This guide is for candidates preparing for AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) and for readers who need a stronger review of AWS design trade-offs. The exam is not a service flash-card test. It is a decision test: choose the right storage, networking, database, compute, resiliency, and cost pattern under an explicit constraint such as latency, operational effort, failure tolerance, or security.
Gateway endpoint: Route-table-based private path from a VPC to Amazon S3 or DynamoDB.
NAT gateway: Managed outbound path that lets private subnets reach the internet or public service endpoints.
ALB / NLB: Application Load Balancer versus Network Load Balancer, which usually means Layer 7 routing versus Layer 4 traffic handling.
Current exam snapshot
AWS’s current SAA-C03 exam guide states:
65 questions in 130 minutes
50 scored questions plus 15 unscored
720 passing score on a scaled 100-1000 range
recommended candidate profile: about 1 year of hands-on AWS solution-design experience
AWS’s current exam guide breaks SAA-C03 into four weighted domains:
1. Secure Architectures: 30%
2. Resilient Architectures: 26%
3. High-Performing Architectures: 24%
4. Cost-Optimized Architectures: 20%
This guide follows that structure directly.
How to use this guide well
flowchart LR
S["Study Plan"] --> D["Domain chapters"]
D --> L["Lesson pages"]
L --> C["Cheat Sheet and Glossary"]
C --> M["Mixed mocks and miss-log review"]
M --> R["Resources for final scope check"]
What to notice:
the main lesson pages are where you learn the architecture logic
the appendices are support layers, not replacements for the chapter work
mixed mocks should happen after you already have domain-level judgment, not before
Use one of these paths:
if you want a paced build, start with the study plan
if you already know AWS services but miss scenario questions, go straight into the four domain chapters and keep the cheat sheet open
if architecture trade-offs blur together, use the cheat sheet to map constraints to answer patterns
if you are close to exam day, use the faq, glossary, and resources to tighten scope and eliminate avoidable mistakes
Resources for the official AWS exam guide and primary docs
If you only have time for one final pass before mocks, spend it on Secure Architectures and Resilient Architectures first. Those two domains carry the most weight and also influence how many performance and cost questions are solved.