AWS SAA-C03: AWS Solutions Architect Exam Bootcamp 2025

Managing on-premises data centers requires handling networking, storage, servers, virtualization, operating systems, middleware, runtime, data, and applications. Cooling, power, space, and manpower add cost, pushing many teams toward cloud services.

Explore the three cloud computing models—IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS—and map them to a cloud stack, detailing who handles networking, storage, servers, OS, and applications.

Explore cloud deployment models including cloud deployment, hybrid, and private on premises cloud, and compare the benefits of full cloud versus on premises control.

Bust common cloud computing myths by clarifying that cloud is not the internet, not software, and not just one computer; it's a network of data centers with resources and services.

Explore cloud service providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP, the on-demand computing leaders with over 200 services, global data centers, and millions of customers including Netflix and NASA.

Explore the full spectrum of AWS certification tracks—from foundational, associate, professional to specialty—with a focus on the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) and its exam path.

Learn to create an AWS free tier account, including required personal details, card verification, email and phone verification, and navigating the AWS management console with basic support.

Sign in to the AWS management console as a root user and explore the dashboard. Discover three ways to view services—by services, all services, or by category—featuring EC2 and DynamoDB.

Recognize the root user as AWS's initial administrator with full access and create an IAM user for day-to-day tasks with administrator privileges and console access.

Explore AWS regions and availability zones, defined as geographic regions and data centers, to achieve high availability and low latency while meeting regulatory requirements across global services.

Explore amazon ec2 as the cloud compute service and learn to launch a linux virtual server, choose an ami and instance type, configure ssh access, storage, networking, and security groups.

Explore the complete lifecycle of an EC2 instance from launching an Amazon Linux 2023 server to starting, stopping, rebooting, hibernating, and terminating, with status checks along the way.

Learn to choose the right ec2 instance type—general purpose, compute, memory, accelerated computing, storage, and hpc optimized—based on cpu, ram needs and gpu or storage requirements.

Launch an EC2 instance in the AWS console, select a Linux AMI, and pick an instance type such as t2.micro, t2.small, or c5.xlarge while staying free tier eligible.

Set up Apache web server on an Amazon Linux EC2 instance by installing httpd, starting and enabling the service, and publishing a welcome page at /var/www/html/index.html accessible via public IP.

Explore how EC2 security groups function as firewalls controlling inbound and outbound traffic, with explicit permits for SSH and HTTP/HTTPS and default deny, demonstrated via a live lab.

Learn how EC2 security groups enforce default denial, manage inbound and outbound rules, and attach up to five groups. See how stateful rules auto-allow responses and test with ssh.

Explore how EC2 public, private, and elastic IP addresses function, including why public IPs are internet addressable, how private IPs stay internal, and how elastic IPs provide a permanent address.

Allocate an elastic IP, associate it with an EC2 instance, and confirm it remains after stopping. Learn when charges apply and how to release the IP when unused.

Edit EC2 instance user data by stopping the instance, then go to actions, instance settings, and select edit user data to modify the script.

Create a launch template from an existing EC2 instance to capture its configuration, including operating system, web server, key pair, security group, and user data, then launch multiple identical instances.

Create and manage launch template versions to snapshot different settings, such as instance type, security group, and user data, then launch EC2 from a chosen version.

An ami is a fully configured, preconfigured, hardened image with the operating system and patches, speeding up instance launches by eliminating bootstrapping delays and enabling consistent deployments.

Learn how AMIs encapsulate EC2 root volumes, are stored in Amazon S3, and how to share or copy them across regions via AWS marketplace or custom sources.

Learn to remotely access Linux EC2 instances from Windows using Putty SSH, using EC2 Instance Connect for keyless access and configuring key pairs (.ppk) and security groups.

Learn to access a Linux EC2 instance by converting a PEM key to PPK for use with PuTTY, configuring SSH access, and logging in as ec2-user.

learn to access a linux ec2 instance from macos or linux using a pem key with chmod 400, ssh, and ec2-user@public-ip.

Learn to access a Windows Server 2022 EC2 instance remotely from Windows 10/11 by creating a PEM/PPK key, and configuring RDP port 3389 for remote desktop.

Launch a Windows Server EC2 instance, select the free tier, and create a new key pair. Decrypt the administrator password and connect via remote desktop using the instance's public IP.

Troubleshoot remote EC2 connectivity by verifying private key, username, public IP, DNS, and decrypting the admin password; ensure security groups allow port 22 for Linux or 3389 for Windows.

Learn EC2 best practices to terminate unused instances and avoid volume charges. Understand why stopping does not remove volumes and how to enable termination protection.

Protect your EC2 instances from accidental stop and termination by enabling stop and termination protection, and learn to manually select availability zones and subnets during launch.

Learn manual selection of an availability zone to reduce EC2 latency. Migrate between AZs by creating an AMI, launching in the target AZ, and reusing the elastic IP.

Manage AWS costs by enabling IAM billing access, monitoring bills, and using AWS budgets to set alerts, understand free tier limits, and control unused resources.

Explore how AWS elastic load balancer distributes traffic across registered healthy targets using target groups and listeners, supports public or private deployments, and enables cross-zone load balancing.

Explore the four AWS elastic load balancer types—classic, application, network, and gateway—and learn why the classic is deprecated, with emphasis on application load balancer for HTTP/HTTPS.

Learn to set up multiple listeners on an application load balancer, routing port 80 traffic to EC2 target groups and 8080 to a fixed response with security group rules.

Learn to configure target groups for EC2, Lambda, or IP targets, including health check, deregistration delay, slow start, and algorithms such as round robin and least outstanding request, with stickiness.

Configure target group health by choosing http or https checks, setting path and port, and tuning thresholds, timeout, interval, and success codes to identify healthy EC2 instances.

Navigate to the target group, select edit health check settings, and adjust http or https protocol, traffic port, healthy threshold, and timeout in the advanced options.

Discover the network load balancer, a layer four transport balancer for tcp/udp with static ips per zone and cross-zone balancing, and its lab-ready setup with target groups and listeners.

Verify traffic is accepted only from the alb security group and the network load balancer security group, while direct access to ec2 via public ip and dns url is blocked.

Learn how to choose between ALB, NLB, and CLB for your application, configure HTTPS with SSL TLS certificates from ACM or IAM, and manage multiple certificates for different domains.

Learn how the gateway load balancer, AWS's latest load balancer, routes traffic through a target group of third-party virtual appliances and uses the Geneve protocol on port 6081.

Delete unused load balancers and target groups in AWS using the EC2 console to confirm deletions. Follow best practices by removing security groups as part of resource cleanup.

Ensure all web traffic to EC2 instances uses the load balancer by restricting inbound rules to the ALB security group and blocking direct IP access.