The Amazon AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional certification is designed for candidates with 2 or more years of hands-on experience creating and deploying cloud architecture on AWS. It proves your skills to deal with apps on AWS within complex and diverse requirements. That’s why your knowledge of the AWS APIs, AWS CLI, AWS CloudFormation, the AWS Billing Console and Management Console, Linux and Windows environments, and a scripting language is welcomed. Your ability to map business objectives to app and architecture requirements, assess cloud app requirements to work with apps on AWS, design hybrid architecture with the use of AWS technologies will also be advantageous.
The Amazon AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional designation is intended for candidates who’ve set the goal to build a career of a solutions architect. That’s why experience of at least 2 years and experience in designing AWS-based applications and systems as well as possessing solid tech skills are required. Your ability to create reliable apps based on AWS, offer suitable AWS services to design and deploy an app based on given requirements, create enterprise-wide operations based on AWS, and utilize cost-control strategies will be assessed.
Before enrolling in the process of taking the SAP-C01 exam, you need to know its details. The exam offers you to complete 75 questions within 180 minutes. The items are of multiple choice and multiple response and consider the fact that only 50 questions will be scored. To succeed in the exam, you are to gain 750 points. Regarding the exam price, it will cost you $300.
As for the exam content, this evaluation includes 5 domains. The first one is dedicated to such a topic as design for organizational complexity. In this part, your skills to define cross-account authentication, access strategy for complex organizations, design networks and multi-account AWS environment for such organizations will be checked.
The second domain is centered on design for new solutions. In this section, you should demonstrate solid skills in selecting appropriate security requirements and controls, select a solution design and apply a strategy to meet the requirements. You also should be able to provide a solution design to support business continuity and meet performance objectives. Besides, you should be skilled in implementing a deployment strategy to meet business requirements.
The third domain is all about migration planning. This section is intended to check your skills to define processes and workloads to provide migration to the cloud, choose migration services and tools for potential solutions based on AWS knowledge, and decide on a new cloud architecture required for an existing solution. In addition, your skills to find a strategy to provide a successful migration of on-premises workloads to the cloud will be checked.
The fourth section verifies your skills that refer to cost control. In this part, you should demonstrate your skills to choose a cost-effective pricing model for a solution, find an AWS-generated cost allocation tags strategy, find a way to operate deployed resources, and a way to plan costs in order not to exceed the determined budget amount. To add more, you should be able to utilize AWS Managed Services and define the services that are most cost-effective in meeting business goals.
The fifth section refers to continuous improvement for existing solutions. To crack the exam questions in this part you should be able to troubleshoot solutions architectures, find a strategy to refine a current solution for operational excellence, better the solidity of an existing solution, improve its performance and security. Additionally, you should find a way of improving the deployment of an existing solution.
Since the Amazon AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional certification is for experienced professionals with solid skills, the salary you can get with this designation is about $163,525 as stated on the Ziprecruiter website.