CertNote/ Commute Study Notes
Roadmap
KOEN
CLF-C02 · FoundationalCloud Practitioner - Foundational
DVA-C02 · AssociateDeveloper - Associate
SAA-C03 · AssociateSolutions Architect - Associate
  • Week 1
    • 1.The Map of AWS Infrastructure: Regions, AZs, and the Promise Called Shared Responsibility
    • 2.IAM Fundamentals: Who Gets to Do What
    • 3.IAM Deep Dive: STS, Permissions Boundaries, and the Shadow of the Confused Deputy
    • 4.AWS Organizations, SCP, Control Tower: The Skeleton of Multi-Account Governance
    • 5.Week 1 Review: Fundamentals and IAM, Hardened Through Scenarios
  • Week 2
  • Week 3
  • Week 4
  • Week 5
  • Week 6
  • Week 7
  • Week 8
  • Week 9
  • Week 10
  • Week 11
  • Week 12
SOA-C02 · AssociateCloudOps Engineer - Associate
SAP-C02 · ProfessionalSolutions Architect - Professional
DOP-C02 · ProfessionalDevOps Engineer - Professional
Linux Master 2 · 2급KAIT Linux Master - Level 2
SCS-C03 · SpecialtySecurity - Specialty
Linux Master 1 · 1급KAIT Linux Master - Level 1
MLA-C01 · AssociateMachine Learning Engineer - Associate
AIF-C01 · FoundationalAI Practitioner - Foundational
DEA-C01 · AssociateData Engineer - Associate
MLS-C01 · SpecialtyMachine Learning - Specialty
SQLD · 개발자SQL Developer (SQLD)

© CertNote · 주간랩스

  • About
  • Changelog
  • Contact
  • Terms
  • Privacy
← All certifications/SAA-C03

Solutions Architect - Associate

12 weeks · 60 days · Associate

Start with Week 1

Read SAA-C03 pass reviews →

Exam Information

Intermediate · 1-2 years of relevant hands-on experience recommended
Questions
65
Duration
130min
Passing
720 / 1000
Cost
$150
Validity
3y

Domain Weights

Design Secure Architectures30%
Design Resilient Architectures26%
Design High-Performing Architectures24%
Design Cost-Optimized Architectures20%
Format65 multiple-choice or multiple-response questions
Prerequisites1 or more years of experience designing cloud solutions using AWS services recommended
LanguagesEnglish, Korean, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Latin America), Spanish (Spain)

Benefits & Tips

  • Passing earns you a 50% discount voucher for your next exam. Find it under "Benefits" in your AWS Certification account and use it for recertification or another certification (it has an expiry date, so use it before then).
  • The certification is valid for 3 years and must be renewed before it expires. You can use the 50% voucher for recertification too.
  • There is no free retake (every attempt is paid in full). Passing on the first try is the cheapest route, so take the real exam once your mock exam scores clear the passing mark.
  • Passing also earns you a Credly digital badge that you can add to LinkedIn and your email signature.

FAQ

How many questions are on the SAA-C03 exam, and how long is it?+

SAA-C03 has 65 questions and a time limit of 130 minutes. Questions are multiple-choice and multiple-response.

What is the passing score?+

A score of 720 or higher out of 1000 is required to pass. Scores are scaled to account for question difficulty, so they are not the same as a simple percentage of correct answers.

How much does the exam cost, and how do I register?+

The exam fee is US $150. You can take it through Pearson VUE at a test center or as an online proctored exam. There is no free retake, so you pay the full fee each time you sit the exam.

How long is the certification valid, and how do I recertify?+

The certification is valid for 3 years after you pass, and you must recertify before it expires. Passing the exam earns you a 50% discount voucher for your next exam, which you can use to recertify or to take another AWS certification.

Can I take the exam in Korean?+

Yes. The exam is offered in 10 languages, including Korean. You can choose your language when you register for the exam.

Official Exam Guide Register for Exam

Week 1

  • Day 1The Map of AWS Infrastructure: Regions, AZs, and the Promise Called Shared Responsibility
  • Day 2IAM Fundamentals: Who Gets to Do What
  • Day 3IAM Deep Dive: STS, Permissions Boundaries, and the Shadow of the Confused Deputy
  • Day 4AWS Organizations, SCP, Control Tower: The Skeleton of Multi-Account Governance
  • Day 5Week 1 Review: Fundamentals and IAM, Hardened Through Scenarios

Week 2

  • Day 1VPC Subnet Routing: The Path a Packet Takes to Reach the Internet
  • Day 2IGW, NAT Gateway, Bastion: The Bridges Between the Internet and a Private Network
  • Day 3Security Groups vs NACLs, and What Flow Logs Tell You
  • Day 4VPC Peering, Transit Gateway, VPC Endpoint: Connections Beyond the VPC
  • Day 5Week 2 Synthesis: Drawing the Path a Packet Travels One More Time

Week 3

  • Day 1EC2 Instance Types and Purchase Options: Where Hardware Design Meets Economics
  • Day 2EBS vs Instance Store: Trading Persistence for Performance, and Choosing a File System
  • Day 3ELB: The Design Philosophy of Per-Layer Load Balancing and How to Choose Between ALB, NLB, and GLB
  • Day 4Auto Scaling Groups: Control Theory, Predictive Scaling, and the Art of Graceful Shutdown
  • Day 5Week 3 Comprehensive Review: Connecting EC2, Storage, ELB, and ASG into One Architecture

Week 4

  • Day 1S3: The Internal Architecture of Object Storage, the Evolution of Its Consistency Model, and Large-Scale Operational Patterns
  • Day 2S3 Storage Classes and Lifecycle: The Economics of Managing Data Temperature
  • Day 3S3 Security: The Layered Structure of Access Control, Encryption Key Management, and Data Exfiltration Prevention
  • Day 4CloudFront and Storage Gateway: The Internal Structure of a CDN and Hybrid Storage Patterns
  • Day 5Week 4 Comprehensive Review: Turning S3, CloudFront, and Storage Patterns into a Single Decision System

Week 5

  • Day 1RDS: What It Means to Run a Relational Database in the Cloud
  • Day 2Aurora: The Relational Database AWS Redesigned From Scratch
  • Day 3DynamoDB: What It Means to Design in a Schema-less World
  • Day 4ElastiCache and In-Memory Data Stores: The Physics of Speed
  • Day 5Week 5 Review: The Art of Choosing a Database

Week 6

  • Day 1Lambda: What It Really Means to Run Code Without a Server
  • Day 2API Gateway: The Broker Between Client and Backend
  • Day 3Step Functions and AppSync: Orchestration and GraphQL
  • Day 4Containers: ECS, EKS, Fargate, ECR
  • Day 5Week 6 Review: Serverless + Containers Combined

Week 7

  • Day 1SQS: How a Message Queue Answers the Questions Distributed Systems Ask
  • Day 2SNS: Topics, Fanout, and How 1:N Notifications Get Made
  • Day 3EventBridge: How an Event Routing Hub Gathers SaaS, AWS, and Internal Apps in One Place
  • Day 4Kinesis: How a Real-Time Stream Solves a Different Problem Than a Queue
  • Day 5Week 7 Review: The Four Models of Messaging and Distributed-System Decisions

Week 8

  • Day 1KMS: Why Key Management Is the Root of Cloud Security
  • Day 2Secrets Manager, Parameter Store, and CloudHSM: Three Tools for Handling Secrets and Configuration
  • Day 3Cognito: Peeling User Authentication Off Into a Cloud Service
  • Day 4WAF, Shield, GuardDuty, Inspector, Macie: The 5 Pillars of Cloud Security Operations
  • Day 5Week 8 Wrap-Up: 12 Security Domain Scenarios

Week 9

  • Day 1CloudWatch: Why Observability Split Into the Three Pillars of Metrics, Logs, and Traces
  • Day 2CloudTrail: Why an Audit Log Must Be Tamper-Proof
  • Day 3Config and Systems Manager: How Do You Enforce a Desired State
  • Day 4X-Ray, Trusted Advisor, Health Dashboard: When One Request Crosses Many Services, How Do You Know Who's Slow?
  • Day 5Week 9 Synthesis: Threading Observability and Governance Through "Who / When / What / Why"

Week 10

  • Day 1Why Compute Cost Splits Along Three Axes: Commitment, Market, and Ownership
  • Day 2Why Storage Cost Is a Function Not of "Unit Price" but of "Access Pattern"
  • Day 3Why Data Transfer Becomes the Hidden 30% of the Bill
  • Day 4Why Cost Governance Splits Into Three Stages: Measure, Account, Automate
  • Day 5Week 10 Synthesis: Binding Cost Optimization Into a Single Way of Thinking

Week 11

  • Day 1Why Availability Zones and Regions Split Along the Cost Called "Physical Distance"
  • Day 2Why DR Got Organized into a "Four-Stage Spectrum"
  • Day 3How DNS Steers Global Traffic with "One Query for a Name"
  • Day 4Why Migration Is Decided by "How You Can't Move It" More Than "What You're Moving"
  • Day 5Threading Resilience, DR, and Migration Onto a Single Decision Tree

Week 12

  • Day 1Why the Security Domain Converges on a Single One-Line Algorithm Called "Policy Evaluation Order"
  • Day 2Why the Resilience Domain Reduces to Two Variables: "Blast Radius and Replication Mode"
  • Day 3Why the High-Performance Domain Reduces to "How Close You Keep Data to the User"
  • Day 4Why the Cost Domain Converges on "a Decision at the Design Stage, Not in Operations"
  • Day 5What the Exam Asks to the End Is "the Speed of Translating Keywords into Services"