Solution Architect Associate Checklist

(this document is a work-in-progress, it is not complete, so you should visit this document from time to time to see if anything has changed)

The AWS Solution Architect Associate exam content contains these sections:

Domain 1: Design Secure Architectures (30%)

1.1: Design secure access to AWS resources.

• Cross account resource access in IAM
• Identity providers and federation
• What is IAM Identity Center
• AWS Global Infrastructure
• AWS security best practices
• Shared Responsibility Model
• Skills:
  • Applying AWS security best practices to IAM users and root users (for example, multi-factor authentication [MFA]):
    • root user best practices
    • Security best practices in IAM
  • Designing a flexible authorization model that includes IAM users, groups, roles, and policies
    • IAM Identities (users, user groups, and roles)
  • Designing a role-based access control strategy (for example, AWS Security Token Service [AWS STS], role switching, cross-account access)
    • In identities: IAM roles
  • Designing a security strategy for multiple AWS accounts (for example, AWS Control Tower, service control policies [SCPs])
    • control tower documentation
  • Determining the appropriate use of resource policies for AWS services
  • Determining when to federate a directory service with IAM roles

1.2: Design secure workloads and applications

1.3: Determine appropriate data security controls

Domain 2: Design Resilient Architectures (26%)

• 2.1: Design scalable and loosely coupled architectures
• 2.2: Design highly available and/or fault-tolerant architectures

Domain 3: Design High-Performing Architectures (24%)

• 3.1: Determine high-performing and/or scalable storage solutions
• 3.2: Design high-performing and elastic compute solutions
• 3.3: Determine high-performing database solutions.
• 3.4: Determine high-performing and/or scalable network
• 3.5: Determine high-performing data ingestion and transformation solutions

Domain 4: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures (20%)

• 4.1: Design cost-optimized storage solutions.
• 4.2: Design cost-optimized compute solutions.
• 4.3: Design cost-optimized database solutions.
• 4.4: Design cost-optimized network architectures.