Earn Your AWS Solutions Architect Associate Certification with Confidence
Structured around the four official SAA-C03 exam domains, this course builds the architecture knowledge and hands-on skills you need to pass.
You'll move through every tested domain — secure, resilient, high-performing, and cost-optimized architectures — applying each concept in a real lab environment. By the end, you won't just be prepared for exam day; you'll be able to reason through AWS design decisions the way the exam expects.
Have a coupon code? Redeem it here
What you'll gain
Every module aligns to an official exam domain, so your study time targets exactly what's tested. No guesswork about what's in scope.
You'll apply each concept by working with real AWS services — IAM, EC2, RDS, CloudFront, ECS, and more — reinforcing understanding through practice, not just reading.
A dedicated exam preparation module covers how to register, how to approach scenario-based questions, and what to prioritize in your final review before test day.
Who this course is for
You've worked with AWS in a limited capacity but haven't formalized your knowledge across all four architecture domains. This course closes those gaps and gives you a structured path to certification.
You understand application logic but want to design what runs behind it — load balancers, auto scaling, databases, and networking. This course builds the AWS architecture fluency that complements your existing development skills.
You have foundational knowledge of computing and networking but haven't worked extensively in a cloud environment. You'll gain practical AWS experience through labs while building the conceptual framework the SAA-C03 exam tests.
What you'll learn
The course opens with AWS fundamentals and exam orientation before moving into the four core domains: secure architectures, resilient architectures, high-performing architectures, and cost-optimized architectures. Each domain module builds on the previous one — security and resilience establish your architectural baseline, while performance and cost optimization teach you to refine and scale what you've built. The final module shifts focus to exam execution, covering registration, question strategy, and a structured final review.
Module 1
Introduction to AWS and This Course
3 lessons
▾
Module 2
Design Secure Architectures
5 lessons
▾
Module 3
Design Resilient Architectures
5 lessons
▾
Module 4
Design High-Performing Architectures
7 lessons
▾
Module 5
Design Cost-Optimized Architectures
6 lessons
▾
Module 6
Exam Preparation and Next Steps
3 lessons
▾
Learn by doing
Each lab puts you inside a configured AWS environment where you execute real tasks using the AWS CLI, Management Console, and services like CloudFormation, GDB-adjacent monitoring tools, and infrastructure-as-code templates. Labs range from writing least-privilege IAM policies to deploying a containerized application on ECS Fargate, so every major exam topic has a corresponding hands-on exercise.
- Confirm the AWS CLI is configured and connect to the lab's simulated AWS environment
- Create and list an S3 bucket to verify the lab environment is fully operational
- Create an IAM group with a custom least-privilege policy and attach it to a new user
- Create a cross-account IAM role and verify it grants only the intended permissions
- Create a customer-managed KMS key and use it to encrypt an S3 bucket's objects
- Write a bucket policy that denies any request not made over HTTPS and verify it is enforced
- Create a REST API in API Gateway and attach a WAF web ACL with a rate-based rule
- Send requests that trigger the rate limit and verify AWS WAF blocks them
- Use AWS STS to assume an existing cross-account role and obtain temporary credentials
- Use the temporary credentials to perform an action permitted by the role and confirm actions outside its scope are denied
- Enable a CloudTrail trail and confirm API calls made during the lab are captured in the event history
- Create an AWS Config rule and confirm it correctly evaluates a resource as compliant or non-compliant
- Launch an Auto Scaling group across multiple Availability Zones behind an Application Load Balancer
- Terminate an instance and verify the Auto Scaling group replaces it and traffic keeps flowing
- Configure an SQS queue that triggers a Lambda function to process messages
- Send a batch of messages and verify all are processed, including a simulated failure and retry
- Write a CloudFormation template that defines compute and database resources spread across two Availability Zones
- Validate the template and review the planned resources without deploying live infrastructure
- Create a manual snapshot of an RDS instance
- Restore the snapshot to a new instance and verify the data matches, simulating a backup/restore DR strategy
- Launch a read replica of an existing RDS instance
- Write data to the primary instance and confirm it appears on the read replica
- Configure a CloudFront distribution in front of an S3 origin with an origin access control
- Measure and compare response times with and without the CloudFront cache warmed
- Deploy a Redis ElastiCache cluster and connect an application to it
- Implement a cache-aside pattern and verify reduced load on the backing database
- Deploy a simple task as both an EC2 instance with a user data script and a Lambda function
- Compare invocation time, scaling behavior, and idle cost between the two approaches
- Create a Route 53 hosted zone and a record that resolves to an existing CloudFront distribution
- Verify DNS resolution and that requests to the custom domain reach the distribution
- Configure a target-tracking Auto Scaling policy based on average CPU utilization
- Create a CloudWatch alarm on the same metric and verify it fires in tandem with a scaling action
- Create a Kinesis Data Stream, publish records to it, and confirm they can be read back from a shard
- Catalog the data with a Glue Data Catalog table and query it using Athena SQL
- Define an ECS task definition and service running a containerized application on Fargate
- Scale the service and verify the load balancer distributes traffic across the running tasks
- Configure an S3 lifecycle policy that transitions objects through storage classes and expires old versions
- Verify the policy behaves as expected using the S3 console lifecycle preview
- Use Cost Explorer to identify the top cost drivers in an account by service and tag
- Create a budget with an alert threshold and confirm the notification path works
- Launch equivalent workloads using different EC2 instance types and review their pricing in Cost Explorer
- Recommend and justify the most cost-effective purchase option and instance size for a given workload profile
- Compare the cost model of an RDS instance under On-Demand vs Reserved pricing for a steady-state workload
- Compare DynamoDB On-Demand vs Provisioned capacity cost for a variable-traffic workload and recommend one
- Design and deploy a small application using at least three AWS services covered in this course, applying cost-optimization choices from each domain
- Use Cost Explorer to review the deployed resources' cost profile and document the reasoning behind each service and pricing choice
Destin Learning
Destin Learning creates practical, project-driven courses for developers, IT professionals, and tech enthusiasts who want to build real skills — not just pass a certification exam.
Every course is built around hands-on labs, working code, and real-world tools. Our students learn by doing: writing programs, configuring systems, and solving problems in environments that mirror what they'll encounter on the job.
Our courses cover systems programming, Linux administration, cloud infrastructure, AI and machine learning, and foundational computer science — all taught with the same philosophy: understand it deeply, build it yourself, and know why it works.
Destin Learning · destinlearning.com
Enroll Now and Start Building
Self-paced video lessons and 23 hands-on labs give you both the knowledge and the practice you need to sit the SAA-C03 exam with confidence.
Have a coupon code? Redeem it here