Cloud Architect on AWS: Design, Tradeoffs and the SAA Exam

This is for you if

• You know AWS services but freeze when asked to design a whole system
• You're moving from DevOps, platform or SRE work into an architect or senior role
• You're preparing for the Solutions Architect Associate exam and want the reasoning, not memorisation
• You have architect or system design interviews coming up

What's inside

• The architect's loop: requirements, constraints, options, trade-offs, with availability, RTO/RPO and capacity math
• All six Well-Architected pillars, how they trade against each other, and a CLI-driven Well-Architected review
• Multi-AZ VPC design in Terraform: three subnet tiers, NAT options, gateway endpoints, security groups by reference
• Choosing compute, storage, databases and caching, plus SQS, SNS, EventBridge and Kinesis patterns
• IAM evaluation, Organizations, SCPs, RCPs and IAM Identity Center, with guardrails tested before deployment
• The four DR strategies with RTO/RPO math, plus a timed point-in-time recovery drill
• Six worked designs: three-tier web app, serverless API, event-driven pipeline, multi-Region DR, multi-tenant SaaS, data lake
• Architecture Decision Records, a troubleshooting playbook and trade-off tables for design reviews
• SAA-C03 domain mapping, keyword-to-service table, 24 architect interview Q&As and a 30-day plan

After this guide you can

• Turn vague stakeholder requirements into availability, RTO, RPO and capacity numbers
• Design and defend a multi-AZ AWS architecture with explicit trade-offs
• Pick a DR strategy that matches the business need and measure its real RTO
• Write ADRs that explain why a system looks the way it does
• Walk into the SAA exam and architect interviews with a repeatable method

Contents

1. Thinking like an architectp. 4
2. Network foundations: VPC design and multi-AZp. 12
3. Compute, storage and databases: choosing the building blocksp. 23
4. Serverless and event-driven building blocksp. 31
5. Identity, security and multi-account designp. 42
6. High availability and disaster recoveryp. 47
7. Cost optimisation and observabilityp. 53
8. Six worked architecture designsp. 58
9. Troubleshooting playbook and production checklistp. 68
10. Mapping to the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate examp. 72
11. Architect interview questionsp. 76
12. Cheat sheetp. 85
13. 30-day practice planp. 88