The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) exam is for individuals working in a solutions architect role. It focuses on designing solutions based on the AWS Well-Architected Framework. The exam assesses the ability to:
- Design solutions using AWS services to meet current and future business requirements.
- Create architectures that are secure, resilient, high-performing, and cost-optimized.
- Review and improve existing solutions.
Candidates should have at least one year of hands-on experience designing cloud solutions using AWS services.
The exam contains two types of questions: multiple-choice and multiple-response. There are 50 questions in total, and unanswered questions are scored as incorrect.
Additionally, the exam includes 15 unscored questions that AWS uses for evaluation but are not identified during the exam.
To pass, candidates need a minimum score of 720 out of a possible 1,000. The exam uses a scaled scoring model.
The exam content is divided into four domains with respective weightings:
- Design Secure Architectures (30%)
- Design Resilient Architectures (26%)
- Design High-Performing Architectures (24%)
- Design Cost-Optimized Architectures (20%)
Each domain contains specific task statements, knowledge areas, and skills to demonstrate proficiency in designing AWS solutions.
Difficulty: 2 out of 5.
I found this to be slightly more difficult than the AWS Developer Associate exam because it involves a lot of planning. You're going to get asked to put together a plan for the fastest, the easiest, the least complex, the most budget friendly, or the most powerful solution that performs a certain task. This requires you to know a lot more than you might expect about how all of the AWS systems play together.
I really enjoyed this one because the material made me sit and think about how I'd build something without getting into the weeds over how to set up the individual services too much. The questions on the exam felt more like thought exercises than trivia questions. Highly recommend doing this one if you think you're going to work with AWS.
