AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03)
Design cost-effective, high-performing, resilient, and secure architectures on AWS, covering multi-tier VPC networks, compute scaling, S3 storage tiers, relational and NoSQL databases, and disaster recovery.
Official Exam Specification & Quick Facts
Question Difficulty Breakdown
Recommended Study Guides & Exam Preparation Blueprints
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Exam Guidelines & Simulation Rules
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
The SAA-C03 exam contains 65 multiple-choice and multiple-response scenario questions over 130 minutes. Cost is $150 USD with a passing threshold of 720/1000 (72%).
Domains include: (1) Design Secure Architectures (~30%), (2) Design Resilient Architectures (~26%), (3) Design High-Performing Architectures (~24%), and (4) Design Cost-Optimized Architectures (~20%).
ALB operates at Layer 7 (HTTP/HTTPS) providing path-based routing, host headers, and SSL termination. NLB operates at Layer 4 (TCP/UDP/TLS) providing ultra-low latency, handling millions of requests per second, and supporting static elastic IPs.
S3 CRR asynchronously copies objects across buckets in different AWS regions for disaster recovery and compliance, requiring S3 Versioning to be enabled on both source and destination buckets.
Multi-AZ synchronously replicates data to a standby instance in another AZ for high availability and automatic failover. Read Replicas asynchronously replicate data to offload read-heavy traffic and improve performance.
Aurora Global Database replicates data across multiple AWS regions with sub-second replication latency, providing fast local reads in secondary regions and disaster recovery with RPO < 1 second and RTO < 1 minute.
Auto Scaling monitors application metrics (CPU utilization, request count per target) and automatically launches additional EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones to handle load.
NAT Gateway is a fully managed, highly available service that scales up to 100 Gbps without managing software or instances. NAT Instances are individual EC2 instances that require manual configuration, patching, and failover management.
Choose DynamoDB for non-relational key-value or document data requiring single-digit millisecond latency at any scale with automated horizontal sharding. Choose RDS for complex relational joins, foreign keys, and existing SQL compatibility.
Transit Gateway acts as a regional cloud router, interconnecting hundreds of VPCs and on-premises networks in a central hub-and-spoke topology, eliminating complex full-mesh VPC peering.
The SAA-C03 certification is valid for three years from the date earned and can be renewed by passing SAA-C03 again or passing SAP-C02.
SAA-C03 is the industry benchmark certification for Cloud Architects, Systems Engineers, and Solutions Consultants earning average US salaries between $130,000 and $170,000.