Common Exam Scenarios for the SAA-C03 Exam

This article was authored by Adrian Formaran. As a Computer Scientist and a proud Iskolar ng Bayan (university scholar), Adrian has a passion for learning cutting edge technologies, such as blockchain, cloud services, and information security, and is passionate about teaching these to others as well. He also has a deep love for mathematics, sciences, and philosophy. A gamer at heart.

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) exam is highly regarded in the cloud industry. It demonstrates your expertise in AWS Cloud and your ability to design a well-architected infrastructure. This certification helps companies recognize and cultivate talent for executing cloud projects. Earning the SAA-C03 certification proves your capability to design and implement solutions on AWS, including distributed architectures, serverless technologies, and containerized applications.

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Certification Exam Overview

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) exam is designed for those in a solutions architect role, though any IT professional can take it. College students looking to stay ahead of their peers can also benefit from this certification. The SAA-C03 exam assesses your skills in using various AWS technologies to design solutions aligned with the AWS Well-Architected Framework .

If you're planning to take the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) exam soon, it's essential to first study the key cloud concepts and design principles on AWS. Focus on securing your cloud architecture, as many exam questions revolve around security scenarios. The SAA-C03 exam also tests your ability to:

• Design solutions using AWS services that address current business needs and anticipate future requirements.
• Create architectures that are secure, resilient, high-performing, and cost-efficient.
• Evaluate existing solutions and recommend enhancements.

The main resources for preparing for this exam include the official AWS Exam Guide, AWS Documentation, and AWS Whitepapers. Hands-on experience in building systems is also valuable, as many questions are scenario-based. You can find more details in the official AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate SAA-C03 Exam Guide . It's a good idea to review it to understand how to prepare and what to expect on the exam.

Common Exam Scenarios for the SAA-C03 Exam

Some Notes Regarding Your SAA-C03 Exam

The AWS Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) exam often concludes questions by asking for highly available or cost-effective solutions. It's important to carefully analyze the provided options and ensure they contain accurate details. Some options may appear to be the best answer but include incorrect information about certain services, making them misleading.

When uncertain about the correct options in a multi-select question, try to rule out choices you think are incorrect. This approach can help you narrow down the possible answers. The same strategy applies to multiple-choice questions. Also, pay close attention to the number of answers you select to ensure accuracy.

As highlighted in this review, it’s important to distinguish between services that fall into different categories. Common comparisons include:

• EC2 vs ECS vs Lambda
• S3 vs EBS vs EFS
• CloudFormation vs OpsWorks vs Elastic Beanstalk
• SQS vs SNS vs SES vs MQ
• Security Group vs nACLs
• The different S3 storage types vs Glacier
• RDS vs DynamoDB vs Elasticache
• RDS engines vs Aurora

The Tutorials Dojo Comparison of AWS Services offers valuable cheat sheets that highlight key differences between seemingly similar services, which are essential for tackling the challenging scenario-based questions in the exam. Understanding each service’s features and use cases can significantly simplify these types of questions.

Finally, watch for "key terms" that can help you quickly identify the correct answer. Words like millisecond latency, serverless, managed, highly available, most cost-effective, fault-tolerant, mobile, streaming, object storage, archival, polling, and push notifications frequently appear in the exam. Effective time management is crucial during AWS certification exams, so keep track of how much time you spend on each question.

* This newsletter was sourced from this Tutorials Dojo article .