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AWS SAP-C03 Study Guide

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional SAP-C03

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional (SAP-C03) is a professional-level exam on designing optimized AWS solutions across many accounts and applications. It covers cloud-built architectures with AI integration, security and governance, cost, resilience and migration, and operational excellence. It suits experienced solutions architects.

  • Exam code SAP-C03
  • Professional level
  • 5 exam domains

This guide is free, with no sign-up. It explains every AWS SAP-C03 exam topic in plain English, one chapter at a time. Read them in order or jump straight to the topic you need.

  • 5chapters
  • 40topics
  • 4diagrams and exhibits
  • 3 h 34 minfast track
Start with Architecture Design and Implementation Built for the Cloud
  • Every topic follows the same simple pattern: what it is, how it works, common mistakes
  • Diagrams and real command output where a picture explains it best
  • Exam tips and worked subnetting and IPv6 practice, with answers

How the exam is weighted

Each domain is worth this share of the exam, so spend your study time in proportion. Select a domain to open its chapter.

Chapters

Open a chapter to see its topics and how long each takes.

1Architecture Design and Implementation Built for the Cloud11 topics · 55 min fast trackEvent-driven apps, containers, edge, VPC and hybrid networks, databases, data lakes and generative AI.
  1. 1Event-Driven Messaging and Event Routing5 min
  2. 2Stateless Design, Caching and Multi-Tenancy5 min
  3. 3Serverless Workflows, Pipelines and Legacy Integration5 min
  4. 4Containers, Service Mesh and Auto Scaling5 min
  5. 5Ingress, Edge Compute and Global Traffic Routing5 min
  6. 6VPC Design, IPv6 and Network Security5 min
  7. 7Hybrid Connectivity, Hybrid DNS and Multi-VPC Design5 min
  8. 8Hybrid Compute and Data Synchronization5 min
  9. 9Database and Storage Selection and Scaling5 min
  10. 10Data Lakes, Analytics Pipelines and Data Sharing5 min
  11. 11Generative AI, Agents, RAG and ML Inference5 min
Read the chapter overview →
2Security, Compliance, and Governance8 topics · 46 min fast trackFederation, least privilege, data perimeters, encryption, multi-account governance, compliance and AI controls.
  1. 1Federation, Application Auth and Workload Identity6 min
  2. 2Least Privilege and Data Perimeters6 min
  3. 3Organizations, Landing Zones, SCPs and RCPs6 min
  4. 4Encryption, Certificates, HSMs and Post-Quantum6 min
  5. 5Centralized Logging and Audit Trails6 min
  6. 6Compliance Monitoring, Patching and Risk5 min
  7. 7Data Protection, Sovereignty and Residency5 min
  8. 8Governance for Generative and Agentic AI6 min
Read the chapter overview →
3Cost-Optimized Architecture Design8 topics · 46 min fast trackPurchase options, compute and AI costs, data transfer, storage tiering, tagging, chargeback and cost monitoring.
  1. 1Purchase Options and Commitments6 min
  2. 2Cost Optimized Compute and Rightsizing5 min
  3. 3AI and ML Cost Optimization6 min
  4. 4Content Delivery and Multi Region Replication6 min
  5. 5Data Transfer and Network Costs5 min
  6. 6Storage Tiering, Block Storage and Backup6 min
  7. 7Cost Allocation Tagging and Chargeback6 min
  8. 8Cost Reporting, Monitoring and Observability6 min
Read the chapter overview →
4Resilience, Migration, and Business Continuity6 topics · 31 min fast trackSAP-C03 resilience chapter overview: migration waves, rehost and modernize, DR strategies, multi-Region failover, locked backups and resilience tests.
  1. 1Migration Assessment, Rehosting, and Data Migration5 min
  2. 2Replatforming, Refactoring, and Legacy Modernization5 min
  3. 3Disaster Recovery Strategies and Continuous Replication5 min
  4. 4Multi-Region Failover and Resilient Architectures6 min
  5. 5Backup Governance and Ransomware Protection5 min
  6. 6Resilience Assessment, Testing, and Chaos Engineering5 min
Read the chapter overview →
5Operational Excellence and Automation7 topics · 36 min fast trackIaC, policy as code, pipelines, deployments, observability, SLOs, scaling, recovery and runbooks.
  1. 1Infrastructure and Policy as Code5 min
  2. 2CI/CD Pipelines and Artifact Security5 min
  3. 3Deployment Strategies and Failure Recovery6 min
  4. 4Observability and Log Aggregation5 min
  5. 5Alerting, SLOs and User Experience5 min
  6. 6Scaling, Capacity and Automated Runbooks5 min
  7. 7Evaluating and Monitoring AI Workloads5 min
Read the chapter overview →

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The full AWS SAP-C03 question bank has 850 questions, with timed practice exams and an explanation for every answer.

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