AWS Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) Exam Preparation

Course Details

A 5-day course, 6 hours per day (30 hours in total), delivered as lectures with hands-on labs on real AWS accounts. Intermediate level. The scope follows the latest SAA-C03 exam guide. The institute provides AWS accounts for the labs, so learners do not need to attach their own credit card. The AWS exam fee itself is paid by the learner. Learners take home a lab guide, a full mock exam with explained answers, and a Well-Architected review checklist.

Day 1: Architecture Foundations and Security

Section 1: The Architect Role and the Exam Scope

• What a solutions architect does and how to turn a business problem into a design
• SAA-C03 structure: the four domains, their weightings and the scenario question style
• Reading a question for its real constraints and eliminating options that miss them
• AWS global infrastructure: regions, availability zones and edge locations

Section 2: The AWS Well-Architected Framework

• The six pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance, cost and sustainability
• The design principles the exam uses to decide which answer is best
• Using the framework to review an existing architecture and find what to improve
• Trade-offs between pillars in real scenarios

Section 3: IAM and Permission Management

• IAM structure: users, groups, roles and policies, and how permissions are evaluated
• Writing least-privilege policies and narrowing scope with conditions
• Using roles instead of embedded access keys, and cross-account access
• Lab: create a role and policy giving a system only the access it needs

Section 4: Defense in Depth

• Encryption at rest and in transit, and managing keys with a key management service
• Storing passwords and secrets safely instead of embedding them in code
• Network and application layer protection, and absorbing volumetric attacks
• Separating accounts by environment and applying multi-account guardrails

Day 2: AWS Networking and Connectivity

Section 5: VPC Design

• Planning IP ranges and splitting public and private subnets
• Route tables, internet gateways and NAT gateways, and the path to the internet
• Security groups versus network ACLs and where each belongs
• Lab: build a multi-subnet VPC across availability zones and test connectivity

Section 6: Connecting Networks

• Connecting VPCs together and the limits that appear as the system grows
• Connecting the corporate data center to AWS over encrypted tunnels or dedicated links
• Reaching AWS services privately with endpoints instead of over the internet
• Choosing the connectivity option that matches speed and security requirements

Section 7: DNS, Load Balancing and Content Delivery

• Managing domains and the DNS routing policies that steer users
• Load balancer types and matching them to the traffic profile
• Using a CDN to speed up delivery and reduce origin load
• Lab: put a load balancer in front of several servers and test distribution

Section 8: Network and Security Scenarios

• Analyzing a scenario where part of the system is public and part must stay closed
• The three-tier pattern the exam favours and why each tier sits where it does
• Common network design mistakes and how to avoid them
• Workshop: design a network from a business scenario and defend your choices

Day 3: Compute, Storage and Databases

Section 9: Compute Services and How to Choose

• Instance families and sizing for the workload
• Instance purchase options and their long-term cost impact
• Running containers and choosing between self-managed and AWS-managed
• Lab: launch and configure a server with an automatic setup script at boot

Section 10: Serverless and Event-Driven Compute

• Serverless functions and when they beat running a server around the clock
• Triggering functions from events and exposing them through an API
• The limits that matter: maximum runtime, memory size and cold starts
• Lab: build a function that runs whenever a file is uploaded to storage

Section 11: Storage Types and Storage Classes

• Object, block and file storage and the workloads each suits
• Storage classes and lifecycle rules that move data automatically to cut cost
• Durability, cross-region replication and protecting against accidental deletion
• Lab: set a lifecycle rule that moves old data to a cheaper storage class

Section 12: Databases on AWS

• Managed relational databases, multi-AZ deployments and read replicas
• NoSQL databases and designing keys that spread load evenly
• In-memory databases for workloads that need very low latency
• Lab: deploy a multi-AZ database and test failover when the primary goes down

Day 4: Resilience, Decoupling and Performance

Section 13: Designing Against Outages

• Spreading systems across availability zones and why the exam weights this heavily
• Auto scaling: setting thresholds that track real load
• Health checks and automatically removing unhealthy instances from service
• Lab: configure an auto scaling group and watch it add capacity under load

Section 14: Backup and Disaster Recovery

• Setting recovery time and recovery point objectives
• Recovery strategies from the cheapest through to instant failover
• Cross-region backup and testing the recovery plan regularly
• Choosing the strategy that fits the budget the scenario gives you

Section 15: Decoupling with Queues and Notifications

• The problems of tightly coupled systems and what a queue buys you
• Message queues and handling failed work with a dead-letter queue
• Fan-out notifications and wiring services together
• Lab: connect two components through a queue and test with the consumer stopped

Section 16: Accelerating Performance

• Caching at each layer to cut database load and response time
• Choosing disk types and tuning them to the read and write pattern
• Distributing content through a CDN to shorten the distance to users
• Lab: add a cache layer in front of the database and measure before and after

Day 5: Cost, Governance and Exam Preparation

Section 17: Designing for Cost Optimization

• How the main services are priced and where bills quietly run away
• Purchase options and using cheap interruptible capacity for suitable workloads
• Reducing data transfer out charges and picking the right storage class
• Budgets, alerts and tagging resources to attribute cost per team

Section 18: Monitoring and Governance

• Collecting metrics and logs and alerting when the system misbehaves
• Recording an audit trail of API activity for later investigation
• Automatically checking configuration against organizational policy
• Lab: set an alert that fires when a resource exceeds a defined threshold

Section 19: Assembling Architectures from Real Scenarios

• The architecture patterns the exam reuses and the conditions that select each one
• Migrating legacy systems to the cloud and choosing a migration strategy
• Reviewing an architecture against the Well-Architected Framework before handover
• Workshop: design a complete system from a business scenario and defend every decision

Section 20: Mock Exam and Study Plan

• Exam technique: spotting keywords, managing time and handling uncertain questions
• Walking through option elimination question by question on the mock exam
• The topics candidates most often miss and how to revise them in the final week
• Workshop: sit a full mock exam with explained answers and build your personal study plan