What is AWS?
- Amazon Web Services
- A worldwide distributed system
- A secure public cloud services platform, offering compute power, database/ storage, content delivery, networking, application deployment and other services to help businesses scale and grow
Why AWS?
- AWS is the market leader
- ~58% of total market share
- AWS is the most in-demand certification
- AWS Partner companies require certified employees
- Clients include businesses from over 190 countries
- Including Netflix, Reddit, AOL and Pinterest etc.
- AWS offers more than 20 + service categories and over 240 services
- There are 76 availability zones in 24 geographical regions around the world
- Learning materials; excellent documentation, online learning
AWS SAA Certificate Overview
- How to apply AWS solutions in real-world scenarios
- Which services to use when, and what each service can and cannot do
- There are three main categories validating one’s abilities
- Architecting and deploying solutions on AWS
- Defining solutions based on customer requirements
- Providing implementations guidance during the project/ projects
- Architecting, Deploying, Defining, Giving Guidance
Exam Knowledge Areas
1. Designing Resilient Architecture ~30% - Storage (S3, Glacier etc.) - Decoupling mechanism - Multi-tier architectures - when building from scratch - High-availability and fault tolerance 2. Define High-Performing Architecture ~28% - Storage and databases - Caching options - Elasticity (in/ out) and Scalability 3. Specify Secure Applications and Architecture ~24% - Securing application tiers - Securing data (at rest and transit) - Securing network infrastructure - VPCs, subnets etc. 4. Design Cost-Optimized Architecture ~18% - Storage and compute options - AWS best practices
Exam Focus Areas
1. Compute - Ensure how to do compute tasks in AWS, e.g. via EC2 instances 2. Networking - Subnets and Virtual Private Clouds (VPSc) - Multiple implementations - public/ private etc. 3. Storage - There are two primary types of storage, Live and Archive - Archives - AWS Glacier, Live storage - AWS S3 - EBS; 4. Databases - Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)
Exam Format
- 130min, 65 m/c questions
- 70% passing mark
- 720/1000 on the 100-1000 scale
- The credential is valid for 3 years
- Scenario-based questions, all about identifying what to use and when
- The majority of the items will present a scenario
- in the form of 1 to 2 lines associated with a specific question
- Which service types to use for particular problems
- Which types of technology are best suited for a particular problem
Exam Focus Services by Service Category
 Compute |  Storage |  Database |  Migrations |
 EC2 Elastic Beanstalk Lambda ECS |  S3 EFS Glacier Storage Gateway |  RDS DynamoDB ElasticCache Amazon Redshif |  Migrations Hub App Discovery Service Database Migration Service Server Migration Service Snowball |
 Network & Content Delivery |  Mgmt & Governance |  Analytics |  Security, Identity& Compliance |
 VPC CloudFront Route 53 API Gateway Direct Connect |  CloudWatch Auto Scaling Organizations CloudFormation CloudTrail Trusted Advisor Config |  Kinesis |  IAM Cognito Inspector CloudHSM Directory Services WAF Shields |
 App Integration |  Cost Mgmt |  Media Services |  End-User Computing | |
 SNS SQS |  Cost Explorer Budgets |  Elastic Transcoder Kinesis Video Streams |  WorkSpaces AppStreams 2.0 |
Links
AWS-Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam Info
AWS SAA-C01 vs. AWS SAA-C02
