AWS
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) #15 Exam Tips and Frequently Missed Patterns
After finishing SAA-C03 domain study, here is the practical strategy for protecting your score in the exam room. It lays out time management across 130 minutes and Mark for Review, how to filter options by constraint keywords, the elimination strategy, and the concept pairs most often confused on the exam (Multi-AZ vs. read replica, SG vs. NACL, Gateway vs. Interface Endpoint, and more) in a single table.
AWS Certified Developer - Associate (DVA-C02) #3 Domain 1-2 Development with AWS Services — API Gateway
The second post of the DVA-C02 development domain. It covers the difference between API Gateway's REST API and HTTP API, Lambda proxy integration, the three authentication methods (IAM, Cognito authorizer, Lambda authorizer), throttling and usage plans/API keys, caching, stages and stage variables, and CORS, all at the exam level. API Gateway is the gateway to serverless APIs and appears in the development domain second only to Lambda.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) #14 Domain 4-2 Cost Optimization — Cost Monitoring
The final post of the SAA-C03 cost optimization domain. It covers Cost Explorer for analyzing and forecasting cost, AWS Budgets for alerting on budget overruns, CUR as the most detailed billing data, Trusted Advisor for checking cost , security , performance, Compute Optimizer for right-sizing recommendations, and how to manage multi-account cost with consolidated billing and cost allocation tags.
AWS Certified Developer - Associate (DVA-C02) #2 Domain 1-1 Development with AWS Services — Lambda Deep Dive
The first post of the DVA-C02 development domain. It covers Lambda's execution model across three invocation types — synchronous, asynchronous, and stream polling — along with concurrency (reserved concurrency, provisioned concurrency) and throttling, environment variables and layers, cold starts, idempotency, and failure handling via destinations and DLQs, all at the exam level. The development domain carries the largest weight at 32%, and Lambda sits at its center.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) #13 Domain 4-1 Cost Optimization — Pricing Models
The first post of the SAA-C03 cost optimization domain. It reorganizes EC2 purchasing options from a cost perspective (Reserved Standard/Convertible, Compute/EC2 Instance Savings Plans, Spot), the cost structure of S3, data transfer costs (inbound , outbound , cross-AZ/region) and how to reduce them, and architecture choices that lower cost.
AWS Certified Developer - Associate (DVA-C02) #1 Exam Introduction — Exam Structure and Study Roadmap
The first post of the AWS Certified Developer - Associate (DVA-C02) series. It covers the exam structure (65 questions, 130 minutes, a 720 passing line), the weight and meaning of the four domains (Development 32% , Security 26% , Deployment 24% , Troubleshooting and Optimization 18%), how it differs from the Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03), and a study strategy that turns the hands-on feel built on the [AWS practical track](/en/posts/aws-basics-1-account-region-az) into exam questions from a developer's point of view. This 15-part series aims to help you pass DVA-C02, ending with a full-scale mock exam in #15.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) #12 Domain 3-4 High-Performing Architectures — Choosing a DB
The final post of the SAA-C03 high-performing domain. It covers the decisive difference between RDS's Multi-AZ (high availability) and read replicas (read scaling), cloud-native Aurora (auto storage scaling , Global , Serverless), NoSQL DynamoDB (capacity modes , global tables , DAX), Redshift for analytics, and the criteria for choosing a database by workload.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) #11 Domain 3-3 High-Performing Architectures — Choosing Storage
The third post of the SAA-C03 high-performing domain. It covers the distinction between block (EBS) , file (EFS , FSx) , object (S3) storage, EBS volume types (gp3 , io2 , st1 , sc1) and selection criteria, the use cases for EFS and FSx (Windows File Server , Lustre), and how to optimize cost with S3 storage classes (Standard , Intelligent-Tiering , IA , Glacier family) and lifecycle policies.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) #10 Domain 3-2 High-Performing Architectures — Caching
The second post of the SAA-C03 high-performing domain. It covers the difference between ElastiCache's Redis and Memcached, DAX for accelerating DynamoDB, CloudFront for caching content close to users (edge , OAC , signed URLs), cache strategies (lazy loading , write-through), and storing sessions externally for stateless design.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) #9 Domain 3-1 High-Performing Architectures — Choosing Compute
The first post of the SAA-C03 high-performing domain. It covers how to choose the compute that fits a workload: EC2 instance families (general , compute , memory , storage , accelerated) and selection criteria, the performance and cost trade-offs of purchasing options (On-Demand , Reserved , Savings Plans , Spot , Dedicated), and when to pick serverless compute (Lambda , Fargate).
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) #8 Domain 2-3 Resilient Architectures — Backup Strategy
The final post of the SAA-C03 resilience domain. It covers incremental storage of EBS snapshots and cross-Region , cross-account copy, snapshot automation with Data Lifecycle Manager, the difference between RDS automated backups and manual snapshots plus point-in-time recovery (PITR), AWS Backup and backup plans for centrally managing multiple services, and immutable backups (Vault Lock).
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) #7 Domain 2-2 Resilient Architectures — DR Patterns
The second post of the SAA-C03 resilience domain. It covers the precise meaning of RTO and RPO, the cost and recovery-time trade-offs of the four disaster recovery (DR) strategies (Backup & Restore , Pilot Light , Warm Standby , Multi-Site Active/Active), and how to implement them with Route 53 failover routing and cross-Region replication (RDS , Aurora Global , DynamoDB global tables , S3 CRR).