This repo is a guide to taking solutions architect associate cert in 2021. The main overview of the exam and AWS official site
Domain 1: Design Resilient Architectures 30%
1.1 Design a multi-tier architecture solution
- Determine a solution design based on access patterns.
- Determine a scaling strategy for components used in a design.
- Select an appropriate database based on requirements.
- Select an appropriate compute and storage service based on requirements.
1.2 Design highly available and/or fault-tolerant architectures
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Determine the amount of resources needed to provide a fault-tolerant architecture across Availability Zones.
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Select a highly available configuration to mitigate single points of failure.
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Apply AWS services to improve the reliability of legacy applications when application changes are not possible.
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Select an appropriate disaster recovery strategy to meet business requirements.
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Identify key performance indicators to ensure the high availability of the solution. 1.3 Design decoupling mechanisms using AWS services
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Determine which AWS services can be leveraged to achieve loose coupling of components.
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Determine when to leverage serverless technologies to enable decoupling.
1.4 Choose appropriate resilient storage
- Define a strategy to ensure the durability of data.
- Identify how data service consistency will affect the operation of the application.
- Select data services that will meet the access requirements of the application.
- Identify storage services that can be used with hybrid or non-cloud-native applications.
Domain 2: Define Performant Architectures 28%
2.1 Identify elastic and scalable compute solutions for a workload
- Select the appropriate instance(s) based on compute, storage, and networking requirements.
- Choose the appropriate architecture and services that scale to meet performance requirements.
- Identify metrics to monitor the performance of the solution.
2.2 Select high-performing and scalable storage solutions for a workload
- Select a storage service and configuration that meets performance demands.
- Determine storage services that can scale to accommodate future needs.
2.3 Select high-performing networking solutions for a workload
- Select appropriate AWS connectivity options to meet performance demands.
- Select appropriate features to optimize connectivity to AWS public services.
- Determine an edge caching strategy to provide performance benefits.
- Select appropriate data transfer service for migration and/or ingestion.
2.4 Choose high-performing database solutions for a workload
- Select an appropriate database scaling strategy.
- Determine when database caching is required for performance improvement.
- Choose a suitable database service to meet performance needs.
Domain 3: Specify Secure Applications and Architectures 24%
3.1 Design secure access to AWS resources
- Determine when to choose between users, groups, and roles.
- Interpret the net effect of a given access policy.
- Select appropriate techniques to secure a root account.
- Determine ways to secure credentials using features of AWS IAM.
- Determine the secure method for an application to access AWS APIs.
- Select appropriate services to create traceability for access to AWS resources.
3.2 Design secure application tiers
- Given traffic control requirements, determine when and how to use security groups and network ACLs.
- Determine a network segmentation strategy using public and private subnets.
- Select the appropriate routing mechanism to securely access AWS service endpoints or internet-based resources from Amazon VPC.
- Select appropriate AWS services to protect applications from external threats.
3.3 Select appropriate data security options
- Determine the policies that need to be applied to objects based on access patterns.
- Select appropriate encryption options for data at rest and in transit for
Domain 4: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures 18%
4.1 Identify cost-effective storage solutions
- Determine the most cost-effective data storage options based on requirements.
- Apply automated processes to ensure that data over time is stored on storage tiers that minimize costs.
Types
- Compute
- Cost management
- Database
- Disaster recovery
- High availability
- Management and governance
- Microservices and component decoupling
- Migration and data transfer
- Networking, connectivity, and content delivery
- Security
- Serverless design principles
AWS Services and Features
Analytics:
- Amazon Athena
- Amazon Elasticsearch Service (Amazon ES)
- Amazon EMR
- AWS Glue
- Amazon Kinesis
- Amazon QuickSight
AWS Billing and Cost Management:
- AWS Budgets
- Cost Explorer
Application Integration:
- Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)
- Amazon Simple Queue Service SQS
Compute:
- Amazon EC2
- AWS Elastic Beanstalk
- Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
- Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS)
- Elastic Load Balancing
- AWS Fargate
- AWS Lambda
Database:
- Amazon Aurora
- Amazon DynamoDB
- Amazon ElastiCache
- Amazon RDS
- Amazon Redshift
Management and Governance:
- AWS Auto Scaling
- AWS Backup
- AWS CloudFormation
- AWS CloudTrail
- Amazon CloudWatch
- AWS Config
- Amazon EventBridge (Amazon CloudWatch Events)
- AWS Organizations
- AWS Resource Access Manager
- AWS Systems Manager
- AWS Trusted Advisor
Migration and Transfer:
- AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS)
- AWS DataSync
- AWS Migration Hub
- AWS Server Migration Service (AWS SMS)
- AWS Snowball
- AWS Transfer Family
Networking and Content Delivery:
- Amazon API Gateway
- Amazon CloudFront
- AWS Direct Connect
- AWS Global Accelerator
- Amazon Route 53
- AWS Transit Gateway
- Amazon VPC
Security, Identity, and Compliance:
- AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)
- AWS Directory Service
- Amazon GuardDuty
- AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
- Amazon Inspector
- AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS)
- Amazon Macie
- AWS Secrets Manager
- AWS Shield
- AWS Single Sign-On
- AWS WAF
Storage:
- Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)
- Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)
- Amazon FSx
- Amazon S3
- Amazon S3 Glacier
- AWS Storage Gateway
- 100 - 1000 with minimum 720
- scaled scoring model
- 15 unscored questions that do not affect your score
- Unanswered questions are scored as incorrect; there is no penalty for guessing
- Multiple-choice: Has one correct response and three incorrect responses (distractors).
- Multiple-response: Has two or more correct responses out of five or more options