What are the new versions of AWS Certified solution Architect examination?

AWS CSA new version (SAA-C02) was released on March 23, 2020, while SAA-C01 can still be taken till July 01 , 2020. This article concentrates on the SAA-C02 edition.

The AWS CSA provides some clear advantages:

• Improves marketability for employers
• Provides strong credibility in a rising industry with expected growth in five years of up to 70 per cent.
• Market analysis shows it is the highest paying certification for AWS IT in 2020

If your next qualification is the AWS Certified Solutions Architect-Associate, you ‘re probably wondering where to start your training. This article is all about new topics added , the weightage of topics in the AWS CSA exam etc.

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Approach for AWS CSA saa-02 exam

Any sort of Learning Path material serves instructional purpose. A training test gives you the chance to evaluate your skills and readiness before taking the actual AWS CSA examination

The Solutions Architect-Associate Learning path focuses on four different domains, each with a weighting percentage in the examination.

• Model Architectures Resilient (30 percent)
• High performance architecture design (28 per cent)
• Build Secure Architectures and Applications (24 percent)
• Cost-optimized architecture concept (18 per cent).

AWS CSA exam updated weightage

This will give you an idea of where you should spend your time on learning new subjects. Below we will discuss some basics. You are taking the SAA-C01 edition of the test. Looking at the learning path itself, let us break down the topics and coverage of the service for each domain, so that you understand what to expect from the exam.

Domain 1: Build Architectures -30%

• Internal network of the AWS (Regions, Availability Areas, Edge Locations, Edge Caches regions)
• Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Multi-tiered Architectures
• Path 53, Amazon
• CloudFront-Amazon
• Disaster recovery plans and business continuity
• Decoupled architectures and event-driven systems
• AWS Web Backup

Domain 2: High-performance architecture concept-28 per cent

• Auto-scaling and elastic load balancers for use and networks
• Amazon EC2, ECS, and The Beanstalk
• The data output includes the Elastic File System and the Amazon S3
• VPC Components of networking: Subnets / ENIs / ENA / NACLs / Security Groups / NAT Gateways / Bastion Hosts / VPC Endpoints / VPN / Direct Connect / Transit Regional Accelerator / AWS
• AWS Datenbank
• High accessibility through Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon Aurora
• Amazon Accelerator DynamoDB (DAX)

Domain 3: Secure Architecture and Applications Design-24%

• AWS Identity & Access Management deep dive
• Web & mobile security at Amazon Cognito
• AWS-Policies for Operation Management (SCPs)
• Application security with AWS WAF, the Firewall Manager and Shield
• Understand Processes for AWS logging
• Audit, monitor and evaluate with AWS CloudTrail and AWS Config
• Encryption of data via the AWS Key Management Service (KMS)

Domain 4: Cost-Optimized Architecture Design-18%

• AWS storage costs from Amazon S3, Glacier, EFS, Gateway Server, AWS Backup
• Savings plans and instances reserved for programming instances
• Optimisation of costs throughout the network infrastructure

Overview of topics added for the AWS CSA certification SAA-02:

The topics added to AWS CSA certification are as follows.

The AWS Basics: IAM & EC2

A deeper dive into the options of Reserved Instances, and how Spot Instances and Spot Fleets operate. Finally, just a word about what ENI is.

Fast Scalability and Accessibility: ELB & ASG

A full update of this section to include the latest details on CLB, ALB, and NLB as well as explain how certain advanced ELB features function. The ASG is also shown to be used with Launch Models, which are better than Launch Configurations.

Storage of EC2-EBS & EFS

Understanding the implications of IOPS for EBS volumes and the IOPS implications of Instance Stores

Aurora + RDS + ElastiCache

A deeper dive into the differences of both RDS Read Replicas and Multi-AZ, understanding the impacts of performance, DR and cost. A deeper dive into Authentication through RDS IAM. Aurora is now being extensively studied, including several new deployment solutions like Aurora Serverless & Global Databases. You need to deeply study topics ElastiCache on Redis vs Memcached.

Amazon S3 Moves

An introduction to the current Glacier Deep Archive storage tier, and how the rules of the S3 lifecycle operate in detail. A closer look at S3, S3 Select & Glacier Select, S3 Lock Policies & Glacier Vault Policy efficiency optimizations.

Global Accelerator: CloudFront & AWS

A clearer introduction to how CloudFront operates, as well as CloudFront integration with various backends (not just S3), the security implications and advanced features. Finally, an introduction to AWS’s amazing new service called Global Accelerator, which will certainly have a larger position over the years at the exam.

AWS Additions to Safety

Here you are talking about Storage Gateway, Snowball, Amazon FSx for Windows and Lustre, as well as a list of all the storage options on AWS (because there are many!).

Uses for decoupling: SQS, SNS, Kinesis, Active MQ

A deeper insight on how to use a SQS ASG and a better way to describe the differences between Kinesis Data Streams and Firehose.

Server less overviews from the viewpoint of a AWS CSA software architect

A server less architecture to CRON, and changed the Lambda limit in the slide to 15 minutes. You need to think about DynamoDB Global Tables and Power On Demand. Finally, You need to learn SAM.

AWS Repositories

A deeper introduction to Redshift including the tools for backups and Redshift Range.

AWS monitoring & audit: CloudWatch & CloudTrail

It added an overview of AWS Settings.

Control of Identification and Access (IAM)-Advanced

This section has been reworked and includes clearer lectures on Security Token Service (STS), Identity Federation, Cognito, AWS Directory Services, AWS Organizations, Advanced IAM Concepts, AWS Resource Access Manager (RAM), and AWS Single Sign-On (SSO).

AWS Security & Encryption: KMS, CloudHSM, Firewall, WAF, SSM Parameter Store

More protection resources such as CloudHSM, Shield & WAF were included.

VPC-Networking

Some further patches for NAT Gateways, VPC Peering, Direct Connect, PrivateLink, ClassicLink, VPN CloudHub.

Recovery for Disasters & Migration

Learn how to use Database Migration Service (DMS), On-Premise Techniques with AWS, AWS DataSync and Switch Huge Datasets to AWS

More Architectures to Solution

Event processing in AWS, caching strategies in AWS, blocking of an AWS IP address, High-Performance Computing (HPC) on AWS.

Conclusion:

Ultimately, it depends on where you decide to focus your time and how much time you spend. Finally, explore AWS CSA Documentation in AWS official site. I don’t suggest to anyone that they spend more or less time preparing for the test. So you’ll want to understand your skill areas and how they apply to this certification.

Finally, you can use 35–40 hours of research as a starting point if you have already experience with AWS. Then you can change your strategy from there. The best approach draws from many sources best practices and guidance, to fit your background, priorities and schedule. You can learn all these topics and have guidance from industry trained experts at AWS online training.