategies (ElastiCache, CloudFront, DAX) redis ❌ Gap
Design event-driven architectures (EventBridge, Step Functions) message-queues ❌ Gap

Design High-Performing Architectures (24%)

Objective Topic Pack Coverage
Determine high-performing compute solutions (EC2 instance types, Lambda, containers) aws-ec2, aws-lambda, aws-ecs ⚠️ Partial
Determine high-performing storage solutions (S3, EBS types, instance store) aws-s3-deep-dive ⚠️ Partial
Determine high-performing database solutions (RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, Redshift) database-ops ❌ Gap
Design high-performing networking (CloudFront, Global Accelerator, VPC endpoints) aws-networking, aws-route53 ⚠️ Partial
Determine high-performing data ingestion and transformation (Kinesis, Glue, Athena) — ❌ Gap
Select appropriate EC2 instance types for workloads aws-ec2 ⚠️ Partial
Use placement groups for performance optimization aws-ec2 ❌ Gap

Design Cost-Optimized Architectures (20%)

Objective Topic Pack Coverage
Design cost-optimized compute solutions (Spot, Reserved, Savings Plans, Graviton) finops, aws-ec2 ⚠️ Partial
Design cost-optimized storage solutions (S3 lifecycle, tiering, Intelligent-Tiering) aws-s3-deep-dive, finops ⚠️ Partial
Design cost-optimized database solutions (Aurora Serverless, DynamoDB on-demand) finops ❌ Gap
Design cost-optimized network architectures (VPC endpoints, NAT optimization) aws-networking, finops ❌ Gap
Use AWS cost management tools (Cost Explorer, Budgets, Trusted Advisor) finops ⚠️ Partial
Right-size resources and implement tagging strategies finops ⚠️ Partial

Study Plan

Phase 1: Foundations (Weeks 1–2)

Goal: Core AWS services and security fundamentals.

  • Week 1: IAM, VPC, and compute
  • Read: aws-iam — users, roles, policies, cross-account access
  • Read: aws-networking — VPC, subnets, route tables, security groups, NACLs
  • Read: aws-ec2 — instance types, AMIs, placement groups, user data
  • Read: aws-lambda — serverless compute, event triggers, limits
  • External: AWS Skill Builder (free) — "Architecting on AWS" fundamentals

  • Practice: Build a VPC from scratch with public/private subnets, NAT gateway, bastion host

  • Week 2: Storage, databases, and networking

  • Read: aws-s3-deep-dive — bucket policies, versioning, lifecycle, replication
  • Read: aws-route53 — DNS routing policies, health checks, failover
  • Read: database-ops — relational concepts (apply to RDS/Aurora)
  • External: AWS documentation for RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB — the wiki has gaps here
  • Practice: Set up S3 lifecycle rules, enable cross-region replication
  • Practice: Deploy an RDS instance with Multi-AZ, test failover

Phase 2: Deep Dive (Weeks 3–4)

Goal: Architecture patterns, resilience, and cost optimization.

  • Week 3: High availability and resilience patterns
  • Read: disaster-recovery — DR strategies, RPO/RTO calculations
  • Read: load-balancing — apply concepts to ALB/NLB/CLB
  • Read: message-queues — apply concepts to SQS/SNS
  • Read: aws-ecs — ECS on Fargate, task definitions
  • Read: aws-cloudwatch — metrics, alarms, logs, dashboards
  • External: AWS Well-Architected Framework — Reliability Pillar

  • Practice: Design a multi-AZ web application with ALB, ASG, RDS Multi-AZ

  • Week 4: Cost optimization and advanced patterns

  • Read: finops — cost management principles
  • Read: security-basics — shared responsibility model
  • Read: cloud-deep-dive — multi-cloud concepts, cloud-native patterns
  • External: AWS Well-Architected Framework — Cost Optimization Pillar
  • External: AWS Pricing Calculator — practice estimating costs for architectures
  • Practice: Review and optimize a sample architecture for cost (switch to Spot, right-size, add lifecycle)
  • Practice: Take the AWS Skill Builder practice exam

Phase 3: Exam Simulation (Weeks 5–6)

Goal: Drill AWS-specific services and take practice exams.

  • Focus study on wiki gaps: RDS/Aurora details, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, CloudFront, Kinesis
  • Take at least 3 full-length practice exams (AWS Skill Builder, Tutorials Dojo, or similar)
  • Review every wrong answer — map it to the specific service and domain
  • Build flashcards for: EC2 instance type families, S3 storage classes, RDS engine options, EBS volume types
  • Study the AWS service comparison tables (when to use SQS vs SNS vs EventBridge, ALB vs NLB)
  • Review AWS-specific terminology: AZ, Region, Edge Location, Outpost

Gap Analysis

Gap Exam Weight Recommended External Resource
AWS Organizations and SCPs High (within 30%) AWS Organizations documentation
RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB (configuration, pricing, HA) High (across 26% + 24%) AWS Database specialty docs, Tutorials Dojo cheat sheets
ElastiCache (Redis/Memcached) and DAX Medium (within 26%) AWS ElastiCache documentation
CloudFront, Global Accelerator Medium (within 24%) AWS Networking specialty docs
Kinesis, Glue, Athena (data ingestion) Medium (within 24%) AWS Analytics documentation
EventBridge, Step Functions Medium (within 26%) AWS event-driven architecture whitepapers
AWS CloudTrail, Config, GuardDuty Medium (within 30%) AWS Security specialty documentation
EC2 placement groups and instance store Low (within 24%) EC2 user guide — placement groups section
S3 Transfer Acceleration, multipart upload Low (within 24%) S3 developer guide — performance optimization
AWS SSO and identity federation (SAML, Cognito) Medium (within 30%) AWS IAM Identity Center documentation

Exam-Day Strategy

Time Management

  • 65 questions in 130 minutes = ~2 min per question
  • Multiple-choice format — no terminal, no hands-on
  • Flag and skip questions you are unsure about — review at the end
  • Eliminate obviously wrong answers first, then reason through remaining options

Question Triage

  1. Read the full question and all answer options before selecting
  2. Identify the domain: security, resilience, performance, or cost
  3. Look for key phrases: "most cost-effective," "highest availability," "most secure," "least operational overhead"
  4. "Least operational overhead" almost always means a managed/serverless service
  5. "Most cost-effective" often means Spot instances, S3 Intelligent-Tiering, or reserved capacity

Common Traps

  • Confusing security groups (stateful) with NACLs (stateless)
  • Forgetting that S3 is eventually consistent for overwrite PUTs (now strong consistency as of Dec 2020)
  • Mixing up EBS volume types: gp3 vs io2 vs st1 vs sc1
  • ALB vs NLB: ALB for HTTP/HTTPS (Layer 7), NLB for TCP/UDP (Layer 4)
  • Aurora vs RDS: Aurora is AWS-proprietary, 5x MySQL / 3x PostgreSQL performance, but costs more
  • DynamoDB: remember partition key design is critical; hot partitions kill performance
  • CloudFront vs Global Accelerator: CloudFront caches content, Global Accelerator routes TCP/UDP

AWS Service Selection Framework

When the question asks "which service?", use this decision tree: - Need caching? CloudFront (edge), ElastiCache (app-level), DAX (DynamoDB) - Need messaging? SQS (queue), SNS (pub/sub), EventBridge (event bus) - Need compute? Lambda (short tasks <15 min), Fargate (containers, no servers), EC2 (full control) - Need database? DynamoDB (key-value, scale), RDS (relational, managed), Aurora (relational, high perf) - Need storage? S3 (objects), EBS (block, single AZ), EFS (file, multi-AZ)

If You're Stuck

  • Eliminate answers that use a service incorrectly (e.g., S3 for low-latency database)
  • "Most" and "least" qualifiers are critical — re-read the question
  • If two options seem correct, the one with less operational overhead is usually preferred
  • Flag and move on — your subconscious may solve it while working other questions

Cross-References