Solutions Architect – Professional Certification Preparation for AWS
Description
Updates:
- 16th August - Added courses 'Using Elastic Load Balancing & EC2 Auto Scaling to support AWS workloads' and 'Deployment Orchestration with AWS Elastic Beanstalk'
- 20th May 2019 - Compute Fundamentals for AWS updated to include content on Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR) & Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (EKS)
Overview
Specifically designed to help you prepare for the AWS Solutions Architect - Professional Certification, this hands-on oriented Learning Path provides over 70 hours of interactive content comprised of hands-on labs, video courses, and a preparation exam. This training content has been carefully created to help you study for this AWS certification. The certification demands that the candidate demonstrates the ability to architect and deploy AWS solutions for different scenarios following AWS' best practices. The AWS Solution Architect Professional Certification requires its candidates to be comfortable architecting, securing, migrating, optimizing deployments and managing full production operations on AWS.
Intended Audience
This Learning Path is suitable for those wanting to pass the AWS Solutions Architect - Professional Certification Exam.
Prerequisites
This is one of the 2 Professional level certifications available with AWS and it's guided to those who already have experience with AWS, and ideally, have already passed the AWS Solutions Architect - Associate exam, but this is not a prerequisite in taking this certification.
What's Included
43 high definition video courses, 19 hands-on Labs, 2 blog/ebook resources and a final preparation Exam.
Learning Objectives
The aim of the certification is to validate your knowledge across a number of different key areas, which have been defined by AWS as being able to:
- Design and deploy dynamically scalable, highly available, fault-tolerant, and reliable applications on AWS
- Select appropriate AWS services to design and deploy an application based on given requirements
- Migrate complex, multi-tier applications on AWS
- Design and deploy enterprise-wide scalable operations on AWS
- Implement cost-control strategies
As a means of demonstrating this knowledge, you will be tested across 5 different domains, with each domain contributing to a total percentage of your overall score. These domains are broken down as:
Domain 1: Design for organization complexity 12.5%
Domain 2: Design for new solutions 31%
Domain 3: Migration Planning 15%
Domain 4: Cost Control 12.5%
Domain 5: Continuous improvement for existing solutions 29%
As you progress through the Learning Path, you will gain all the information and knowledge required to fulfill the domain expectations, gaining a deep understanding within each area.
Feedback
We welcome all feedback and suggestions - please contact us at support@cloudacademy.com if you are unsure about where to start or if you would like help getting started.
Certificate
Learning Path Steps
Overview Specifically designed to help you prepare for the AWS Solutions Architect - Professional Certification, this hands-on orientated Learning Path provides over 70 hours of interactive content comprised of hands-on labs, video courses, and a ...
Course Description One of the core building blocks of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is that of storage, and AWS provides a wide range of storage services that allow you to architect the correct solution for your needs. Understanding what each of thes...
You will learn the steps to create and apply AWS S3 Bucket Policies with embedded conditions to restrict a user's ability to perform specific functions within S3 Buckets.
Overview This course will provide you with an introduction to the cloud database services offered by AWS. In this course we will first we explore the fundamentals of cloud databases, outline the cloud databases provided by AWS before exploring how to get st...
Knowledge Check: Database Fundamentals for AWS
Course Description: Course two of the Big Data Specialty learning path focuses on storage. In this course we outline the key storage options for big data solutions. We determine data access and retrieval patterns, and some of the use cases that suit partic...
Broad introductory lab on Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR). Get started today!
Learn how to use the Amazon Redshift service. Create a cluster with a database, copy data from S3, query data using SQL, and resize the cluster.
This is a beginner level course intended for anyone who is interested in learning the basics about the Amazon ElastiCache Service. We will discuss the concept of caching and how it relates to the Amazon ElastiCache service. We will define and discuss Elasti...
Understanding the fundamentals of AWS is critical if you want to deploy services and resources within the AWS Cloud. The Compute category of services are key resources that allow you to carry out computational abilities via a series of instructions used by...
Course Description Elastic Load Balancing and EC2 Auto Scaling are widely used features within AWS to help you maintain reliability, availability and reduce costs within your environment. As such, it's fundamental that if you are designing, operating ...
Application Load Balancers support content-based routing, and supports applications that run in containers. They support a pair of industry-standard protocols (WebSocket and HTTP/2) and also provide additional visibility into the health of the target instan...
During this lab we will understand how to launch an Auto Scaling group behind a Classic Load Balancer
This course has been designed to give you an overview of the AWS Virtual Private Cloud and its associated networking components. This will help you to architect and build your VPC for a variety of different work loads and use cases. The topics covered wit...
Knowledge Check: Working with AWS Networking and Amazon VPC
Description Creating and configuring a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) within AWS can be a simple or difficult process. It all very much depends on the complexity of your requirements. For example, how many subnets and hosts will you require? will you be using...
Learn how to increment the network security creating a public and private subnet on VPC and filter traffic using network ACL
Set Up VPN Connections with an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud using dynamic routing (BGP), and manage traffic using multi-homed routers
In this course, you will be introduced to Amazon VPC IPsec VPNs. We will first introduce you to the IPsec security protocol, highlighting key components - providing explanations of what it is and why and where it is useful. We will describe in detail the i...
Amazon's Route 53 provides three services: record creation (which registers the human-readable names you'd like associated with your web domains), request handling (to direct web traffic to the right servers), and health checks (to ensure that traffic isn't...
Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery web service which integrates with other Amazon Web Services products to give you an easy way to distribute content to end users with low latency, high data transfer speeds, and no minimum usage commitments. During th...
The gold standard for high availability is five 9's, meaning guaranteed uptime 99.999% of the time. That means just five and a half minutes of downtime throughout an entire year. Achieving this kind of reliability requires some advanced knowledge of the man...
With this course, you will be helping and enabling your development teams to architect applications that are highly scalable and resilient using best practices when working within a decoupled environment. This will lead to increased availability of operatio...
Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a fast, reliable, scalable, fully managed message queuing service. You can use SQS to transmit any volume of data, at any level of throughput, without losing messages or requiring other services to be always available.
Course Description: This course will provide you with a good foundation to better understand Amazon Kinesis, along with helping you to get started with building streamed solutions. In this course we'll put a heavier emphasis on hands-on demos along with br...
Learn how to deploy a highly available website using AWS, with a scenario based on challenges, like time restrictions, and cost limitations many websites face.
Learn how to create and run your first AWS Lambda function.
Automating EBS snapshots with Lambda and CloudWatch EventsAutomating EBS snapshots with Lambda and CloudWatch Events
Course Description: In this course for the Big Data Specialty Certification, we learn how to identify the appropriate data processing technologies needed for big data scenarios. We explore how to design and architect a data processing solution, and explore...
Overview In this course you'll learn about Amazon Rekognition, a service that enables you to easily and quickly integrate computer vision features directly into your own applications. At its core, Amazon Rekognition provides an API that you submit images a...
This course looks at one of the key Security services within AWS, Identity & Access Management, commonly referred to IAM. This service manages identities and their permissions that are able to access your AWS resources and so understanding how this service ...
Knowledge Check: Overview of AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Learn how to manage our organization using IAM Users and Groups and IAM Roles
Cloud Security is a huge topic, mainly because it has so many different areas of focus. This course focuses on three areas that are fundamental, AWS Authentication, Authorisation and Accounting. These three topics can all be linked together and having an u...
Multiple AWS Account Management using AWS Organizations
Resources mentioned throughout this course: Cloud Academy Courses: Amazon Web Services: Key Management Services (KMS) Working with Amazon Kinesis Getting started with AWS CloudHSM AWS Resources: Configuring HDFS Transparent Encryption in Amazon ...
Course Description We have all seen in the media numerous occurrences whereby large international organizations have had their data exposed and leaked that had been stored on S3. Any sensitive data stored in the cloud MUST be encrypted, and when stori...
Course Description Unencrypted data can be read and seen by anyone who has access to it, and data stored at-rest or sent between two locations, in-transit, is known as ‘plaintext’ or ‘cleartext’ data. The data is plain to see and can be seen and under...
In this lab, you'll learn about Amazon Key Management Service to encrypt S3 and EBS Data at an intermediate level. Get started today!
AWS Key Management Service (KMS) Intermediate
Course Description: AWS CloudHSM is the name of Amazon’s original encryption key solution. HSM stands for Hardware Security Module and in the solution provided by AWS is a Safenet Luna appliance hosted at AWS. The appliance is single tenant and exclusive t...
Course Description: In this course we will discuss the fundamentals of Intrusion Detection and Prevention on Amazon Web Services. We will explore the difference between IDS and IPS, and the difference between host-based Intrusion Prevention, and Network ba...
Course Description: AWS Identity Federation is the concept of using external authorization sources to permit access to AWS Console and AWS Resources. Identity Federation comes is multiple levels that enables the use of existing directories or SAML to ensur...
Course Description: In this course we will learn practical planning techniques for migrating business applications to public cloud services. Intended Audience:The course is suitable for anyone wanting to learn more about how public cloud services can be e...
The purpose of this course is to enable us to recognize and explain what the AWS Database Migration Service is and how the AWS Database Migration Service can be used to migrate data from one database to another. This course will also enable us to recognize ...
OverviewIn this course we will learn to recognise and explain the migration services available from AWS and AWS partners, and how to run a migration using the AWS Server Migration Service. Intended AudienceThis course is suited to anyone running or involv...
This course is a "live" scenario discussion where the CloudAcademy team tackle a migration project. Our customer needs to migrate out of their current data center by a certain date. They also would like to modernise their business application. Our brief i...
Getting Started with an Amazon Web Services Solution Real World Practices: In this course, we will untangle the AWS landscape and teach what you need to know to build applications on AWS. This includes understanding what AWS has to offer you if those prepac...
Course Description Continuous integration is the first step toward a completely automated development, deployment and operations pipeline. It helps to mitigate integration issues, and catch known issues early via automated testing. If you're new to continu...
In this course we’ll provide you with an introduction to AWS CodeCommit and how it can be used to manage your source code. We’ll show you where AWS CodeCommit sits in a CI/CD setup. This lecture will familiarize yourself with the AWS CodeCommit service and ...
In this course we’ll provide you with an introduction to AWS CodeDeploy and how it can be used to automate deployments of applications to servers either running in the cloud or on prem and/or into the Lambda service. We’ll show you where AWS CodeDeploy sits...
In this course we’ll provide you with an introduction to AWS CodePipeline and how it can be used to orchestrate the delivery of your software from source code to executable and deployable artifacts. We’ll show you where AWS CodePipeline sits in a CI/CD setu...
Follow the application lifecycle from dev to prod: continuous integration, rollbacks and blue/green deployments with AWS Code Services.
As AWS-based cloud environments grow in complexity, DevOps Professionals need to adopt more powerful tools and techniques to manage complex deployments. In the AWS ecosystem, CloudFormation is the most powerful and sophisticated automation tool available to...
Scalable DevOps: Using CloudFormation for Whole VPC Stacks
As modern software expectations increase the burden on DevOps delivery processes, engineers working on AWS need increasingly reliable and rapid deployment techniques. This course aims to teach students how to design their deployment processes to best fit bu...
Course Description AWS Elastic Beanstalk can help you deploy and scale your applications and services with ease and without you having to worry about provisioning components and implementing high availability features such as elastic load balancing and...
Course Description: This course is an introduction to the Amazon ECS Container Service (ECS). ECS is highly scalable, high performance container management service that supports Docker. This course will provide a detailed introduction to what ECS is and ho...
A hands-on lab showing you how to use Amazon CodeBuild and EC2 Container Service to perform a blue-green deployment.
API Gateway is a fully managed service by Amazon that makes it easy for developers to create, publish, maintain and monitor their APIs at any scale without having to worry about versioning, authorizations, throttling and other administrative tasks. In this ...
The first steps in creating a serverless function are generally creating a REST interface to allow clients to interact with your backend services. In this course, we step through creating an API using the AWS API Gateway service.
In this course, we will create a multi-tier Serverless architecture on AWS using Amazon API Gateway, AWS Lambda, AWS Step Functions and Amazon Polly text to speech. This is a hands-on course where you will learn how to create serverless functions, data acce...
Course Description: CloudWatch is a monitoring service for cloud resources in the applications you run on Amazon Web Services. CloudWatch can collect metrics, set and manage alarms, and automatically react to changes in your AWS resources. Amazon Web Servi...
Any information that helps to secure your Cloud infrastructure is of significant use to security engineers and architects, with AWS CloudTrail you have the ability to capture all AWS API calls made by users and/or services. Whenever an API request is made ...
With the ever-changing nature of Cloud Computing in AWS, through the use of Auto Scaling, and self-healing architecture mechanisms, having visibility and awareness of your AWS resources is invaluable. It can be difficult to understand what your resources wi...
Compliance check using AWS Config Rules: See how AWS Config can enhance your security and compliance with AWS managed rules and custom rules with AWS Lambda
Course Description: Trying to ensure that your AWS infrastructure remains optimized at all times can be a daunting task. By the very nature of AWS, your infrastructure is likely to be very fluid with the different resources used across your entire AWS acc...
AWS Billing and Cost Management Tools eBook
Course Description AWS offers several service to help businesses review, manage and optimize their costs, as well as help accounts maximize investments in any reserved services. Watching this course, you’ll learn what different billing and cost management ...
In this lab you will learn how to create EC2 spot instances, how they can be used in AWS and how to handle instance interruptions.
High availability is frequently a design requirement for solutions architects. Highly available architectures eliminate single points of failure keeping businesses running in the presence of unexpected faults. In this Lab you will be assessing your practi...
Overview Specifically designed to help you prepare for the AWS Solutions Architect - Professional Certification, this hands-on orientated Learning Path provides over 70 hours of interactive content comprised of hands-on labs, video courses, and a ...
Preparation Exam: Certified Solutions Architect - Professional for AWS (February 2019)
Changelog
Added courses:
- Using Elastic Load Balancing & EC2 Auto Scaling to support AWS workloads
- Deployment Orchestration with AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Added the Implement Amazon VPC High Availability Best Practices Lab Challenge
About the Author
Stuart has been working within the IT industry for two decades covering a huge range of topic areas and technologies, from data centre and network infrastructure design, to cloud architecture and implementation.
To date, Stuart has created 50+ courses relating to Cloud, most within the AWS category with a heavy focus on security and compliance
He is AWS certified and accredited in addition to being a published author covering topics across the AWS landscape.
In January 2016 Stuart was awarded ‘Expert of the Year Award 2015’ from Experts Exchange for his knowledge share within cloud services to the community.
Stuart enjoys writing about cloud technologies and you will find many of his articles within our blog pages.