AWS Solutions Architect Associate

A 30-chapter walkthrough that follows the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate — SAA-C03 course deck (872 slides) slide by slide. This is the theory half; the practice questions live in the AWS SAA-C03 Practice group.

How to use these notes

Each chapter is a standalone page matching exactly one section of the original deck. You can read straight through from Chapter 1 to Chapter 30 (using the Next button at the bottom of each page), or jump directly to the chapter you want to revise. The Exam tip callouts flag what is commonly tested or easy to confuse; the Real-world example callouts make a concept concrete. Every page closes with a Quick recap you can skim before the exam.

Already know Cloud Practitioner?

SAA-C03 reuses most of the CLF-C02 foundations but goes considerably deeper and asks its questions from an architecture design angle. If the foundations are still shaky, read AWS CLF-C02 first and come back here.

Foundations & Identity

Getting Started with AWSWhat AWS is, and the global infrastructure: Regions, Availability Zones, Edge Locations and how to choose a Region.

AWS IAMUsers, Groups, Policies, Roles, MFA, the IAM Credentials Report and the least privilege principle.

Amazon EC2

EC2 – BasicsInstance types, User Data, Security Groups, SSH and the EC2 purchasing options.

EC2 – AssociatePrivate/Public/Elastic IPs, Placement Groups, ENIs and Hibernate.

EC2 – Instance StorageEBS volume types, snapshots, AMIs, Instance Store, EFS and EBS versus EFS.

High Availability & Databases

High Availability & ScalabilityScaling up and out, ELB (ALB, NLB, GWLB), sticky sessions, Auto Scaling Groups and scaling policies.

RDS, Aurora & ElastiCacheRDS Read Replicas, Multi-AZ, Aurora, RDS Proxy and ElastiCache Redis/Memcached.

Amazon Route 53Record types, TTL, Alias records, health checks and the seven routing policies.

Classic Solutions ArchitectureBuilding up the WhatIsTheTime, MyClothes and MyWordPress architectures, plus instructive stateless apps.

Amazon S3 & Content Delivery

Amazon S3Buckets and objects, versioning, replication, storage classes and static website hosting.

S3 – AdvancedLifecycle rules, Storage Lens, performance, Multi-Part Upload, S3 Select and Batch Operations.

S3 – SecurityThe four encryption types, bucket policies, CORS, MFA Delete, Access Points and Object Lambda.

CloudFront & Global AcceleratorCDN, origins, cache policies, signed URLs, price classes and AWS Global Accelerator.

AWS Storage ExtrasSnow Family, FSx, Storage Gateway, Transfer Family, DataSync and how the storage services compare.

Integration, Containers & Serverless

Integration & MessagingSQS (Standard, FIFO, DLQ), SNS, Kinesis Data Streams/Firehose and Amazon MQ.

Containers on AWSDocker, ECS, Fargate, ECR, EKS, App Runner and the patterns for running containers.

Serverless OverviewLambda, DynamoDB, API Gateway, Step Functions and Cognito.

Serverless ArchitecturesA mobile app, a thumbnail generator, serverless architectures and the caching patterns.

Data & Machine Learning

Databases in AWSPicking the right database: RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, Redshift, Neptune, DocumentDB, Timestream and more.

Data & AnalyticsAthena, Redshift, OpenSearch, EMR, QuickSight, Glue, Lake Formation and MSK.

Machine LearningRekognition, Transcribe, Polly, Translate, Lex, Comprehend, SageMaker, Forecast and Kendra.

Monitoring, Advanced Identity & Security

Monitoring, Audit & PerformanceCloudWatch Metrics/Logs/Alarms, EventBridge, CloudTrail, AWS Config and X-Ray.

Advanced Identity in AWSSTS, identity federation, Organizations, SCPs, IAM Identity Center and Control Tower.

Security & EncryptionKMS, the Encryption SDK, SSM Parameter Store, Secrets Manager, Shield, WAF and GuardDuty.

Networking & Architecture

Amazon VPCCIDR, subnets, IGW, NAT Gateway, NACL versus Security Group, peering, endpoints, VPN and Transit Gateway.

Disaster Recovery & MigrationsRPO/RTO, the four DR strategies, DMS, SMS, AWS Backup and VMware Cloud on AWS.

More Solutions ArchitecturesLambda with SNS and SQS, the Fan Out pattern, S3 Event Notifications, EventBridge, API Gateway service integrations, caching layers, blocking an IP address, HPC and a highly available single EC2 instance.

Other ServicesCloudFormation, SES, Pinpoint, Cost Explorer, Batch, Amplify, AppFlow and the other odds and ends.

Exam Preparation

White Papers & ArchitecturesThe Well-Architected Framework, Trusted Advisor and the white papers worth reading.

Exam Review & TipsThe structure of the SAA-C03 exam, exam technique, how to register and where to go after you pass.

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These notes are written entirely from the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) course slide deck, for personal study purposes only.