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AWS Solutions Architect: Service-by-Service

A provider-deep tour of Amazon Web Services for solutions and cloud architects. Walks the full service landscape - compute, storage, databases, networking, identity, data and analytics - then layers on infrastructure-as-code, containers, operations, security and the Well-Architected Framework, and finishes with the architecture deep-dives and behavioral themes AWS architect loops grade against.

AWS Solutions ArchitectSenior~50h8 sections22 items
Section 1 of 8

The AWS service landscape

Architects are expected to know what each service is for and when to reach for it. Build a working map of the core families: compute (EC2, Lambda, ECS/EKS, Fargate, Batch), storage (S3, EBS, EFS, Glacier, Storage Gateway), databases (RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, Redshift), and the glue (SQS, SNS, EventBridge, Step Functions). This category is the spine of the path.

  1. 01MCQAWS questions (106 suggested)Multiple choice category
Section 2 of 8

Networking and content delivery

Most AWS design questions come down to the VPC. Anchor subnets, route tables, NAT, security groups vs NACLs, Transit Gateway, PrivateLink, Route 53, and CloudFront edge delivery before the design rounds.

  1. 01MCQNetworking questions (20 suggested)Multiple choice category
  2. 02DesignDesign a CDN with Edge Compute (CloudFront / Cloudflare)System Design · Hard
  3. 03DesignDesign a Load Balancer (L4 vs L7, Envoy / HAProxy / ALB)System Design · Hard
Section 3 of 8

Data stores and analytics

Choosing the right data store is half of an architect's job. Work through relational vs key-value vs columnar trade-offs, then the analytics path (Kinesis, Glue, Athena, Redshift) and caching patterns that keep reads fast.

  1. 01MCQDatabases questions (20 suggested)Multiple choice category
  2. 02DesignDesign an Analytics Pipeline (Kafka / Spark / Warehouse)System Design · Hard
  3. 03DesignDesign a Distributed Cache (Memcached / Redis Cluster)System Design · Hard
Section 4 of 8

Infrastructure as Code and containers

Architects don't click in the console. Build fluency in declarative provisioning (CloudFormation, CDK, Terraform) and the container stack (ECS, EKS, Fargate) that runs most modern AWS workloads.

  1. 01MCQTerraform questions (25 suggested)Multiple choice category
  2. 02MCQKubernetes questions (20 suggested)Multiple choice category
Section 5 of 8

Operations, observability and DevOps

A design isn't done until it can be operated. Cover CloudWatch, X-Ray, CodePipeline/CodeBuild, and the deployment-safety patterns (blue/green, canary) architects are expected to bake in.

  1. 01MCQDevOps questions (20 suggested)Multiple choice category
  2. 02DesignDesign an Observability Platform (Metrics, Logs, Traces)System Design · Hard
Section 6 of 8

Security, governance and the Well-Architected Framework

The pillars architects are graded on: IAM least privilege, KMS, Organizations and Control Tower for governance, plus the six Well-Architected pillars (operational excellence, security, reliability, performance, cost, sustainability).

  1. 01MCQSecurity questions (20 suggested)Multiple choice category
  2. 02MCQCloud Architecture questions (25 suggested)Multiple choice category
Section 7 of 8

Architect deep-dives (system design)

Bounded designs that exercise the conversations AWS architects lead - decoupling with queues, consistency across services, throttling, and payment-grade reliability.

  1. 01DesignDesign a Distributed Message Queue (Kafka deep-dive)System Design · Hard
  2. 02DesignDesign Distributed Transactions (2PC, Saga, TCC)System Design · Hard
  3. 03DesignDesign a Rate Limiter (API Throttling)System Design · Medium
  4. 04DesignDesign a Payments / Checkout System (Stripe-style)System Design · Hard
Section 8 of 8

Behavioral: influence and judgment

Architect rounds screen for driving decisions across teams you don't manage and making pragmatic cost/resilience trade-offs. Have a story per theme with concrete business impact.

  1. 01BehavioralLeadership Without AuthorityBehavioral · General
  2. 02BehavioralDealing with AmbiguityBehavioral · General
  3. 03BehavioralFrugality (Amazon Leadership Principle)Behavioral · Amazon LP
  4. 04BehavioralDive Deep (Amazon Leadership Principle)Behavioral · Amazon LP
  5. 05BehavioralLearn and Be Curious (Amazon Leadership Principle)Behavioral · Amazon LP

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