Part 1: AWS Certified Solutions Architect SAA C03 [2025]

Learn how public and private IP addresses identify devices, how routers and firewalls secure private networks, and how CIDR subnetting and routing enable cloud environments and internet communication.

Configure a secure network using security groups, a stateful firewall in VPC, allowing only HTTP/HTTPS to web servers, app servers from web servers, and database access from the app server.

Understand the network access control list (NACL) as a subnet-level, stateless firewall that allows or denies traffic. Learn its numeric rule order, inbound/outbound requirements, and CIDR blocking.

Assign private ip addresses from the subnet block to each instance's primary network interface, ipv6 optional, and use a public ip or elastic ip for internet access.

Create a key pair for EC2 login, download the private key, and use the public key when launching instances. On Windows, use PPK with Putty; on Mac/Linux, PEM with SSH.

Explore the default VPC in the AWS console, including its 172.31.0.0/16 CIDR, four public subnets across availability zones, an internet gateway, and main route table routing local and internet-bound traffic.

Launch and log into an EC2 instance in a default VPC, then explore private, public, and elastic IPs, including SSH access, key handling, and IP persistence behavior.

Learn to securely connect a Mac to an AWS EC2 Linux instance by creating and configuring a pem key pair, setting file permissions, and SSH into the instance as ec2-user.

Launch an Amazon Linux instance in a public subnet and configure a security group to allow ping traffic, demonstrating the stateful firewall and inbound and outbound rules.

Launch an EC2 instance, configure a security group for SSH and ping, and build a custom network ACL to learn how a stateless firewall controls inbound and outbound traffic.

Explore how VPC components work together to route traffic: public subnets reach EC2 via internet gateway, while private subnets use NAT for access, guarded by ACL, routes, and security groups.

Explore how to enable private cloud instances to access AWS services via NAT gateway and VPC endpoints, including gateway endpoints for S3/DynamoDB and interface endpoints for SQS.

Configure a VPC with public and private subnets across two availability zones, set up route tables, a NAT gateway, and a bastion host to access private instances.

Enable VPC flow logs to capture traffic at the VPC, subnet, or interface and publish to CloudWatch Logs or S3, with an IAM role and permissions for monitoring.

Set up a cross-region VPC peering between Oregon and Ireland, update routes for the peering connection, and test private connectivity with ICMP ping between instances.

Explore how to expose your application to external and AWS cloud partners using public endpoints or private link, via a network load balancer and interface endpoints.

Explore how site-to-site vpn, cloud hub, and client vpn enable secure, scalable connectivity between on-premises networks and aws vpcs, including transit gateway architectures for centralized cloud connectivity.

Link your on-premises data center to AWS with Direct Connect for consistent throughput and performance, while using Direct Connect Gateway or Transit Gateway to connect multiple VPCs across regions.

Contrast server-based and serverless approaches using a three-tier online marketplace, then enhance resilience, scaling, security, and cost optimization across AWS resources.

Explore serverless and server-based architectures for order processing using API gateway with REST and WebSocket APIs, Lambda, Step Functions, SNS/SQS, DynamoDB, and S3, highlighting resilience, scaling, security, and cost considerations.

Placement groups optimize low-latency, high-throughput networking for HPC and machine learning workloads by distributing EC2 instances across availability zones, using cluster, partition, and spread types.

Learn to customize EC2 instances with user data, install Apache web server, and use the instance metadata service, then resize from t2 micro to t3 large.

Learn how IAM roles grant EC2 instances permission to access S3, attach roles, and test with AWS S3 ls while using credentials from the instance metadata service.

Explore monitoring AWS resources with CloudWatch, publishing default and custom metrics, and configuring alarms. Analyze logs via CloudWatch in near real-time and use CloudTrail for an API audit trail.

Monitor your applications with CloudWatch metrics and alarms, track ELB and EC2 metrics, and trigger auto scaling or alerts using thresholds and evaluation windows.

Learn to monitor CPU utilization with CloudWatch detailed monitoring, view metrics, and configure a p90-based alarm that stops an idle EC2 instance after 15 minutes.

Explore AWS file sharing options for EC2: Elastic File System, FSx for Windows, and FSx for Lustre, including integration with S3, private user spaces, and on-premises access.

Learn how EBS volume encryption uses KMS and a data key with envelope encryption to protect volumes, while snapshots, key changes, and default encryption apply to volumes, RDS, and DynamoDB.

Learn to enable encryption for unencrypted EBS volumes, create and switch to a customer managed kms key, and copy encrypted snapshots across regions for disaster recovery.

Launch an Amazon Linux EC2 instance and install the LAMP stack (Apache, MariaDB, PHP). Secure MariaDB root access and create a LAMP base build AMI for rapid launches.