Here's a comprehensive AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) Cheat Sheet for quick
last-day reference:
🚀 AWS Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) Cheat Sheet
🔹 1. AWS Global Infrastructure
✅ Regions – Physically separated locations
✅ Availability Zones (AZs) – Multiple data centers in a region
✅ Edge Locations – Used by CloudFront for caching
🔹 2. Compute Services
✅ EC2 – Virtual servers; Instance Types (General, Compute, Memory, Storage Optimized)
✅ Auto Scaling – Scales instances based on demand
✅ Load Balancers –
🔹 ALB (Application LB) – Layer 7 (HTTP/S)
🔹 NLB (Network LB) – Layer 4 (TCP/UDP)
🔹 CLB (Classic LB) – Deprecated
✅ Lambda – Serverless functions, event-driven
✅ ECS vs. EKS – Container orchestration
✅ Elastic Beanstalk – PaaS to deploy applications
🔹 3. Storage Services
✅ S3 (Simple Storage Service) – Object storage; classes:
🔹 Standard – General-purpose, high availability
🔹 IA (Infrequent Access) – Cheaper, for less-accessed data
🔹 One Zone-IA – Cheaper than IA, but only one AZ
🔹 Glacier / Glacier Deep Archive – For long-term storage
✅ EBS (Elastic Block Store) – Block storage for EC2, types:
🔹 GP3 (General Purpose SSD) – Default
🔹 IO1/IO2 (Provisioned IOPS SSD) – High-performance databases
🔹 SC1 (Cold HDD) / ST1 (Throughput HDD) – Low-cost, infrequent access
✅ EFS (Elastic File System) – Network file storage for multiple EC2s
✅ Glacier – Archival storage
🔹 4. Networking & Content Delivery
✅ VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) – Private AWS network
🔹 Subnets – Public (Internet-facing) & Private (internal)
🔹 Route Tables – Control network traffic
🔹 Internet Gateway (IGW) – Allows public access
🔹 NAT Gateway – Enables private subnets to access the internet
✅ VPC Peering – Connects two VPCs
✅ VPN & Direct Connect – Secure on-prem to AWS connections
✅ Route 53 – Managed DNS service; Routing policies:
🔹 Simple – Single endpoint
🔹 Weighted – Traffic split by %
🔹 Failover – Active/passive setup
🔹 Latency-Based – Routes based on latency
🔹 Geolocation – Routes based on user location
✅ CloudFront – CDN for content caching
🔹 5. Databases
✅ RDS (Relational Database Service) – Managed DB (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, Aurora)
🔹 Multi-AZ – High availability
🔹 Read Replicas – Scaling reads
✅ Aurora – AWS-managed RDS, faster than MySQL/PostgreSQL
✅ DynamoDB – Serverless NoSQL DB, scales automatically
🔹 DAX – Caching for DynamoDB
🔹 Global Tables – Multi-region replication
✅ ElastiCache – In-memory caching (Redis, Memcached)
✅ Redshift – Data warehousing
🔹 6. Security & Identity Management
✅ IAM (Identity & Access Management) – Manages permissions
🔹 Policies – JSON documents defining access
🔹 Roles – Permissions for AWS services
✅ Cognito – User authentication & identity pools
✅ KMS (Key Management Service) – Encrypts data
✅ AWS Shield – DDoS protection (Standard & Advanced)
✅ AWS WAF – Web application firewall
✅ AWS Organizations – Manage multiple AWS accounts
✅ GuardDuty – Threat detection
✅ Inspector – Scans for vulnerabilities
🔹 7. Application Integration
✅ SQS (Simple Queue Service) – Message queue service
🔹 FIFO Queue – Messages processed in order
🔹 Standard Queue – Best-effort ordering
✅ SNS (Simple Notification Service) – Pub/Sub messaging
✅ EventBridge (CloudWatch Events) – Event-driven architecture
✅ Step Functions – Serverless workflows
🔹 8. Monitoring & Management
✅ CloudWatch – Logs, metrics, alarms
✅ AWS X-Ray – Traces requests across applications
✅ CloudTrail – Logs API activity
✅ AWS Config – Tracks configuration changes
✅ AWS Budgets & Cost Explorer – Cost monitoring
🔹 9. High Availability & Disaster Recovery
✅ Multi-AZ – Data redundancy across AZs
✅ Auto Scaling – Scale resources automatically
✅ Pilot Light – Small version of system always running
✅ Warm Standby – Scaled-down version of full production system
✅ Multi-Region Deployment – Active-Active architecture
🔹 10. AWS Pricing & Cost Optimization
✅ EC2 Pricing Models:
🔹 On-Demand – Pay per use
🔹 Reserved Instances – Long-term discount
🔹 Spot Instances – Up to 90% discount, but can be terminated
🔹 Savings Plans – Discounted pricing for consistent usage
✅ S3 Storage Classes – Use lower-cost classes for rarely accessed data
✅ Compute Savings Plans – Lower costs for EC2 & Lambda