AWS Solutions Architect Associate: architecture decisions

Objectives and progression

Ten original modules include 70 questions and 12 fictional AWS architecture, banking, and production cases. Expanded lessons cover hybrid private access, container startup, regional permissions, recovery, capacity, and cost comparison using synthetic values. The internal assessment reuses 44 decisions in 75 minutes. Full mocks and exhaustive SAA-C03 task coverage are still outstanding. Exercises require no AWS account and do not represent executed cloud experiments or independent specialist review.

Audience: Cloud engineers, developing architects, and technical managers with production responsibility.

Prerequisites: AWS fundamentals, TCP/IP networking, and familiarity with databases and availability.

385 estimated study minutes

• Diagnose permissions and network paths.
• Relate capacity and recovery to RTO and RPO.
• Select data, caching, and processing according to access patterns.
• Assess cost, commitments, and resource retirement.
• Establish startup dependencies and measure complete recovery under comparable costs.

Modules

1. Identity, trust, and permissions
2. Networks, endpoints, and hybrid connectivity
3. Data protection and recovery
4. Resilience, capacity, and recovery
5. Storage and content delivery
6. Databases, replicas, and cache
7. Events, queues, and processing
8. Costs, commitments, and retirement
9. Private access and startup without hidden dependencies
10. Recovery: dependencies, capacity, and cost

Continue learning

AWS

• AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
• Terraform Associate
• DNS
• Production Support L3

References and version

SAA-C03

• SAA-C03 exam guide · 2026-10-01
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate · 2026-09-29
• IAM security best practices · 2026-09-29
• IAM roles · 2026-09-29
• IAM policy evaluation logic · 2026-09-29
• Service control policies · 2026-09-29
• KMS key policies · 2026-09-29
• Security groups · 2026-09-29
• Network ACLs · 2026-09-29
• Internet gateways · 2026-09-29
• Configure an interface endpoint · 2026-10-01
• Gateway endpoints for Amazon S3 · 2026-10-01
• Direct Connect encryption · 2026-09-29
• VPC peering behavior · 2026-09-29
• Restrict access to an S3 origin · 2026-09-29
• S3 Object Lock · 2026-09-29
• Secrets Manager rotation · 2026-09-29
• CloudTrail data events · 2026-09-29
• S3 Versioning · 2026-09-29
• RDS point-in-time restore · 2026-09-29
• EC2 Auto Scaling architecture benefits · 2026-09-29
• Disaster recovery options in the cloud · 2026-10-01
• Define recovery objectives · 2026-09-29
• Route 53 health checks · 2026-09-29
• Amazon EFS overview · 2026-09-29
• FSx for Windows File Server · 2026-09-29
• S3 multipart uploads · 2026-09-29
• CloudFront cache policies · 2026-09-29
• S3 Lifecycle transitions · 2026-09-29
• S3 Intelligent-Tiering · 2026-09-29
• EBS general purpose SSD volumes · 2026-09-29
• RDS Multi-AZ DB instance deployments · 2026-09-29
• RDS read replicas · 2026-09-29
• DynamoDB partition-key design · 2026-09-29
• Aurora reader endpoints · 2026-09-29
• ElastiCache Memcached caching strategies · 2026-09-29
• RDS best practices · 2026-09-29
• SQS standard queues · 2026-09-29
• SQS visibility timeout · 2026-09-29
• SQS dead-letter queues · 2026-09-29
• SNS fanout to SQS · 2026-09-29
• Scale using SQS backlog · 2026-09-29
• AWS Lambda overview · 2026-09-29
• Savings Plans overview · 2026-09-29
• Spot interruptions · 2026-09-29
• NAT gateway pricing considerations · 2026-09-29
• AWS Budgets · 2026-09-29
• Delete an EBS volume · 2026-09-29
• SAA-C03 content domain 1 · 2026-09-29
• SAA-C03 content domain 2 · 2026-09-29
• SAA-C03 content domain 3 · 2026-09-29
• SAA-C03 content domain 4 · 2026-09-29
• EBS modification limitations · 2026-09-29
• Route 53 record TTL · 2026-09-29
• Control access using endpoint policies · 2026-10-01
• Amazon ECR interface VPC endpoints · 2026-10-01
• Replicate Secrets Manager secrets across Regions · 2026-10-01
• Control access to multi-Region keys · 2026-10-01
• AWS PrivateLink pricing · 2026-10-01