AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional Exam Guide

About

This guide serves to help the user pass the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional exam.

It generally follows the great course by Adrian Cantrill AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional course, but includes some additional content that will supplement.

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Table of Contents

AWS Essentials

• Disaster Recovery: RPO and RTO
• High Availability, Fault Tolerance and Disaster Recovery
• Regions, Availability Zones, and Edge Locations
• Data Persistence

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AWS Accounts

• Management and Access:

  • IAM Overview
  • Identity and Resource Policies Overview
  • IAM Roles and Temporary Security Credentials
  • Cross-Account Access: Resource Permissions vs. Cross-Account Roles
  • AWS Accounts and AWS Organizations
  • AWS Config
  • AWS Service Catalog
  • Billing

• Advanced Identity and Permissions in AWS:

  • IAM Permission Boundaries
  • Identity Federation
  • Policy Evaluation Logic
  • Resource Access Manager

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Networking

• Essentials:

  • VPC Basics
  • VPC Routing
  • Network Access Control Lists
  • Security Groups
  • Private vs Public Subnets, Internet Gateways, IP Addressing
  • Egress-Only Gateway
  • VPC Flow Logs
  • DNS

• Advanced VPC Networking:

  • VPC Endpoints
  • VPC Peering
  • VPNs
  • Direct Connect
  • Private Link
  • Advanced VPC Structure

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Security

• Account and Service Security:

  • Key Management Service (KMS)
  • CloudHSM
  • Certificate Manager (ACM)
  • Directory Service
  • AWS Secrets Manager

• Network Security:

  • WAF and Shield
  • GuardDuty

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Compute

• EC2:
  • EC2 Concepts
  • Creating and Using AMIs
  • Virtualization and EC2 Instance Type: Deep Dive
  • EC2 Storage and Snapshots
  • EC2 Instance Profiles and Roles
  • HPC and Placement Groups
• Containers:
  • ECS Architecture
  • ECS Security
• Serverless:
  • Serverless and Event-Driven Architectures
  • Lambda Layers
  • API Gateway
• Workspaces:
  • Workspaces Overview

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Scaling and Resilience

• Scaling Architecture:
  • AWS Service Resilience
  • Stateless Architectures
  • Deciding between Spot and Reserved Instances
  • Implementing Auto Scaling Groups (ASGs)
  • Elastic Load Balancers
• CloudFront Essentials:
  • CloudFront Architecture
  • Creating and Working with Distributions
  • Working with Custom Origins
  • CloudFront and Security
  • Optimizing Caching
  • Lambda@Edge
  • Logging, Reporting, and Monitoring
• Route 53:
  • Route 53 Architecture
  • Advanced Route 53 Concepts

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Storage

• Object Storage: Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3):
  • S3 Architecture
  • S3 Storage Tiers, Intelligent-Tiering, and Lifecycle Policies
  • Versioning and Locking
  • Controlling Access to S3 Buckets
  • Cross-Region Replication
  • Object Encryption
  • Optimizing S3 Performance
  • Glacier Architecture
• Elastic File System (EFS):
  • EFS Architecture
• FSx:
  • FSx Architecture
  • FSx Lustre
• Storage Gateway:
  • File Gateways vs. Volume Gateways vs. Tape Gateway

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Databases

• Databases Introduction:
  • EC2 Self-Managed Databases
  • Database Data Models and Engines
• SQL Databases:
  • Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
  • Aurora
  • Athena
• NoSQL Databases:
  • DynamoDB
  • DocumentDB
  • General NoSQL - Neptune & QLDB
• ElastiCache:
  • ElastiCache Architecture

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Analytics, IoT, and Streaming

• Elastic Map Reduce:
  • Elastic Map Reduce (EMR)
• Kinesis:
  • Kinesis
  • Kinesis Firehose
• Redshift:
  • Redshift Overview
• IoT Platform:
  • IoT Overview
• QuickSight:
  • QuickSight Overview
• Elasticsearch:
  • Elasticsearch Overview

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Deployment and Operations

• Monitoring:
  • CloudWatch
  • CloudTrail
• Systems Manager:
  • Systems Manager Overview
  • Parameters Store
• CloudFormation:
  • CloudFormation Overview
  • Stack Updates
  • Template Portability and Reuse
  • Stack References and Nested Stacks
  • Using CloudFormation for Disaster Recovery
• Elastic Beanstalk:
  • Elastic Beanstalk Overview
• OpsWorks:
  • OpWorks Overview
• AWS Code*
  • AWS Code*

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Migrations and Hybrid Architectures

• AWS Data Pipeline:
  • Data Pipelines Overview
• AWS Snow*:
  • Snowball and Snowmobile

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Application Integration

• Simple Queue Service (SQS):
  • SQS Overview
• Simple Notification Service (SNS):
  • SNS Overview
• Amazon MQ:
  • Amazon MQ Overview
• Workflow Orchestration:
  • SWS and Step Functions

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Useful Links

Additional links can be found in the content specific links above.

• Practice Exams:

  • Whizlabs
  • Jon Bonso
  • PSI Practice

• AWS Produced Content:

  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) Exam Guide
  • AWS Digital Library
    • Exam Readiness: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
    • AWS Well-Architected
    • Migrating and Tiering Storage to AWS
    • Deep Dive into Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)
    • Deep Dive into Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)
  • White Papers:
    • Securing Data at Rest with Encryption
    • Web Application Hosting in the AWS Cloud
    • Migrating AWS Resources to a New Region
    • AWS Security Best Practices
      • Audio Version
    • Implementing Microservices on AWS
    • Amazon Web Services: Overview of Security Processes
    • Practicing Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery on AWS
    • AWS Well-Architected Framework
    • Building a Scalable and Secure Multi-VPC AWS Network Infrastructure
  • FAQs:
    • Auto Scaling
    • Elastic Load Balancing
    • Elastic Beanstalk
    • Lambda
    • API Gateway
    • DynamoDB
    • CodePipeline
    • CodeCommit
    • CodeBuild
    • Database Migration Service (DMS)
    • Organizations
    • Server Migration Service
    • Serverless Application Model
    • EC2 Systems Manager
    • Service Catalog
    • Direct Connect
    • Transit Gateway
    • Key Management Service (KMS)

• Adrian Cantril:

  • Solutions Architect - Professional Course

• Udemy:

  • Stephane Maarek's Course

• Linux Academy:

  • The Orion Papers Pro

• Pluralsight:

  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional Path

• Tutorial Dojo:

  • AWS Cheat Sheets

• Other:

  • AWS In Plain English
  • AWS Certification Reddit

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Planned Approach

• Watch Linux Academy Course Through
• Work Through Adrian Cantrill's SA Pro Course (If Available)
• Watch AWS Digital Library:
  • Exam Readiness: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
  • AWS Well-Architected
  • Migrating and Tiering Storage to AWS
  • Deep Dive into Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)
  • Deep Dive into Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)
• Read FAQs:
  • Auto Scaling
  • Elastic Load Balancing
  • Elastic Beanstalk
  • Lambda
  • API Gateway
  • DynamoDB
  • CodePipeline
  • CodeCommit
  • CodeBuild
  • Database Migration Service (DMS)
  • Organizations
  • Server Migration Service
  • Serverless Application Model
  • EC2 Systems Manager
  • Service Catalog
  • Direct Connect
  • Transit Gateway
  • Key Management Service (KMS)
• Take Practice Exams:
  • 1 Bonso
  • 1 Whizlab
• Read Whitepapers:
  • Securing Data at Rest with Encryption
  • Web Application Hosting in the AWS Cloud
  • Migrating AWS Resources to a New Region
  • AWS Security Best Practices
  • Implementing Microservices on AWS
  • Amazon Web Services: Overview of Security Processes
  • Practicing Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery on AWS
  • AWS Well-Architected Framework
  • Building a Scalable and Secure Multi-VPC AWS Network Infrastructure
• Watch Stephane Maarek's Udemy Course
• Take Practice Exams:
  • Bonso
  • Whizlab
  • PSI
• Review
• Schedule Exam