Amazon Web Services · Official Blueprint · Last reviewed May 2026
The official Amazon Web Services SAA-C03 exam covers 4 domains. Domain weights tell you exactly how much of the exam each topic represents — and where to invest your study time.
IAM policies, resource-based policies, encryption at rest and in transit, VPC security groups and NACLs, and AWS security services.
Practice Design Secure Architectures questionsMulti-AZ vs multi-Region strategies, Auto Scaling, load balancing, fault tolerance patterns, and backup/recovery approaches.
Practice Design Resilient Architectures questionsSelecting optimal compute (EC2 types, Lambda, containers), storage (S3, EBS, EFS, FSx), and database services for workload requirements.
Practice Design High-Performing Architectures questionsCovers the topics, concepts, and applied skills examined under the Design Cost-Optimized Architectures domain. Study the official exam objectives and practise questions in this area to build confidence and accuracy before your exam.
Practice Design Cost-Optimized Architectures questionsThe heaviest domain on the SAA-C03 is "Design Secure Architectures" at 30%. Start here and return to it regularly.
Allocate study time proportional to domain weight — a 25% domain deserves roughly 25% of your prep hours.
Never skip a low-weight domain. A 10% domain still represents 5–7 exam questions — enough to make the difference between pass and fail.
Use Courseiva domain analytics to track your accuracy per domain automatically. The system routes extra questions to your weak areas.
Courseiva tracks your accuracy per domain automatically and routes you toward your weakest areas — no manual configuration needed.
S3 Storage Classes
S3 looks like a simple file store until you see the bill.
AWS IAM
In AWS, every action against every resource is an API call, and every API call must be authorized.
AWS VPC
Your resources in AWS do not automatically sit in a protected private network.
EC2 Purchasing Options
Running an EC2 instance on-demand for a year costs significantly more than committing to that same instance in advance.
AWS High Availability
High availability and fault tolerance are not the same thing, and the SAA-C03 exam expects you to know the difference.
IaaS, PaaS, SaaS
Before you can architect a cloud solution or answer a security question about cloud responsibility, you need to understand what cloud service models are and what they actually change about who manages what.