Conclusion

Congratulations on completing this course that prepares you for the AWS Solutions Architect – Associate exam.

What we covered

This course started with the fundamentals of AWS and elaborated on the AWS global infrastructure that allows for designing a secure, resilient, high performant, and scalable architecture. Let’s briefly look at what we covered in the course:

Secure architectures

Secure architectures involve designing and implementing robust security measures to protect AWS resources, workloads, and applications.

• We looked at AWS security best practices for access control using the Identity and Access Management (IAM) services.

• We also examined ways to secure access to resources and applications by controlling ports and network traffic using security groups, route tables, network ACLs, and NAT gateways.

• We also looked at AWS security services like Amazon GuardDuty and Amazon Macie to address external threats.

• We also looked at encrypting data at rest using AWS Key Management Service (KMS), encrypting data in transit using AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) with TLS, and implementing access policies for encryption keys.

Resilient architectures

Resilient architectures refer to the design principles and strategies to ensure high availability and fault tolerance of systems deployed on AWS.

• We looked at techniques to mitigate single points of failure, maintain system integrity, and minimize downtime in the face of failures or disruptions by using AWS global infrastructure, including Availability Zones and Regions, to distribute workloads across multiple geographically separated data centers.

• We also looked at different disaster recovery strategies such as backup and restore, pilot light, warm standby, and active-active failover to ensure data integrity and business continuity in the event of disasters or outages.

• We looked at services like Amazon Route 53 for DNS routing, AWS X-Ray for workload visibility, and purpose-built services for workloads that enhance the reliability and availability of applications deployed on AWS.

High-performing architectures

High-performing architectures can efficiently handle significant workloads and scale seamlessly to accommodate future needs.

• For storage solutions, we covered how to select appropriate storage services like Amazon S3, Amazon EFS, and Amazon EBS based on specific use cases and performance demands.

• For compute solutions, we covered how to design high-performing and elastic compute solutions that leverage AWS compute services such as AWS Batch, Amazon EMR, and Fargate, along with distributed computing concepts and serverless technologies like Lambda.

• We looked at read replicas for database solutions, selecting appropriate database engines (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL), and integrating caching strategies to optimize performance.

• We also covered network architecture designs for various scenarios, such as global, hybrid, and multi-tier architectures using Amazon CloudFront, load balancing strategies, and network connection options to ensure optimal resource placement and scalability.

• Finally, we covered the data ingestion and transformation solutions for data analytics and visualization services like Amazon Athena and AWS QuickSight, and data transfer services like AWS DataSync and AWS Storage Gateway.

Cost-optimized architectures

Cost-optimized architectures provide a balance between performance requirements and cost.

• For storage solutions, we covered understanding storage access patterns and lifecycles and selecting the most cost-effective storage service for a workload.

• For compute solutions, we covered selecting appropriate instance types and sizes, leveraging purchasing options like Spot Instances or Reserved Instances.

• For database solutions, we covered designing efficient backup and retention policies, selecting the most cost-effective database service and type for a workload, and optimizing database connections and proxies.

• Finally, in network architectures, we looked at network connections and routes to minimize transfer costs and strategically plan for content delivery networks (CDNs) and edge caching.

Practice exam

Lastly, we had three sets of practice questions with detailed answer explanations to help you prepare for the certification exam. This is especially important to reinforce your knowledge and equip you with the skills to tackle similar questions effectively during the exam.