AWS Certified Solutions Architect – AssociateStudy guide
The associate certification for designing on AWS (SAA-C03).
About AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03)
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) is a Associate-level certification from AWS. This page organizes the exam scope into a 4-chapter, 12-section study guide and lets you check your understanding with exam-style practice questions. A good flow is to read the chapters below in order, then test yourself via "Practice questions."
Exam domains (approximate weighting)
- Design secure architectures~30%
- Design resilient architectures~26%
- Design high-performing architectures~24%
- Design cost-optimized architectures~20%
Weights are approximate guidance for the live exam. Each domain is covered in detail in the chapters and sections below.
Official exam information: https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-solutions-architect-associate/
1Designing Secure Architectures
- 1.1IAM and Access Management
Understand IAM users, groups, roles, and policies, least privilege, IAM roles for EC2/services, and federation. The starting point for designing secure architectures in SAA-C03.
- 1.2Data Protection and Encryption
Understand data protection design: encryption at rest/in transit, key management with AWS KMS, encrypting S3/EBS/RDS, and secrets management with Secrets Manager.
- 1.3VPC and Network Security
Understand VPCs and subnets (public/private), the difference between security groups and network ACLs, and network defenses like WAF/Shield.
2Designing Resilient Architectures
- 2.1High Availability and Scaling
Understand designing architectures that are resilient and scale with demand by combining multiple Availability Zones (multi-AZ), Elastic Load Balancing, and Auto Scaling.
- 2.2Decoupling and Messaging
Understand decoupling components with Amazon SQS (queues) and Amazon SNS (publish/subscribe) to absorb spikes and improve scalability.
- 2.3Backup and Disaster Recovery
Understand designing for disaster recovery: backups/snapshots, RTO and RPO, and multi-region failover (Route 53).
3Designing High-Performing Architectures
- 3.1Choosing Compute and Storage
Understand choosing compute (EC2 instance types, serverless Lambda) and storage (EBS, EFS, S3) to fit the workload.
- 3.2Caching and Content Delivery
Understand reducing latency and improving performance with Amazon CloudFront (CDN) edge delivery and Amazon ElastiCache in-memory caching.
- 3.3Choosing and Scaling Databases
Understand RDS/Aurora (relational), DynamoDB (serverless NoSQL), scaling reads with read replicas, and choosing purpose-built databases.
4Designing Cost-Optimized Architectures
- 4.1Compute Pricing Models
Understand EC2 pricing models—On-Demand, Savings Plans/Reserved Instances, and Spot—and how to optimize cost by matching them to workloads.
- 4.2Storage Cost Optimization
Understand S3 storage classes (Standard / Standard-IA / Glacier), lifecycle policies, and optimizing cost by choosing the right storage.
- 4.3Cost Management Tools and Right-Sizing
Understand cost visibility, management, and recommendations via Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets, and Trusted Advisor, plus right-sizing resources.