Master the AWS Solutions Architect Associate – 2026

Master high availability, scalability, and clustering in cloud architectures by detailing request flow, load balancing, failover, and the roles of DMZ, VPC, and public and private networks.

Compare traditional on-premises data centers with cloud data centers, highlighting the benefits of cloud computing, pay-as-you-go pricing, and disaster recovery through CSPs.

Master virtualization as the base of cloud computing, showing how hypervisors create virtual servers, storage, and networks from a single hardware to enable elasticity and multi-tenant efficiency.

Understand cloud computing basics, including pay as you go access and internet based services from cloud providers, and compare desktop, client-server, and grid models while noting scalability and accessibility benefits.

Explore cloud deployment models—public, private, hybrid, and community—and the dedicated versus non-dedicated hosts, multi-tenancy, and the SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS service models.

Learn to access AWS via the management console, compare pricing models including on-demand, reserved and spot, leverage the free tier, and manage budgets and costs across regions and EC2 instances.

Learn the basics of the AWS management console, navigate the default dashboard, select regions, explore security credentials, Cloud Shell, and search for services like EC2 and S3.

Explore AWS regions, availability zones, local zones, and wavelength zones, and learn how geography and data centers drive high availability, latency, and edge compute architecture.

Explore AWS identity and access management to securely control who can access which resources. Learn about users, groups, roles, and policies, plus authentication, authorization, MFA, and auditing.

Understand how to centralize user management across multiple AWS accounts with IAM identity center, compare with IAM, and apply group-based policies, MFA, and access controls.

Enable AWS IAM Identity Center, create users and groups, and assign permissions with predefined or custom permission sets to groups for end-to-end access management via the AWS Access Portal.

Explore AWS networking fundamentals and configure a VPC with subnets, cidr blocks, route tables, internet gateway, NAT gateway, and security groups and network ACLs.

Explains how a VPC is divided into public and private subnets using CIDR blocks, and how internet gateways, route tables, and NAT gateways enable secure internet access.

Explore CIDR, classless inter-domain routing, and how to allocate IP addresses within a VPC and its subnets. Learn how to calculate available IPs, avoid waste, and plan subnet CIDRs.

Learn how AWS VPC route tables govern traffic between subnets and to the internet, using internet gateways, NAT gateways, and public versus private subnets.

Master how the internet gateway enables inbound and outbound internet access for VPC subnets, with one gateway per VPC and routing tables for internet traffic.

Understand how a NAT gateway enables outbound internet access from private subnets via a public subnet and internet gateway, using elastic IPs and route tables for secure, scalable traffic.

Security groups act as virtual firewalls for AWS EC2 instances, controlling inbound and outbound traffic at the instance level, with default deny, automatic return traffic, and shared rules across instances.

Explore how network ACLs act as subnet-level, stateless firewalls with separate inbound and outbound rules, differentiating them from security groups and route tables.