Independent preparation · SAA-C03
Use constraints to choose an architecture, then test the relevant concept. Selected explanations and local experiments are available; this is not full exam coverage.
Read the explanation, predict a changed scenario, run an experiment and explain the outcome. Return to a topic after a gap. These local exercises supplement study; they do not replace experience using the real services.
Almost every AWS error a beginner hits is an IAM error wearing a different hat. AccessDenied on a bucket, a Lambda that cannot write logs, an EC2 instance that cannot reach a database — the same evaluation logic decides all three.
ExplorePublic and private subnets are not a setting. A subnet is "public" only because its route table has a path to an internet gateway. Once that clicks, NAT gateways, bastion hosts and VPC endpoints all stop being memorised facts.
ExploreMarketing wants a landing page live today with no servers. Finance wants every resource attributable. Legal wants overwrites recoverable. All three are S3 settings, and two of them are off by default for good reasons.
ExploreTraffic triples at 09:00 every weekday and the site falls over at 09:02. Adding a bigger instance fixes it until the day traffic quadruples. Horizontal scaling is a different shape of answer, and it forces your application to become stateless.
ExploreThe database is the part you least want to run yourself and the part hardest to move later. Multi-AZ and read replicas look similar in the console and solve completely different problems.
ExploreTwo architectures both meet the requirements. One costs four times the other. Cost is a design constraint that shows up in every diagram — data transfer paths, instance lifecycles, storage classes — and almost never in the diagram itself.
ExploreChoose an answer to see explanations for every option. Revisit any question without a timer or login.
Secure architectures
Secure architectures
Resilient architectures
Secure architectures
Cost-optimized architectures