AWS Solutions Architect Associate Certification Guide

The AWS Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) is the most popular AWS certification. It validates your ability to design secure, resilient, high-performing, and cost-optimized architectures on AWS.

Exam Overview

Detail	Value
Exam Code	SAA-C03
Questions	65 (multiple choice + multiple response)
Length	130 minutes
Passing Score	720 (on a scale of 100–1000)
Validity	3 years
Price	~$150 USD
Prerequisites	AWS Cloud Practitioner recommended but not required

Domain Breakdown

Domain	Weight
Design Secure Architectures	30%
Design Resilient Architectures	26%
Design High-Performing Architectures	24%
Design Cost-Optimized Architectures	20%

Key Services to Master

Compute

EC2 — Instance types (general, compute, memory, accelerated, storage optimized), purchasing options (On-Demand, Reserved, Spot, Savings Plans), user data, security groups, EBS vs instance store
Lambda — Serverless functions, triggers, concurrency, versions/aliases, reserved concurrency
ECS / EKS — Container orchestration, Fargate (serverless) vs EC2 launch type, task definitions, services
ELB — ALB (HTTP/HTTPS), NLB (TCP/UDP), Gateway LB, target groups, stickiness, cross-zone load balancing
Auto Scaling — Launch templates, scaling policies (target tracking, step, simple), cooldown periods

Storage

S3 — Storage classes (Standard, Intelligent-Tiering, Standard-IA, One Zone-IA, Glacier, Glacier Deep Archive), lifecycle policies, versioning, cross-region replication, presigned URLs, S3 Select, S3 Transfer Acceleration
EBS — Volume types (gp2/gp3, io1/io2, st1, sc1), snapshots, encryption, EBS Multi-Attach
EFS — NFS file system for Linux, performance modes, throughput modes, lifecycle management
FSx — FSx for Windows File Server, FSx for Lustre (HPC)

Database

RDS — Multi-AZ (high availability), Read Replicas (performance), Automated backups, snapshots, encryption at rest/in transit
Aurora — Aurora Serverless, Global Database, Auto Scaling, cloning
DynamoDB — On-demand vs provisioned capacity, DAX (caching), TTL, Global Tables, streams, transactions
ElastiCache — Redis vs Memcached, caching strategies (lazy loading, write-through), Redis AOF/backup
Redshift — Cluster types, Redshift Spectrum, automatic snapshots, RA3 nodes

Networking

VPC — Subnets (public/private), route tables, Internet Gateway, NAT Gateway/Instance, VPC Peering, VPC Endpoints (Gateway/Interface), Transit Gateway
Direct Connect — Dedicated private connection, hosted vs dedicated, VPN as backup
Route 53 — Routing policies (simple, weighted, latency, failover, geolocation, geoproximity, multivalue), health checks, alias records
CloudFront — Origin access control, custom origins, behavior settings, signed URLs/cookies, field-level encryption
Global Accelerator — Anycast IPs, endpoint groups, traffic dials

Security & Identity

IAM — Users, groups, roles, policies (managed vs inline), service-linked roles, permission boundaries, IAM Identity Center (SSO)
KMS — Customer managed keys vs AWS managed keys, key rotation, key policies, envelope encryption
AWS Shield — Standard (free) vs Advanced ($3000/month), DDoS protection
WAF — Web ACLs, rate limiting, IP sets, rule groups, managed rules

Analytics & Integration

SQS — Standard vs FIFO queues, dead-letter queues, visibility timeout, long polling, delay queues
SNS — Topics, subscriptions (email, SMS, SQS, Lambda, HTTP), message filtering, fan-out
Step Functions — State machines, standard vs express workflows, service integrations
API Gateway — REST vs HTTP vs WebSocket APIs, throttling, caching, usage plans, API keys
Kinesis — Data Streams, Firehose, Data Analytics, Video Streams

Well-Architected Framework (Review)

The 6 pillars (updated):

Operational Excellence — Run and monitor systems, automate
Security — Protect data, identity, and infrastructure
Reliability — Recover from failures, scale
Performance Efficiency — Use resources efficiently
Cost Optimization — Eliminate waste, use right-sizing
Sustainability — Minimize environmental impact (new)

Architecture Patterns to Know

Highly Available

Multi-AZ deployment for RDS, EC2 (Auto Scaling), ELB across AZs
Active-passive (Route 53 failover) vs active-active (multi-region)

Disaster Recovery Strategies

Strategy	RTO	RPO	Cost
Backup/Restore	Hours	Hours	$
Pilot Light	Minutes	Minutes	$$
Warm Standby	Minutes	Seconds	$$$
Multi-Site	Seconds	Seconds	$$$$

Caching Patterns

Lazy loading (cache aside) — slow initial request, updates on read
Write-through — consistency at write time
TTL expiration — automatic invalidation

Storage Optimization

S3 Intelligent-Tiering for unknown access patterns
S3 Lifecycle policies to move data between tiers
EBS gp3 for baseline performance without provisioned IOPS
RDS Read Replicas for read-heavy workloads

Study Tips

Understand the Well-Architected Framework — Every question ties back to one or more pillars
Know your storage differences — S3 (object), EBS (block), EFS/FSx (file) — when to use what
Master VPC networking — Subnets, NAT, gateways, endpoints, peering, Transit Gateway
Compare database services — RDS vs Aurora vs DynamoDB vs Redshift vs ElastiCache
Understand HA vs DR — Multi-AZ (HA), Multi-Region (DR), Read Replicas (performance)
Know S3 consistency — Strong consistency (since Dec 2020), eventually consistent prior
Practice with AWS Free Tier — Build VPCs, create EC2 instances, configure S3, set up RDS

Practice Questions

Use our AWS Solutions Architect Associate practice questions — 50+ questions covering all exam domains with detailed explanations.

Start Practice →

Career Path

Solutions Architect Associate prepares you for:

Cloud Architect ($120k–$160k)
Solutions Architect ($130k–$180k)
DevOps Engineer ($110k–$150k)
Infrastructure Architect ($125k–$170k)

Next: AWS Solutions Architect Professional or AWS DevOps Engineer Professional

AWS Solutions Architect Associate Exam Guide (SAA-C03)