IAM, SSO, and secure access

Identity policies, roles, federation, and least-privilege patterns for SAA-C03 Domain 1.

VPC security groups, NACLs, and endpoints

Network isolation, PrivateLink, and secure connectivity choices.

Data encryption and secrets

KMS keys, encryption at rest and in transit, Secrets Manager, and S3 security controls.

Workload protection and threat detection

WAF, Shield, GuardDuty, Inspector, and securing applications at the edge.

High availability and fault tolerance

Multi-AZ, load balancing, Route 53 routing policies, and recovery objectives.

Loose coupling with SQS, SNS, and EventBridge

Async patterns, retries, DLQs, and event-driven resilience.

Database resilience — RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB

Multi-AZ databases, read replicas, Aurora failover, and DynamoDB global tables.

Disaster recovery and backup strategies

Backup and restore, pilot light, warm standby, multi-site active/active, and AWS Backup.

Storage performance (S3, EBS, EFS)

When to use which storage tier and performance characteristics.

Compute and edge (EC2, Lambda, CloudFront)

Scaling compute and caching at the edge for global users.

Database and caching performance

Read scaling, in-memory caches, and DynamoDB performance patterns.

High-performing networking and API patterns

API Gateway, load balancer tuning, and network paths for low latency.

Cost visibility and governance

Cost Explorer, Budgets, tags, and optimization services for FinOps on AWS.

Compute pricing models and right-sizing

On-Demand, Spot, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, and Graviton for lower compute bills.

Storage, database, and data transfer costs

S3 lifecycle tiers, EBS/RDS optimization, and avoiding surprise data transfer charges.