NEW 2025

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C03 Study Guide

by Stephen Philip Thomas

The most comprehensive study guide for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) exam. Spanning 700+ pages across 19 chapters, this book covers every exam domain in depth — from IAM and VPC networking to disaster recovery, cost optimization, and database performance. Packed with real-world scenarios, decision frameworks, practice questions, quick reference cheat sheets, and a complete glossary to ensure you pass the exam with confidence.

What You'll Learn

• Master IAM users, groups, roles, policies, permission boundaries, and identity federation for secure AWS architectures
• Design high-availability and fault-tolerant systems with Multi-AZ, Multi-Region, load balancing, and Auto Scaling
• Implement network security with VPCs, Security Groups, NACLs, WAF, Shield, VPC Endpoints, and PrivateLink
• Optimize compute and storage using EC2 instance types, EBS volumes, S3 storage classes, EFS, and FSx
• Build disaster recovery strategies from Backup & Restore through Pilot Light, Warm Standby, to Active-Active
• Apply cost optimization with Reserved Instances, Spot Instances, Savings Plans, Cost Explorer, and Trusted Advisor

Full Table of Contents

1. 1 Introduction to the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam — Why get certified, exam format and domains, study strategy, and test day tips
2. 2 AWS Global Infrastructure and Core Concepts — Regions, Availability Zones, Edge Locations, Shared Responsibility Model, Well-Architected Framework, and Resource Access Manager (RAM)
3. 3 Identity and Access Management (IAM) — Users, groups, roles, policies, permission boundaries, policy evaluation, LDAP federation, custom identity brokers, and STS
4. 4 Data Protection and Encryption — Encryption at rest and in transit, KMS, Secrets Manager, Parameter Store, client-side encryption, ECS Fargate secrets, and Requester Pays
5. 5 Network Security — Security Groups, NACLs, ephemeral ports, VPC Endpoints, PrivateLink, WAF, Shield, rate-based rules, and Network Firewall
6. 6 Authentication and Authorization Services — Cognito, SSO, identity federation, STS, cross-account access, MFA, and IAM database authentication
7. 7 High Availability and Fault Tolerance — Multi-AZ/Multi-Region, load balancers (ALB, NLB, GLB), cross-zone balancing, gRPC, Auto Scaling, Elastic IPs, placement groups, SQS/SNS messaging, and SWF
8. 8 Disaster Recovery Strategies — Backup & Restore, Pilot Light, Warm Standby, Multi-Site Active-Active, RTO/RPO analysis, and automation
9. 9 Elastic and Resilient Compute Design — EC2 instance types, launch templates, Systems Manager Run Command, Elastic Beanstalk, Lightsail, horizontal vs vertical scaling, and async processing patterns
10. 10 Optimizing Compute and Storage — EBS volume types and live modifications, instance store, S3 storage classes, Transfer Acceleration, multipart upload, EFS, FSx, and S3 Object Lambda
11. 11 Networking for Performance — Transitive routing, VPC Peering, Transit Gateway, Global Accelerator, Lambda@Edge, Route 53 routing policies, bastion hosts, Gateway VPC Endpoints, and SNI on ALB
12. 12 Database Performance — RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB (partitions, capacity modes, GSI/LSI, DAX, Global Tables, Streams), batch operations, Glue, and Apache Parquet
13. 13 Monitoring and Load Handling — CloudWatch, CloudTrail, X-Ray tracing, stress testing, Auto Scaling policies, and sentiment analysis with Comprehend
14. 14 Cost Optimization Strategies — AWS pricing models, Cost Explorer, Budgets, Cost Anomaly Detection, Trusted Advisor, and governance best practices
15. 15 Right-Sizing and Resource Efficiency — Compute scheduling, Auto Scaling, storage lifecycle management, ELB optimization, and performance monitoring
16. 16 Practice Exam Review and Analysis — Question walkthroughs, mistake analysis, misconceptions, domain mapping, and exam confidence building
17. 17 Quick Reference Cheat Sheets — Service limits, ports and protocols, decision diagrams for compute, database, storage, network, and security selection
18. 18 Glossary and AWS Acronym Guide — Complete A-Z glossary, acronyms, cross-reference guide, and study tips
19. 19 About The Author