The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) exam validates an individual’s ability to effectively demonstrate knowledge of how to architect and deploy secure, robust applications on AWS technologies. Intended for professionals in a solutions architect role, the exam covers designing resilient, high-performing, secure, and cost-optimized architectures. Candidates should have hands-on experience with AWS services. They should be able to identify requirements and recommend solutions based on best practices. The exam consists of 65 multiple choice questions taken over 130 minutes. A passing score is 720/1000. Preparation resources include AWS training courses, documentation, whitepapers, and hands-on practice.
The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) exam is designed for professionals working in a solutions architect role. Candidates should have at least one year of hands-on experience architecting systems on AWS. The exam validates the ability to make recommendations based on technical requirements, choose appropriate AWS services, and apply best practices for building secure, robust, and cost-optimized applications on AWS. Solutions architects are responsible for the overall design and delivery of solutions on AWS. Passing the SAA-C02 exam demonstrates proficiency in architecting secure and scalable cloud solutions using AWS technologies.
The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) exam validates that an individual can effectively demonstrate knowledge of how to architect and deploy secure, robust applications on AWS technologies. Candidates must show proficiency in defining solutions using architectural design principles based on customer requirements and providing implementation guidance based on best practices. The exam covers architecting available, cost-effective, fault-tolerant, and scalable distributed systems on AWS. Candidates should have hands-on experience with compute, networking, storage, database AWS services and be able to identify requirements and choose appropriate solutions.
Recommended AWS Knowledge Before Taking the Exam
Gaining hands-on experience using AWS compute services like EC2, ECS, Lambda, networking services like VPC, Route 53, API Gateway, storage services like S3, EBS, EFS, and database services like RDS, DynamoDB, Redshift is critical preparation for the SAA-C02 exam. Working directly with these core AWS services gives candidates the required knowledge to architect robust and secure applications. Through hands-on practice deploying systems on AWS, candidates gain practical experience with provisioning, configuring, scaling, troubleshooting, and monitoring resources. This experience enables identifying technical requirements and choosing appropriate AWS services based on best practices.
Experience with AWS deployment
Hands-on experience using AWS deployment services like CloudFormation, Elastic Beanstalk, OpsWorks, and CodeDeploy is critical preparation for the SAA-C02 exam. These services provide automation for provisioning, configuring, and managing AWS resources. Working with them gives practical knowledge for deploying robust cloud architectures. Candidates should also gain experience with management tools like CloudWatch, AWS Config, and AWS Trusted Advisor for monitoring, auditing, and optimizing workloads. Using these AWS services for deployment and day-to-day management enables architects to design secure, highly available, and efficient systems on AWS.
Identify technical requirements
A key skill tested in the SAA-C02 exam is the ability to identify an application’s technical requirements and determine the appropriate AWS services to meet those needs. Candidates should have hands-on experience analyzing requirements, mapping them to AWS services like compute, database, storage and networking, and choosing the right solutions based on factors like scalability, security, and cost. The exam validates proficiency in recognizing technical specs and selecting the ideal AWS building blocks to architect systems that are robust, secure, highly available, and cost-optimized. Real-world expertise mapping requirements to AWS services is essential preparation.
AWS architecture best practices
Having strong knowledge of AWS architecture best practices is critical for success on the SAA-C02 exam. Candidates should understand core design principles like scalability, high availability, security, cost optimization, and performance efficiency. The exam validates proficiency in architecting systems using proven patterns like load balancing across zones, decoupled tiers, immutable infrastructure, and horizontal scaling. Hands-on experience following AWS Well-Architected Framework guidelines for building secure, robust, resilient, and efficient architectures on AWS is key preparation. The SAA-C02 tests expertise in applying best practices for provisioning, deploying, and managing resources on AWS.
Understanding of AWS global
Having knowledge of AWS global infrastructure components like regions, availability zones, and edge locations is key preparation for the SAA-C02 exam. Candidates should understand AWS network technologies including VPCs, subnets, route tables, security groups, NAT gateways, VPN connections, and AWS Direct Connect. This enables designing solutions that leverage AWS’s reliable and low-latency global network to deploy secure, robust applications closer to end users. Architects must know how to build fault-tolerant infrastructure across regions and zones for high availability. The exam validates expertise in utilizing AWS global infrastructure and networking features to meet requirements.
AWS security features
Developing familiarity with the wide range of AWS security services like IAM for access controls, VPC for network security, AWS WAF for protecting applications, Amazon Macie for data security, AWS Shield for DDoS protection, AWS Key Management Service for encryption, and Amazon GuardDuty for threat detection is critical preparation for the SAA-C02 exam. Hands-on experience using these services to implement security best practices like least privilege access, encryption, network segmentation, and logging and monitoring is key. The exam validates expertise in architecting secure systems leveraging AWS’s robust set of native security features and services.
Exam Logistics
- Multiple choice format, 65 questions, 130 minutes
- Covers 4 domains: Design Resilient Architectures, Design High-Performing Architectures, Design Secure Applications and Architectures, Design Cost-Optimized Architectures
- Passing score is 720/1000
- Results reported as score from 100-1000
Preparing for the SAA-C02 Exam
Reviewing AWS training courses like those offered on AWS Skill Builder, whitepapers published by AWS, and official documentation for AWS services are critical preparation materials for the SAA-C02 exam. These resources created directly by AWS experts provide in-depth knowledge on architecting systems and technical use cases. Going through training courses gives hands-on practice deploying AWS services. Whitepapers provide best practices and design principles. Documentation provides technical details on each service. Together these resources enable gaining the required hands-on expertise to pass the SAA-C02 exam.
Hands-on experience architecting systems on AWS
Gaining hands-on experience architecting and deploying real systems on AWS is critical preparation for the SAA-C02 exam. By working through use cases and building solutions leveraging AWS services for compute, storage, databases, networking, security, analytics, and more, architects gain practical expertise in areas like provisioning resources, decoupling workloads, implementing security controls, optimizing performance, and managing costs. Hands-on practice drives familiarity with AWS services and features and reinforces architectural best practices and design principles covered in the exam. There is no substitute for direct experience architecting, deploying, and operating applications on AWS technologies when preparing for the SAA-C02 exam.
High availability and fault tolerance
Gaining strong knowledge of high availability and fault tolerance architectural patterns is key preparation for the SAA-C02 exam. Candidates should understand how to build resilient systems that can withstand failures and still meet requirements. Hands-on experience implementing multi-AZ deployments, redundancy, decoupling, and horizontal scaling enables architects to design robust applications that remain available despite outages. The exam validates expertise in leveraging AWS services like load balancers, auto scaling groups, RDS Multi-AZ, and S3 versioning to architect highly available, fault tolerant systems that avoid single points of failure.
SAA-C02 Practice exam questions and answers
Completing practice exams with sample questions and answers for the SAA-C02 is critical preparation. Practice tests expose architects to the format, style, and depth of questions on the actual exam. Reviewing detailed explanations for both correct and incorrect answers reinforces key concepts and identifies knowledge gaps. Sources like Tutorials Dojo, Whizlabs, and Udemy offer full-length practice tests and quizzes covering all SAA-C02 domains. Taking timed practice exams simulates the actual testing experience and environment. Scoring practice tests identifies strengths and improvement areas to focus further study. Practice tests are essential to validate exam readiness.
SAA-C02 Study guides and books
Studying AWS-authored study guides and books is an essential part of preparing for the SAA-C02 exam. Resources like the official exam guide and AWS whitepapers provide insights directly from AWS experts. Third-party books and guides from publishers like Sybex and Pearson offer full exam prep covering all domains and knowledge areas tested in the SAA-C02. Books enable self-paced preparation and reinforce key concepts through hands-on exercises. Combining official AWS guides with third-party study books provides comprehensive coverage of services, architectures, security, deployment, and other topics assessed in the exam. Books are indispensable for in-depth learning.
Amazon Online courses
Online courses and training programs offer a flexible and self-paced option to study for the SAA-C02 exam. Courses on platforms like Udemy, A Cloud Guru, and Linux Academy provide video lectures, hands-on labs, sample tests, and other resources structured into a learning path covering all exam domains. Choose AWS-authorized instructor-led courses for content directly from experts. Following a structured online course helps learn key concepts through visual and hands-on learning. Online training drives consistency and enables learning anytime, anywhere at your own pace. Reinforce through practice tests.
Key Exam Topics and Objectives
Multi-tier architecture design patterns
The SAA-C02 exam covers architecting secure, reliable, and efficient multi-tier architectures on AWS. Candidates should understand horizontal scaling patterns like load balancing across AZs and auto scaling groups. Vertical scaling with larger instance sizes may also be appropriate. A decoupled tiered design with elasticity enables high availability. Candidates should have hands-on experience with compute, database, storage, and networking services for each tier. The exam validates expertise in choosing AWS services to optimize performance, costs, and security for web, application, data, and other tiers. Architects should know when to leverage containers, serverless, and microservices versus traditional servers.
High availability and fault tolerance
Here are two steps the company should take to redesign its architecture to be highly available and fault tolerant:
1. Deploy the EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones (AZs) in the region. Spreading instances across AZs provides fault tolerance in case one AZ goes down.
2. Use an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in front of the EC2 instances. The ALB will distribute incoming requests randomly across the healthy EC2 instances in multiple AZs. This provides high availability and ensures traffic reaches all running instances.
Deploying across multiple AZs provides geographic redundancy, while the ALB handles load balancing and health checks on the instances. Together, these provide a highly available and fault tolerant architecture that can withstand AZ failures and ensure traffic is distributed to available instances.
Some key points:
– Use multiple AZs for fault tolerance
– ALB for random load balancing across instances
– ALB performs health checks on instances
– Traffic reaches available instances after failures
– No single point of failure
This architecture aligns with AWS best practices for high availability and fault tolerance when running applications on EC2.
Decoupling mechanisms like SQS, SNS
Decoupling application components is a key design pattern for building highly available and scalable architectures on AWS. SQS and SNS allow different parts of an application to communicate asynchronously without tight dependencies. SQS enables decoupling distributed application tiers to allow independent scaling. SNS allows publishing messages to multiple subscribers like Lambda functions, SQS queues, and HTTP endpoints. Decoupling improves fault tolerance since failures are isolated. Hands-on experience with SQS, SNS, and other decoupling patterns enables architects to design robust, event-driven systems that can withstand failures and scale independently on AWS.
Compute, storage, network and database solutions
The SAA-C02 exam covers architecting solutions using AWS’s broad portfolio of compute, storage, network, and database services. Candidates should have hands-on experience with core services like EC2, EBS, S3, VPC, RDS, and DynamoDB. The exam validates proficiency in provisioning infrastructure on AWS using the most appropriate services based on requirements for performance, scalability, availability, durability, and cost. Architects must know how these building blocks integrate and combine in a robust overall architecture. Deep knowledge of AWS compute, storage, network, and database services enables creating optimized, secure cloud solutions aligned to best practices.
IAM roles, security groups, encryption
The SAA-C02 exam covers leveraging IAM roles to provide least privilege access, using security groups as virtual firewalls to control traffic to resources, and encrypting data in transit and at rest. Architects should understand how to restrict IAM roles through policies, assign roles to EC2 instances for access to other services, authorize security group rules between tiers, and enable encryption using services like EBS, S3, EFS, and RDS encryption. Hands-on experience with these tools to implement security best practices like encryption, identity federation, and network segmentation is key to designing secure, robust cloud solutions on AWS.
Cost optimization, right sizing, pricing models
A key skill assessed on the SAA-C02 exam is knowledge of cost optimization strategies like right sizing EC2 instances based on utilization metrics, leveraging auto scaling to match capacity to demand, and choosing AWS pricing models like spot instances and reserved instances where appropriate. Architects should understand how to optimize costs by matching workloads to the most cost-efficient instance types and sizes. The exam validates expertise in architecting solutions that avoid waste and unnecessary expense by combining the optimal AWS services, features, and configurations to meet performance, availability, and reliability requirements at the lowest possible cost.
Conclusion
Preparing thoroughly and comprehensively is the key to passing the SAA-C02 exam. Architects should gain hands-on experience with AWS services through building real solutions and following best practices around security, cost optimization, high availability, and performance efficiency. Leverage AWS training courses, documentation, and whitepapers to gain in-depth knowledge directly from the source. Combine self-study with instructor-led training for structured learning. Books and online courses ensure coverage of all exam domains. Practice tests identify gaps and get comfortable with the question format.
When assessing exam readiness, architects should validate skills in identifying requirements, choosing appropriate services, estimating costs, designing secure and robust architectures, and defining implementation plans. Focus study on weak domains and re-take practice tests until consistently scoring over 80%.
With diligent preparation using recommended resources and strategies, solutions architects can gain the required knowledge to pass the SAA-C02 exam. Earning this AWS certification validates critical skills in designing and deploying cloud solutions on AWS. The certification distinguishes architects as capable of architecting systems aligned to AWS best practices.
