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AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Certification Prep

Prepare for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate-level exam

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate exam is ideal for individuals who have experience designing distributed applications and systems on the AWS platform. Achieving AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate certification validates your understanding of the following concepts:

  • Designing and deploying scalable, highly available and fault-tolerant systems on AWS.
  • Lift and shift of an existing on-premises application to AWS.
  • Ingress and egress of data to and from AWS.
  • Selecting the appropriate AWS service based on data, compute, database or security requirements.
  • Identifying appropriate use of AWS architectural best practices.
  • Estimating AWS costs and identifying cost control mechanisms.

 

About the exam

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate exam includes multiple-choice and multiple-answer questions. You will have 80 minutes to complete it.

 

Prerequisites

The below prerequisites demonstrate the skills and knowledge that will help you achieve the AWS Solutions Architect – Associate certification:

 

 

AWS Knowledge and Experience

  • Hands-on experience using compute, networking, storage, and database AWS services.
  • Professional experience architecting large-scale distributed systems.
  • Understanding of Elasticity and Scalability concepts.
  • Understanding of network technologies as they relate to AWS.
  • A good understanding of all security features and tools that AWS provides and how they relate to traditional services.
  • A strong understanding of how to interact with AWS (AWS SDK, AWS API, Command Line Interface, AWS CloudFormation).
  • Hands-on experience with AWS deployment and management services. 

 

 

General IT Knowledge 

  • Excellent understanding of typical multitier architectures: web servers (Apache, nginx, IIS), caching, applications
  • RDBMS (MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server), NoSQL.
  • On servers and load balancers.
  • Knowledge of message queuing and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB).
  • Familiarity with loose coupling and stateless systems.
  • Understanding of different consistency models in distributed systems.
  • Experience with CDN and performance concepts.
  • Network experience with route tables, access control lists, firewalls, NAT, HTTP, DNS, IP and OSI Network.
  • Knowledge of RESTful Web Services, XML, JSON.
  • Familiarity with the software development lifecycle.
  • Work experience with information and application security, including public key encryption, SSH, access credentials and X.509 certificates.

Required Exams

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate exam 

Recertification

AWS Associate-level certification holders are required to get recertified every two years in order to remain valid. Two ways to maintain Associate-level certification:

  1. Take a Recertification Exam. This is not the same exam as the original, but follows the same format. Read more at AWS Recertification FAQs.
  2. Pass the Professional-level Exam. You can remain certified by earning either the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional or AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional certification.