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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the following people who helped us create AWS Certified Solutions Architect Study Guide: Associate SAA‐C02 Exam, Third Edition.
First, a special thanks to our friends at Wiley. Kenyon Brown, senior acquisitions editor, got the ball rolling on this project and pushed to get this book published quickly. His experience and guidance throughout the project was critical. Stephanie Barton, project editor, helped push this book forward by keeping us accountable to our deadlines. Her edits made many of the technical parts of this book more readable.
Todd Montgomery reviewed the chapters and questions for technical accuracy. Not only did his comments and suggestions make this book more accurate, he also provided additional ideas for the chapter review questions to make them more challenging and relevant to the exam.
Lastly, the authors would like to thank each other!
About the Authors
Ben Piper is a networking and cloud consultant who has authored multiple books, including the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Study Guide: Foundational CLF‐C01 Exam (Sybex, 2019) and Learn Cisco Network Administration in a Month of Lunches (Manning, 2017). You can contact Ben by visiting his website: benpiper.com.
David Clinton is a Linux server admin and AWS solutions architect who has worked with IT infrastructure in both academic and enterprise environments. He has authored books—including (with Ben Piper) the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Study Guide: Foundational CLF‐C01 Exam (Sybex, 2019) and Linux in Action (Manning Publications, 2018)—and created more than two dozen video courses teaching Amazon Web Services and Linux administration, server virtualization, and IT security for Pluralsight.
In a “previous life,” David spent 20 years as a high school teacher. He currently lives in Toronto, Canada, with his wife and family and can be reached through his website: bootstrap-it.com.
Introduction
Studying for any certification always involves deciding how much of your studying should be practical hands‐on experience and how much should be simply memorizing facts and figures. Between the two of us, we've taken dozens of IT certification exams, so we know how important it is to use your study time wisely. We've designed this book to help you discover your strengths and weaknesses on the AWS platform so that you can focus your efforts properly. Whether you've been working with AWS for a long time or whether you're relatively new to it, we encourage you to carefully read this book from cover to cover.
Passing the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam requires understanding the components and operation of the core AWS services as well as how those services interact with each other. Read through the official documentation for the various AWS services. Amazon offers HTML, PDF, and Kindle documentation for many of them. Use this book as a guide to help you identify your strengths and weaknesses so that you can focus your study efforts properly.
You should have at least six months of hands‐on experience with AWS before taking the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam. If you're relatively new to AWS, we strongly recommend our own AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Study Guide: CLF‐C01 Exam (Sybex, 2019) as a primer.
Even though this book is designed specifically for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam, some of your fellow readers have found it useful for preparing for the SysOps Administrator and DevOps Engineer exams.
Hands‐on experience is crucial for exam success. Each chapter in this AWS Certified Solutions Architect Study Guide: Associate SAA‐C02 Exam, Third Edition contains hands‐on exercises that you should strive to complete during or immediately after you read the chapter. It's vital to understand that the exercises don't cover every possible scenario for every AWS service. In fact, it's quite the opposite. The exercises provide you with a foundation to build on. Use them as your starting point, but don't be afraid to venture out on your own. Feel free to modify them to match the variables and scenarios you might encounter in your own organization. Keep in mind that some of the exercises and figures use the AWS web console, which is in constant flux. As such, screenshots and step‐by‐step details of exercises may change. Use these eventualities as excuses to dig into the AWS online documentation and browse around the web console on your own. Also remember that although you can complete many of the exercises within the bounds of the AWS Free Tier, getting enough practice to pass the exam will likely require you to spend some money. But it's money well spent, as getting certified is an investment in your career and your future.
Each chapter contains review questions to thoroughly test your understanding of the services and concepts covered in that chapter. They also test your ability to integrate the concepts with information from preceding chapters. Although the difficulty of the questions varies, rest assured that they are not “fluff.” We've designed the questions to help you realistically gauge your understanding and readiness for the exam. Avoid the temptation to rush through the questions to just get to the answers. Once you complete the assessment in each chapter, referring to the answer key will give you not only the correct answers but a detailed explanation as to why they're correct. It will also explain why the other answers are incorrect.
The book also contains a self‐assessment exam with 39 questions, two practice exams with 50 questions each to help you gauge your readiness to take the exam, and flashcards to help you learn and retain key facts needed to prepare for the exam.
This AWS Certified Solutions Architect Study Guide: Associate SAA‐C02 Exam, Third Edition is divided into two parts: “The Core AWS Services” and “The Well‐Architected Framework.”
Part I, “The Core AWS Services”
The first part of the book dives deep into each of the core AWS services. These services include ones you probably already have at least a passing familiarity with: Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Identity and Access Management (IAM), Route 53, and Simple Storage Service (S3), to name just a few.
Some AWS services seem to serve similar or even nearly identical purposes. You'll learn about the subtle but important differences between seemingly similar services and, most importantly, when to use each.
Part II, “The Well‐Architected Framework”
The second part of the book is a set of best practices and principles aimed at helping you design, implement, and operate systems in the cloud. Part II focuses on the following five pillars of good design:
Reliability