The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate examination is intended for individuals who perform a solutions architect role , cost-efficient, fault-tolerant, and scalable distributed systems on AWS.
Abilities Validated by the Certification
Effectively demonstrate knowledge of how to architect and deploy secure and robust applications on AWS technologies
Define a solution using architectural design principles based on customer requirements
Provide implementation guidance based on best practices to the organization throughout the life cycle of the project
Recommended Knowledge and Experience
Hands-on experience using compute, networking, storage, and database AWS services
Hands-on experience with AWS deployment and management services
Ability to identify and define technical requirements for an AWS-based application
Ability to identify which AWS services meet a given technical requirement
Knowledge of recommended best practices for building secure and reliable applications on the AWS platform
An understanding of the basic architectural principles of building on the AWS Cloud
An understanding of the AWS global infrastructure
An understanding of network technologies as they relate to AWS
An understanding of security features and tools that AWS provides and how they relate to traditional services
Exam topics
Amazon SAA-C02 contains several main domains, which form the whole exam content that should be mastered by the candidates. It is important to know all the details of each section to have an idea of what you can expect during the very test. They are:
Design Cost-Optimized Architectures – 18%
This the smallest area that you can see in the test. The domain covers the skills that you will need to be able to identify or design cost-effective storage solutions, cost-optimized network architectures, as well as cost-effective compute and database service. All in all, you have to know how to deploy apps on AWS and work with them.
Design Secure Applications and Architectures – 24%
In this section, you will run into the key subtopics that include your ability to design secure application tiers and secure access to AWS resources as well as your skills in selecting the appropriate data security options. This means that you need to understand how to utilize native AWS technologies to develop secure apps. Your proficiency in configuring security controls for authorization, authentication, and access, as well as applying encryption to data is also important.
This topic also covers the details of AWS KMS, Amazon VPC, AWS IAM, AWS CloudHSM, AWS Directory Services, Amazon Route 53, Amazon Cognito, Amazon CloudFront, and AWS Auto Scaling. The students should also understand how to implement logging and monitoring by using AWS CloudTrail and Amazon CloudWatch.
Design High-Performing Architectures – 28%
The main subtopics of this objective include selecting scalable and high-performing storage solutions for a workload, choosing high-performing database solutions for a workload, identifying elastic compute solutions for a workload, and selecting of high-performing networking solutions for a workload.
You should also know about certain technologies, such as Amazon CloudFront, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon DynamoDB DAX, and particular services, including AWS Auto Scaling and EC2 Auto Scaling.
Design Resilient Architectures – 30%
This is the biggest part of the whole exam content that you need to pay the most of your attention to. This domain is all about the design of fault-tolerant and highly available architectures, creation of decoupling mechanisms using AWS services, and developing multi-tier architecture solutions. It also covers the skills you need to be able to choose the appropriate resilient storage when required.
The learners have to understand how to use and what to do with Amazon EFS, Amazon SQS, Amazon SWF, Amazon EBS, Instance Store, Amazon S3, and Amazon FSx. Besides that, they also need to understand Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon Route 53, Amazon RDS Read Replicas, Multi-AZ, and AWS Global Infrastructure.
