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AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Exam Topics
Exam Basics
- Format: 50 scored questions and 15 unscored questions
- Question types: multiple choice and multiple response
- Passing score: 720 out of 1000
- Scaled scoring from 100 to 1000 with a compensatory model
- No penalty for guessing unanswered questions count as incorrect
- Target candidate: at least 1 year of hands-on AWS design experience
Domain 1: Design Secure Architectures (30%)
- Design secure access across accounts using IAM, IAM Identity Center, and federation
- Apply least-privilege with users, groups, roles, policies, and SCPs
- Secure VPCs with security groups, network ACLs, routing, and segmentation
- Protect applications with WAF, Shield, Cognito, Secrets Manager, and secure endpoints
- Implement data protection with KMS encryption at rest and ACM TLS in transit plus backups and lifecycle policies
Domain 2: Design Resilient Architectures (26%)
- Use multi-AZ and multi-Region patterns with Route 53 and load balancers
- Choose DR strategies such as backup and restore, pilot light, warm standby, and active-active with RPO and RTO targets
- Decouple with queues, topics, and event-driven workflows using SQS, SNS, and Step Functions
- Increase reliability with proxies and managed services such as RDS Proxy and service quotas planning
- Automate to remove single points of failure and improve durability and observability with X-Ray and CloudWatch
Domain 3: Design High-Performing Architectures (24%)
- Select storage that meets performance needs using S3, EFS, and EBS with the right access patterns
- Build elastic compute with EC2 Auto Scaling, Lambda, Fargate, and containers on ECS or EKS
- Design databases with RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, caching with ElastiCache, read replicas, and proxies
- Optimize networking with CloudFront, Global Accelerator, PrivateLink, and the right load balancer
- Ingest and transform data with Kinesis, Glue, EMR, and DataSync and convert formats such as CSV to Parquet
Domain 4: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures (20%)
- Lower storage costs using the right service and tier with S3 lifecycle policies, EFS, EBS, and FSx
- Optimize compute with right sizing and purchase options including Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, and Spot
- Choose cost-effective databases using serverless options and the right engine and capacity model
- Reduce network spend with efficient NAT patterns, VPC endpoints, Direct Connect, and edge caching
- Track and control spend with Budgets, Cost Explorer, and the Cost and Usage Report
Out of Scope
- IoT services and specialized domains such as Robotics, Game Tech, and Quantum
- Developer tooling focus such as Cloud9, CodeBuild, CodeCommit, and CodeDeploy
- Lightsail and other offerings outside core architect responsibilities
- AR and VR services and media packaging services not aligned to the role
- Niche ML builder tools such as DeepRacer and Deep Learning AMIs
How to Prepare
- Study the official exam guide and map each task statement to hands-on labs
- Practice designing with the Well-Architected Framework across security, reliability, performance, and cost
- Build labs for VPC design, IAM and federation, load balancing, Auto Scaling, and database choices
- Use managed services and decoupling patterns with SQS, SNS, API Gateway, and Step Functions
- Take practice exams and review weak areas until you can explain the why behind each choice