Certified Solutions Architect (SAA)

Prepare for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect (SAA) exam with our expert-designed course. Dive deep into essential AWS services and architectures. Achieve your certification goals with confidence!

Difficulty: Intermediate Level
26 sections, 338 lessons
20 hours and 40 min total of video lectures

Course Description

Master AWS and become a Certified Solutions Architect with our expert-led SAA exam prep course. Dive into core AWS services, advanced concepts, serverless architectures, and security best practices through hands-on labs and real-world scenarios.

With comprehensive materials, interactive exercises, and a pass-or-we-pay guarantee, this course ensures you’re exam-ready and confident in your skills. Transform your career with the ultimate guide to designing scalable, secure, and efficient AWS solutions.

Who this course is for

IT Professionals Advancing or Transitioning into Cloud Roles

Developers and Engineers Needing Cloud Skills to Stay Competitive

Cloud Practitioners Validating or Expanding their AWS Skills

Course Outline

Course Content

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Welcome to the course!

8 lessons - 23 min

Pass-Or-We-Pay Exam Guarantee* 02:08
Download Course Materials & Slides Here
Welcome from Hadelin* 01:06
Create a Free-Tier Account [Hands-On]* 04:48
Set up a Billing Alarm [Hands-On]* 04:29
Root User vs. Admin User [Hands-On]* 04:59
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)* 02:14
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) [Hands-On]* 03:54

Cloud Computing Foundations

7 lessons - 24 min

What is Cloud Computing?* 04:36
Cloud Service Models* 02:39
AWS Regions and Availability Zones* 03:32
AWS Regions and Availability Zones [Hands-On]* 03:58
High Availability (HA) & Disaster Recovery* 05:15
Shared Responsibility Model in AWS* 04:04
Quiz

Identity Access Management (IAM)

12 lessons - 42 min

Intro to IAM* 02:03
IAM User Permissions & Policies* 06:58
IAM User Permissions & Policies [Hands-On]* 05:59
IAM Groups* 02:19
IAM Groups [Hands-On]* 05:14
IAM Roles* 02:33
AWS CLI & CloudShell* 02:34
AWS CloudShell [Hands-On]* 03:59
AWS CLI [Hands-On] (Optional)* 04:42
IAM Identity Center 02:52
Amazon Cognito 03:06
Quiz

Simple Storage Service (S3)

20 lessons - 81 min

What is S3?* 03:50
Quick Win* 04:51
Object Versioning* 03:55
Object Versioning [Hands-On]* 05:18
Storage Classes* 06:14
Intelligent Tiering* 03:47
Lifecycle Configuration* 03:53
Storage Classes, Tiering and Configuration [Hands-On]* 04:52
Resource-Based Policies (Bucket Policies)* 03:33
Resource-Based Policies (Bucket Policies) [Hands-On]* 06:33
Replication (SRR & CRR)* 03:04
Replication [Hands-On]* 07:47
Static Hosting* 01:24
Static Hosting [Hands-On]* 06:24
Multi-Part Upload* 02:15
Transfer Acceleration* 04:28
Object Lock & Glacier Vault Lock* 01:43
S3 Access Logs* 01:16
S3 Access Logs [Hands-On]* 06:22
Quiz

Advanced S3

20 lessons - 77 min

Lifecycle Configuration (Advanced) [Hands-On] 04:43
S3 Consistency Model 05:14
S3 Inventory 01:24
S3 Batch Operations 01:09
S3 Batch Operations [Hands-On] 08:26
S3 Select and Glacier Select 02:26
Byte-Range Fetches 01:44
S3 Encryption 04:48
S3 Encryption [Hands-On] 04:59
Replicating encrypted objects 03:27
MFA Delete 02:30
Requester Pays 02:31
Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) 03:46
Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) [Hands-On] 08:29
S3 Pre-signed URLs 01:38
S3 Pre-signed URLs [Hands-On] 02:59
S3 Access Points 03:22
S3 Object Lambda 03:43
Event Notifications 02:02
Event Notifications [Hands-On] 08:20

Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

23 lessons - 96 min

What is EC2?* 02:15
Virtualization* 03:03
EC2 Instance Types* 04:27
EC2 Behind the Scenes* 02:44
EC2 [Hands-On]* 05:59
Security Groups* 03:55
Security Groups [Hands-On]* 05:58
SSH and Instance Connect* 00:42
Instance Connect [Hands-On]* 04:50
SSH [Hands-On] (Mac & Linux)* 08:48
SSH [Hands-On] (Windows 8 or lower)* 07:27
SSH [Hands-On] (Windows 10 or higher)* 07:24
IAM Roles for EC2* 01:41
IAM Roles for EC2 [Hands-On]* 08:29
Instance Purchase Options* 02:14
Spot Instances* 02:46
Reserved Instances Overview* 02:28
Reserved Instances Options ("Roadtrip" mnemonic)* 05:53
Savings Plan* 04:33
Dedicated Instances and Hosts* 03:48
Capacity Reservations* 02:15
Instance Purchase Options [Hands-On]* 04:58
Quiz

Advanced EC2

9 lessons - 50 min

Spot Request & Spot Fleet 06:50
Spot Request & Spot Fleet [Hands-On] 05:50
EC2 Placement Groups 04:19
EC2 Placement Groups [Hands-On] 02:59
Types of IP (Private, Public, Elastic) 05:41
Types of IP (Private, Public, Elastic) [Hands-On] 06:28
Elastic Network Interfaces (ENI) 06:18
Advanced ENI 06:23
Elastic Network Interfaces (ENI) [Hands-On] 05:59

Elastic Block Store (EBS) & Instance Store

16 lessons - 56 min

File vs Block vs Object Storage Types* 04:13
EBS Behind The Scenes* 02:36
Types of EBS Volumes* 02:56
EBS Multi-Attach 02:29
EBS [Hands-On]* 07:03
EBS Snapshots* 04:10
EBS Snapshot Archive* 00:48
EBS Snapshots [Hands-On]* 03:59
EBS Encryption 05:53
EBS Encryption [Hands-On] 04:06
Amazon Machine Image (AMI)* 03:59
AMIs [Hands-On]* 06:27
Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM)* 03:34
Instance Store Behind The Scenes* 03:15
Instance Store Volume Types* 01:19
Quiz

Advanced Storage

5 lessons - 24 min

Amazon EFS* 03:01
Amazon EFS [Hands-On] 09:59
Amazon FSx 04:13
Shared file systems: Which to use? 03:19
Amazon FSx [Hands-On] 03:57

Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) and Auto Scaling (ASG)

11 lessons - 37 min

Elastic Load Balancer (ELB)* 03:59
Types of Load Balancers* 01:48
EC2 Launch Template [Hands-On]* 03:56
Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) [Hands-On]* 06:58
VPC Lattice 02:36
Auto Scaling Group (ASG)* 03:59
Auto Scaling Group (ASG) [Hands-On] (Part 1)* 04:16
Auto Scaling Group (ASG) [Hands-On] (Part 2)* 04:09
Auto Scaling Group (ASG) - Scaling Policies* 04:12
Section Cleanup 01:59
Quiz

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) & Networking

25 lessons - 85 min

Amazon VPC* 02:56
Public & Private Subnets* 02:20
CIDR Notation & CIDR Blocks* 06:34
Subnetting your VPC* 02:28
Amazon VPC [Hands-On] Part 1* 05:59
Internet & NAT Gateways* 03:17
Route Tables* 05:44
Amazon VPC [Hands-On] Part 2* 04:54
Stateful vs. Stateless Firewalls* 03:38
Network ACLs (NACLs)* 04:10
Network ACLs [Hands-On]* 03:38
AWS Public and Private Services* 01:31
Gateway & Interface Endpoints* 03:46
Interface Endpoints [Hands-On] 09:59
Gateways vs. Endpoints* 01:11
AWS PrivateLink* 01:45
VPC Peering* 02:06
VPC Architecture Exercise* 02:08
VPC Architecture Exercise [Hands-On] Part 1* 04:55
VPC Architecture Exercise [Hands-On] Part 2* 02:19
VPC Flow Logs 02:34
Bastion Hosts 03:06
IPv6 for VPC 02:30
Section Cleanup 01:57
Quiz

Hybrid Cloud

7 lessons - 22 min

Types of Cloud Deployments* 02:49
Site-to-Site VPN* 02:43
Site-to-Site VPN [Hands-On] 02:57
Direct Connect (DX)* 04:00
Transit Gateway 03:19
AWS Client VPN* 02:47
AWS Outposts* 03:57

Route 53

24 lessons - 111 min

Introduction to Route 53 & DNS 05:54
Introduction to Route 53 & DNS [Hands-On] 06:07
Register your Domain [Hands-On] 04:27
DNS Record Types 04:27
DNS Record Types [Hands-On] 03:14
Public & Private Hosted Zones 04:26
Time To Live (TTL) Setting 03:03
Time To Live (TTL) Setting [Hands-On] 04:59
Creating your EC2 Servers [Hands-On] 05:59
Routing Policies Part 1 (Simple, Weighted) 04:44
Simple Routing Policy [Hands-On] 04:52
Weighted Routing Policy [Hands-On] 04:59
Health Checks 03:41
Health Checks [Hands-On] 06:59
Routing Policies Part 2 (Failover, Multi-Value) 03:31
Failover Routing Policy [Hands-On] 04:38
Multi-Value Answer Routing Policy [Hands-On] 04:46
Routing Policies Part 3 (Latency, Geolocation) 04:36
Latency Routing Policy [Hands-On] 04:55
Geolocation Routing Policy [Hands-On] 04:59
Routing Policies Part 4 (Geoproximity, IP-Based) 02:54
Alias Records 06:03
Alias Records [Hands-On] 05:39
Section Cleanup 02:05

CloudFront & AWS Global Accelerator

4 lessons - 8 min

CloudFront Overview* 01:25
CloudFront Deep Dive 01:50
CloudFront: Lambda@Edge and CloudFront Functions 02:51
AWS Global Accelerator 02:46

Databases

19 lessons - 63 min

Introduction to Databases (SQL vs NoSQL)* 05:13
Amazon RDS* 02:13
RDS Multi-AZ & Read-Replicas* 05:50
Amazon RDS [Hands-On]* 06:49
Amazon Aurora* 02:04
Amazon Aurora [Hands-On] 04:53
Amazon Aurora Global Database 02:42
Amazon Aurora Serverless v2 02:16
ElastiCache 03:34
MemoryDB with Redis Compatibility 01:18
DynamoDB* 02:59
DynamoDB Global Tables* 02:15
DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)* 02:43
DynamoDB [Hands-On]* 05:21
DocumentDB* 03:13
Amazon Keyspaces 01:57
Database Migration Service (DMS)* 01:32
Amazon Neptune* 01:16
OpenSearch Service 05:17

Analytics

4 lessons - 8 min

Amazon Redshift* 04:16
AWS Glue* 01:31
Amazon Athena* 01:02
Lake Formation 01:54

Decoupling & Integration Services

21 lessons - 84 min

Microservices & Decoupling* 04:51
Simple Queue Service (SQS)* 06:00
Simple Queue Service (SQS) [Hands-On]* 03:34
Visibility Timeout vs Delay Queue 05:19
Short Polling vs Long Polling 01:57
Dead Letter Queues (DLQs) 03:59
Configuring an advanced SQS Queue [Hands-On] 06:30
FIFO Queues 02:23
FIFO Queues [Hands-On] 04:47
Simple Notification Service (SNS)* 03:45
Simple Notification Service (SNS) [Hands-On]* 04:51
Advanced SNS (Filtering, Encryption, Fanout) 03:44
Amazon MQ* 01:37
Amazon Kinesis* 01:47
Kinesis Data Streams 05:42
Kinesis Data Firehose 03:56
Kinesis Data Analytics (For Applications) 02:58
Kinesis Data Analytics (For Apache Flink) 02:17
MSK (Kafka) 03:27
Amazon Kinesis [Hands-On] 08:51
Batch 02:20

Containers: ECS, ECR, EKS, Fargate

7 lessons - 19 min

Docker & Containerized Applications* 04:10
Elastic Container Service (ECS), Fargate, ECR* 03:09
Amazon ECR 03:10
ECS - Services and Tasks 02:41
Kubernetes Overview 01:31
Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) 01:50
ECS Fargate vs Lambda for Serverless Containers 03:14

Serverless Services (Solutions Architect Level)

16 lessons - 56 min

What is Serverless?* 03:25
Lambda* 04:23
Lambda [Hands-On]* 06:28
Lambda - Packaging and Versioning 02:27
Lambda - Permissions and Security 03:20
Lambda in VPC 02:08
Lambda Invocation 03:50
Lambda - Success and Error handling 01:32
API Gateway 01:38
API Gateway - Advanced Topics 03:17
AppSync 01:27
EventBridge* 05:42
EventBridge [Hands-On]* 05:57
RDS Lambda Invocation 01:10
Step Functions* 01:45
Step Functions [Hands-On] 07:59

Machine Learning

12 lessons - 33 min

Machine Learning Services* 03:15
Amazon Polly [Hands-On]* 01:58
Amazon Transcribe [Hands-On]* 01:59
Amazon Textract [Hands-On]* 01:57
Amazon Personalize [Hands-On]* 05:59
Amazon Rekognition [Hands-On]* 02:57
Amazon Lex [Hands-On]* 04:59
Amazon Comprehend [Hands-On]* 05:59
Amazon Translate [Hands-On]* 01:58
Amazon Bedrock - Chat and Text Generation [Hands-On]* 01:56
Amazon Bedrock - Image Generation [Hands-On]* 00:44
Quiz*

Application & Infrastructure Monitoring

8 lessons - 25 min

AWS Health Dashboard* 02:26
AWS Health Dashboard [Hands-On]* 02:51
CloudWatch Metrics & Alarms* 03:46
CloudWatch Metrics & Alarms [Hands-On]* 06:59
CloudWatch Bonus + Cleanup [Hands-On]* 00:59
CloudWatch Logs 04:01
CloudWatch Logs Insights 03:15
CloudWatch Dashboards 01:32

Management & Governance

19 lessons - 64 min

AWS Organizations* 03:32
Service Control Policies (SCPs)* 03:28
AWS Organizations & SCP [Hands-On] Part 1* 04:59
AWS Organizations & SCPs [Hands-On] Part 2* 04:27
Control Tower* 01:25
Control Tower [Hands-On]* 05:59
AWS Config* 01:36
AWS Config [Hands-On]* 04:59
CloudTrail* 02:51
CloudTrail - Advanced Topics 02:00
CloudTrail [Hands-On]* 02:57
Trusted Advisor* 01:19
Trusted Advisor [Hands-On] 03:38
Systems Manager (SSM)* 02:05
SSM Session Manager* 02:00
SSM Session Manager [Hands-On]* 04:58
SSM Parameter Store 03:14
SSM Parameter Store [Hands-On] 06:29
AWS RAM (Resource Access Manager) 02:24

Encryption & Security

22 lessons - 78 min

Encryption Fundamentals* 05:22
Types of Encryption* 03:20
Key Management Service (KMS)* 04:35
Key Management Service (KMS) [Hands-On]* 06:28
Data Encryption Key (DEK)* 04:32
Multi-Region Keys 04:05
Symmetric & Asymmetric Keys 05:29
Advanced: How SSL/TLS Certificates Work 06:46
AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) 02:17
AWS Secrets Manager* 02:21
AWS Secrets Manager [Hands-On]* 06:20
Secrets Manager vs Parameter Store 01:11
Web Application Firewall (WAF)* 04:41
AWS Shield* 03:36
AWS Firewall Manager 01:28
Web Application Firewall (WAF), AWS Shield and AWS Firewall Manager [Hands-On] 04:55
WAF Cleanup [Hands-On] 01:59
Amazon GuardDuty* 01:03
Amazon Inspector (EC2) 01:57
Amazon Inspector (ECR & Lambda) 01:41
Amazon Macie* 01:03
AWS Network Firewall 03:14

Automation, Deployment & Developer Tools

13 lessons - 37 min

CloudFormation* 04:13
CloudFormation [Hands-On]* 06:57
Cloud Development Kit (CDK)* 02:09
Elastic Beanstalk 02:37
Elastic Beanstalk [Hands-On] 07:59
Amplify 01:18
CodePipeline: CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy* 04:14
AWS CodeArtifact* 01:41
AWS Cloud9* 00:55
AWS CodeStar* 01:31
Amazon CodeGuru* 02:24
AWS X-Ray* 01:40
Quiz

Other Services

3 lessons - 6 min

Simple Email Service (SES) 02:48
Pinpoint 01:20
Backup 02:40

AWS Frameworks And Best Practices

10 lessons - 35 min

Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF)* 06:52
AWS Well-Architected Framework Overview* 04:20
1st Pillar: Operational Excellence* 02:31
2nd Pillar: Security* 02:47
3rd Pillar: Reliability* 02:32
4th Pillar: Performance Efficiency* 02:42
5th Pillar: Cost Optimization* 02:22
6th Pillar: Sustainability* 02:52
The Lenses* 03:33
Well-Architected Tool* 04:29

Practice Exams

2 lessons - 0 min

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate - Practice Exam #1
AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate - Practice Exam #2

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Meet Your Instructors

Dedicated professionals committed to your success.

Kirill Eremenko

Co-Founder and Instructor

With ten years of experience in online education, Kirill is an industry expert. Having created more than 40 online courses, he has taught over three million students on Udemy.

Kirill’s many qualifications include Certified Cloud Practitioner, Certified AI Practitioner, Certified Solutions Architect (Associate), and Certified Machine Learning Engineer (Associate).

Hadelin de Ponteves

Co-Founder and Instructor

With ten years of experience in online education, Hadelin is an industry expert. Having created more than 40 online courses, he has taught over two million students on Udemy.

Hadelin’s many certifications include Certified Cloud Practitioner, Certified AI Practitioner, Certified Solutions Architect (Associate), and Certified Machine Learning Engineer (Associate).

Sam Bashton

Head Instructor

I’m excited to contribute to the CloudWolf community: I’ve been working with AWS for over 15 years, and I’m just as passionate about the opportunities the cloud offers as the day I started. Now I’m even more excited to join the CloudWolf community to share my knowledge and train people on leveraging AWS to its fullest potential.

Laurent Mathieu

Instructor

AWS certifications offer a solid foundation for advancing in cloud careers, and I’m thrilled to support the next wave of professionals by sharing my passion with the CloudWolf community.

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