Before I start :

In this series I will share all the things that are required to become a AWS Solutions Architect ( AWS - SAA). This AWS series is also a AWS-SAA exam centric. As I am also preparing for the exam, I am blogging all my learnings via this AWS - SAA exam series.

Lets start : 👇

• To build the foundation to learn & pass the AWS - SAA exam, first we need to understand the different domains that are present in AWS.

Below picture shows all the domains that are currently available in AWS.

Note : These are just domains and each domain has several services.

So the big question is do you have to learn all of the sevices for the exam ?? 🤔

NO, Don't worry, you don't have to learn all this domains & services to pass the exam. Even to be a successful Solutions Architect you dont need to learn all this.

So we are gonna focus on only the domains and services corresponding to that specific domain.

• Below is the list of only domains to study for this exam .

1. Analytics

2. Application Integration

3. Compute

4. Database

5. Management & Governance

6. Networking & Content Delivery

7. Security, Identity & Compliance

8. Storage

At this moment if you are not familiar with these services, it might look overwhelming to you. I mean how in the world can you study and remember all the services at the same time ?? Right ? 🤯

But trust me on this, this is not difficult at all. Because first of all, You dont need to learn every single thing about all this services.

You just need to understand the primary features of each services. As we keep learning one service at a time, you will not only find it easy to understand but also to be comfortable working with these services.

• Now lets look at each domains and services it offers.

** Explaination Structure 👇

⬇ Domain Name

⬇ Short explanation of the domain

⬇ Services provides by the domain

⬇ Corresponding image containing all other services from that domain that I did not mentioned.

1. Analytics

Analytics Services provide you with a wide range of data analytics tools with the power to analyze vast volumes of customer, business and transactional data quickly and at low cost.

• The most important sevices in this domain to study for SAA is Amazon Kinesis .

2. Application Integration

Application Integration enables you to make communication between decoupled components within microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. You don’t need to refactor your entire architecture to benefit - decoupling applications at any scale can reduce the impact of changes, making it easier to update and faster to release new features.

• Most of the services in this domain needs to be covered up. Below are the services it provides ⬇

i. Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow (MWAA)

ii. AWS AppSync

iii. Amazon EventBridge

iv. Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)

v. Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)

vi. Amazon MQ

vii. Amazon AppFlow

viii. AWS Step Functions

3. Compute Services

Compute sevices allow you to develop, deploy, run and scale your applications and workloads by providing you with virtually unlimited compute capacity in terms of virtual machines, containers, virtual private servers(vpc), serverless computing power etc.

• The most important sevices in this domain to study for SAA exam are ⬇

i. Amazon EC2

ii. AWS Elastic Beanstalk

iii. AWS Lambda

4. Database Services

Database Services allow us to store terabytes to petabytes of new types of data. Provides access to the data with milliseconds latency, process millions of requests per seconds, and scale to support millions of users anywhere in the world.

• The most important sevices in this domain to study are ⬇

i. Amazon RDS ( Relational Database System )

ii. Amazon DynamoDB

iii. Amazon Redshift

5. Management & Governance

By implementing best practices to maintain your application infrastructure, these services automate common activities such as change requests, monitoring, patch management, security and backup services. It also provides full-lifecycle services to provision, run and support your infrastructure.

• The most important services in this domain to study are ⬇

i. AWS CloudTrail

ii. AWS Auto Scaling

iii. AWS CloudFormation

iv. AWS Trusted Advisor

6. Networking and Content Delivery

These services enables you to isolate your cloud infrastructure, scale your request, handling capacity and connect to your physical network to your virtual network.

• The most important services to know from this domain are ⬇

i. Amazon CloudFront

ii. Amazon Direct Connect

iii. Amazon Elastic Load Balancing

iv. Amazon Route 53

v. Amazon API Gateway

vi. Amazon VPC

7. Security, Identity & Compliance

These types of services allows users applicaations meet the requirements of the most security sensitive organizations by keeping the data safe. Maintaining the privacy of the data, authenticating & authorizing valid users and scaling the application without compromising the safety of the data.

• The most important service to study from this domain is AWS IAM .

8. Storage Services

Storage Services provides highly available, and highly durable storage services with virtually unlimited capacity for your applications.

• The most important sevices in this domain to study for SAA exam are ⬇

i. Amazon S3 ( Simple Storage Service )

ii. Amazon Glacier

iii. Amazon Elastic File System ( EFS )

iv. Amazon Elastic Block Store ( EBS )

Important :

In the above domains and sevices I just mentioned those services that needs more focus. That does not mean at all, One should not study the services that are not mentioned above. You need to put almost same effort to study other services if not more than the mentioned .

Conclusion

So this was a brief overview of different AWS Services that one should understand in order to pass the solutions architect exam of AWS. By no means this blog conatains everything but you can expect detailed blog on each of services in this AWS-SAA series. As this was the first blog of the series, you will see a detailed key points in the next blog ( B 2 ) in this series.

I hope this blog helps you . Keep learning. 🔥

If you like my articles, you can consider helping me learn and keep the blogs coming by buying me a book or coffe .

See you in the next blog :)