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Preparing for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate certification (SAA-C03)

Preparation guide for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate: format, the four domains (security, resilience, performance, costs), reference architectures to know, a study plan and a method for scenario questions.

Martin LEKPA3 min readPublished 28/10/2026Updated 08/11/2026

1. The exam #

Format and domains.

Format #

Item	Indicative value
Questions	65 (15 of them unscored), single- or multiple-choice scenarios
Duration	130 minutes
Passing score	720 out of 1000
Price	150 USD
Validity	3 years

SAA-C03 domains — Security is cross-cutting: it also appears in questions from the other domains.

2. Architectures to know #

Recurring patterns.

Reference #

Reference web architecture — Be able to justify each building block: availability, performance, security, cost.

Scenario need	Typical answer
Decoupling components	SQS (queue), SNS (fan-out), EventBridge (events)
Unpredictable load, no servers	Lambda + API Gateway + DynamoDB
Disaster recovery	Backup/restore, pilot light, warm standby, multi-site (increasing cost)
Private access to S3 from a VPC	Gateway VPC Endpoint
Storage shared between instances	EFS (Linux), FSx (Windows, Lustre)
Reducing global latency	CloudFront, Global Accelerator, cross-region replicas

3. Method #

Answering scenario questions.

Method #

Spot the deciding constraint: « least expensive », « least operational effort », « highly available », « lowest latency ».
Eliminate answers that do not meet a constraint, even if they work.
Prefer managed services when the question mentions operational effort.
Check consistency: a single AZ is never « highly available ».

Good practice: Practice with full, timed mock exams: time management (2 minutes per question) is part of the difficulty.