AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) flashcards

An Amazon RDS deployment option that automatically provisions and maintains a synchronous standby replica of your database in a different Availability Zone within the same AWS Region, providing high availability and automatic failover.

• Provides high availability and durability within a single AWS Region.
• Automatic failover in case of primary instance or AZ failure.
• Synchronous replication ensures zero data loss during failover.
• Increases fault tolerance and reduces administrative burden.

Memory trick: Multi-AZ: More Zones, More Zest for Your DB.

A fast content delivery network (CDN) service that securely delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs to customers globally with low latency.

• Caches content at edge locations worldwide.
• Reduces latency and improves transfer speeds.
• Offloads traffic from origin servers (e.g., S3).

Memory trick: CloudFront's the key, for content to be free, fast to your users, across every sea.

A system designed to ingest, process, and store high-volume, continuous data streams with minimal latency, typically using services like Kinesis, Lambda, and S3.

• Handles high-throughput data ingestion.
• Processes data with low latency.
• Stores raw or processed data for analytics.

Memory trick: Kinesis streams the data fast, Lambda processes, S3 makes it last.

A fully managed, serverless, key-value and document NoSQL database service that delivers single-digit millisecond performance at any scale. It supports flexible schemas and is highly available and durable.

• NoSQL database (key-value, document).
• Serverless and fully managed.
• Scales to millions of requests/second with single-digit millisecond latency.
• High availability and durability across multiple AZs.

Memory trick: DynamoDB: Dynamic Data, Dynamic Scale.

A disaster recovery strategy where a scaled-down but functional version of the application is continuously running in a secondary region, ready to handle traffic upon failover.

• Achieves RTO in minutes to hours and RPO in minutes.
• Higher cost than Pilot Light but lower than Multi-site Active/Active.
• Pre-provisioned infrastructure in the DR region.

Memory trick: DR strategies: B.P.W.A. - Big Problems With AWS

Amazon Aurora's architecture provides high availability, fault tolerance, and automatic failover across multiple Availability Zones for relational databases.

• Data automatically replicated across 3 AZs.
• Automatic failover to a replica in seconds.
• Separates compute and storage for scalability and fault tolerance.

Memory trick: Aurora Multi-AZ is your relational database's fortress, always up, always ready.

A disaster recovery strategy where core infrastructure (e.g., database) is continuously running in the DR region, while other components are launched only during a disaster, balancing RTO/RPO with cost.

• A minimal version of the application's core is always running.
• Other resources are provisioned on demand during a disaster.
• Offers RTO in hours and RPO in minutes, balancing cost and recovery.

Memory trick: Pilot Light, a small glow, for DR, a cost-effective flow.

Fully managed, multi-region, multi-active DynamoDB tables that provide fast local read/write performance for global applications.

• Automatic replication across specified AWS regions.
• Provides low-latency access globally.
• Enhances application availability and disaster recovery.

Memory trick: Global tables make DynamoDB data zoom across regions, always local.

A feature of Amazon Aurora that allows a single Aurora database to span multiple AWS regions, providing fast local reads and disaster recovery from regional outages.

• RTO of minutes, RPO typically less than 1 second.
• Uses dedicated infrastructure for replication, minimizing latency.
• Allows secondary regions to be used for read scaling.

Memory trick: Global Database is like having an instant twin brain in another city, always perfectly in sync.

A fully managed in-memory data store service compatible with Redis, providing sub-millisecond latency and high throughput for real-time applications.

• Supports various data structures (strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets).
• Ideal for caching, session stores, leaderboards, and real-time analytics.
• Offers high availability with replication groups and automatic failover.

Memory trick: ElastiCache Redis is the lightning-fast brain for your app's data.

A serverless compute service that runs code in response to events and automatically manages the underlying compute resources.

• Event-driven execution.
• Automatically scales from zero to meet demand.
• Pay-per-execution model (compute time and requests).

Memory trick: Lambda is like a tiny robot that wakes up only when it hears a doorbell.

A networking service that improves the availability and performance of applications with global users by directing traffic to optimal healthy endpoints over the AWS global network.

• Provides static Anycast IP addresses.
• Routes traffic to the nearest healthy endpoint.
• Uses the AWS global network for improved performance.

Memory trick: Global Accelerator is your app's express lane on the AWS superhighway, always taking the fastest route.

A fully managed, petabyte-scale cloud data warehouse service designed for high-performance analytical processing of large datasets.

• Optimized for complex analytical queries.
• Columnar storage and parallel processing for speed.
• RA3 instances allow independent scaling of compute and storage.

Memory trick: Redshift is the super-computer brain for all your data questions.

An AWS service that automatically adjusts the number of Amazon EC2 instances in your application based on defined conditions to maintain performance and reduce costs.

• Adds instances during demand spikes, removes during lulls.
• Integrates with CloudWatch for metric-based scaling.
• Improves fault tolerance by replacing unhealthy instances.

Memory trick: Auto Scaling is like a smart elevator, always having just the right number of cars.

An Application Load Balancer feature that binds a user's session to a specific target (EC2 instance), ensuring that all requests from that user during the session are sent to the same target.

• Maintains session state on a specific instance.
• Can be cookie-based.
• Can reduce load balancing effectiveness if overused.

Memory trick: Sticky sessions, like glue, keeps users with their instance, it's true.

A disaster recovery strategy for RDS where a cross-region read replica acts as a 'pilot light,' continuously replicating data at low cost, ready for quick promotion to a primary instance.

• Achieves RPO in minutes (replication lag dependent).
• Achieves RTO in tens of minutes (promotion and scaling).
• Cost-effective during normal operations by only running a read replica.

Memory trick: Your RDS read replica is a Pilot Light, quietly humming in the next region, ready to flare up.

A fully managed, in-memory data store service compatible with Redis, offering high performance, low latency, and scalability for caching and real-time use cases.

• In-memory data store for caching.
• Sub-millisecond latency and high throughput.
• Highly available and scalable for demanding workloads.

Memory trick: Lambda loves ElastiCache, for speed that can't be matched.

Allows sharing live, transactionally consistent data from a Redshift cluster to other clusters, including those in different regions, for near-zero RPO disaster recovery.

• Enables real-time data access across regions.
• Achieves near-zero RPO.
• Simplifies cross-region disaster recovery and analytics.

Memory trick: Share your Redshift data live across regions, so outages won't stop the insights.

An Amazon S3 feature that provides WORM (Write Once, Read Many) protection for objects. It prevents objects from being deleted or overwritten for a fixed retention period or indefinitely.

• Supports governance mode (most users can't delete) and compliance mode (no user, including root, can delete).
• Used for regulatory compliance and data retention policies.
• Works with S3 Versioning to protect individual object versions.

Memory trick: Lock Your S3: Regulations, Retention, Resilience.

Amazon CloudFront is a fast content delivery network (CDN) service that securely delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs to customers globally with low latency and high transfer speeds. It integrates with S3, EC2, ELB, and WAF/Shield.

• Caches static content at edge locations worldwide.
• Can serve dynamic content by forwarding requests to origins (e.g., ALBs, EC2).
• Provides built-in DDoS protection and integrates with AWS WAF.
• Improves user experience by reducing latency and increasing availability.

Memory trick: CloudFront's Edge: Speed and Shield for All.

A fully managed publish/subscribe messaging service that enables you to send messages to a large number of subscribers simultaneously.

• Decouples publishers from subscribers.
• Supports various endpoint types (SQS, Lambda, HTTP/S, email, mobile push).
• Scales automatically to handle high message throughput.

Memory trick: SNS is like a loudspeaker, broadcasting news to everyone who tunes in.

A billing and capacity management mode for Amazon DynamoDB that automatically scales throughput to meet workload demand without requiring explicit capacity planning.

• Pay-per-request pricing for reads and writes.
• Ideal for unpredictable workloads with sudden spikes.
• No need to specify read/write capacity units (RCUs/WCUs).

Memory trick: On-demand is like a magic elastic band, stretching perfectly with every pull.

A real-time data streaming service that can continuously capture and store gigabytes of data per second from hundreds of thousands of sources.

• Enables real-time processing of large data streams.
• Supports multiple consumers to process the same data independently.
• Data is stored for up to 365 days, allowing replay.

Memory trick: Kinesis is like a powerful river, carrying news to many towns at once.

Using Amazon CloudFront as a Content Delivery Network (CDN) with an Amazon S3 bucket as the origin to deliver static web content globally with low latency.

• Caches content at edge locations worldwide.
• Reduces load on the origin S3 bucket.
• Improves user experience by reducing content load times.

Memory trick: CloudFront is the global express delivery service for your website's goodies.

Amazon S3 Lifecycle policies automate the transition of objects between different S3 storage classes or their expiration. This helps optimize storage costs by moving data to less expensive classes as its access patterns change.

• S3 Standard: high availability, frequent access.
• S3 Standard-IA: high availability, infrequent access, lower cost.
• S3 Glacier: archival, configurable retrieval times, very low cost.
• S3 Glacier Deep Archive: lowest cost archival, longest retrieval times (up to 12 hours).

Memory trick: S3 Tiers: Standard, Infrequent, Glacier, Deep.

A fully managed messaging service that enables you to send messages to a large number of subscribers (fan-out) via a 'topic'. Subscribers can be SQS queues, Lambda functions, HTTP endpoints, email, or SMS.

• Publish/Subscribe model.
• Supports fan-out to multiple endpoints simultaneously.
• Decouples publishers from subscribers.
• Often used with SQS for reliable message delivery to services.

Memory trick: SNS: Send to Many, SQS: Queue for One.

An AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) option that operates at the application layer (Layer 7) and allows for flexible application management and traffic routing to targets in multiple Availability Zones.

• Distributes traffic across multiple targets (EC2, containers, Lambda).
• Performs health checks and routes traffic only to healthy targets.
• Supports path-based, host-based, and query string-based routing.

Memory trick: ALB is the smart traffic cop, directing cars around broken roads.

A common and cost-effective architecture for Amazon EMR clusters, using EC2 Spot Instances for compute to reduce costs and Amazon S3 for durable, scalable storage of input and output data.

• Spot Instances offer up to 90% savings for interruptible workloads.
• S3 provides high durability and availability for data, decoupling storage from compute.
• EMR is designed to be resilient to instance failures (including Spot interruptions).
• Ideal for batch processing, analytics, and big data workloads.

Memory trick: Spot's the Deal, S3's the Data Seal.

Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployments create a synchronous standby replica of your database in a different Availability Zone for high availability and automatic failover.

• Synchronous replication to a standby instance.
• Automatic failover in case of primary instance or AZ failure.
• Enhances fault tolerance and minimizes downtime.

Memory trick: Multi-AZ is like having a perfect twin ready to take over instantly.

Combining Amazon SNS (pub/sub) with Amazon SQS (queuing) creates a powerful and flexible asynchronous messaging system for microservices, supporting both fan-out and reliable point-to-point delivery.

• SNS handles fan-out (one-to-many) messaging.
• SQS provides durable queuing for individual consumers.
• Ensures reliable message delivery and loose coupling.

Memory trick: SNS broadcasts, SQS stores, microservices talk, and no one ignores.

An S3 storage class that automatically moves objects between four access tiers (Frequent, Infrequent, Archive Instant Access, Archive Deep Access) when access patterns change, optimizing storage costs.

• Optimizes costs without performance impact or operational overhead.
• No retrieval fees when moving between Frequent and Infrequent tiers.
• Ideal for data with unknown or changing access patterns.

Memory trick: Intelligent-Tiering is the smart butler, knowing exactly where to put your data for cheapest access.

A disaster recovery strategy where identical, fully operational environments run simultaneously in multiple AWS Regions, distributing traffic across them. In case of an outage in one region, traffic is seamlessly redirected to the other active region(s).

• Highest availability and resilience.
• Lowest RTO and RPO (near zero).
• Most complex and expensive to implement.

Memory trick: Active-Active: Always On, Always Ready, Anywhere.

A combination of AWS services that automatically adjusts the number of EC2 instances based on demand and distributes incoming traffic across them, ensuring high availability and scalability.

• EC2 Auto Scaling dynamically scales instances up/down.
• ELB distributes traffic for fault tolerance.
• Handles unpredictable and spiky workloads efficiently.

Memory trick: Auto Scaling grows, ELB flows, your app goes where the traffic goes.

Leveraging EC2 Spot Instances with Amazon EMR provides a highly cost-effective solution for processing large datasets, ideal for fault-tolerant, intermittent big data workloads.

• Spot Instances offer up to 90% savings.
• EMR simplifies running big data frameworks like Hadoop, Spark.
• Suitable for workloads tolerant to interruptions.

Memory trick: Spot the savings for big data with EMR.

AWS Direct Connect is a cloud service solution that links your internal network to an AWS Direct Connect location over a standard Ethernet fiber-optic cable.

• Dedicated network connection from on-premises to AWS.
• Bypasses the public internet.
• Reduces network costs, increases bandwidth throughput, and provides a more consistent network experience.
• Supports various connection speeds from 50 Mbps to 100 Gbps.

Memory trick: Direct Connect: Dedicated, Data-Driven, Dependable.

An Auto Scaling policy that adjusts the number of resources to maintain a specified metric (e.g., CPU utilization) at a target value, dynamically scaling up and down.

• Automatically maintains a target metric.
• Reacts to real-time workloads.
• Simplifies scaling configuration.

Memory trick: Track your target, and ECS will scale for you.

Amazon EC2 Spot Instances let you take advantage of unused EC2 capacity in the AWS cloud, available at a discount of up to 90% compared to On-Demand prices.

• Ideal for fault-tolerant, flexible, and stateless workloads.
• Can be interrupted by AWS with a two-minute warning.
• Significant cost savings compared to On-Demand instances.
• Often used for big data, containerized workloads, CI/CD, and HPC.

Memory trick: Spot Instances: Savings for Spiky, Stop-able tasks.

Amazon Aurora Serverless v2 is an on-demand, auto-scaling configuration for Amazon Aurora that scales compute and memory capacity instantly and automatically, paying only for the capacity consumed.

• Designed for highly variable, unpredictable workloads.
• Scales compute and memory in fine-grained increments.
• Provides immediate scaling (milliseconds).
• Cost-effective by paying only for capacity used.

Memory trick: Aurora Serverless v2 grows and shrinks like a mobile app's user base.

A fully managed, scalable, and elastic NFS file system that can be shared across multiple Amazon EC2 instances.

• Supports NFSv4 protocol.
• Automatically scales storage capacity and performance.
• Accessible from multiple EC2 instances concurrently.
• Regional service, data is stored across multiple Availability Zones.

Memory trick: Shared files in the cloud, EFS shouts loud!

S3 Multi-Region Access Points provide a global endpoint to access replicated data across multiple S3 buckets. AWS Global Accelerator improves routing for optimal performance and availability across AWS regions.

• Single global endpoint for multi-region S3 data.
• Automatically routes requests to the nearest S3 bucket.
• Global Accelerator uses AWS network for improved routing and performance.

Memory trick: Think global access point, then accelerate the path.

A common architecture for delivering live video content globally with low latency and high availability using AWS services.

• AWS Elemental MediaLive for real-time video encoding.
• Amazon S3 for storing video assets and segments.
• Amazon CloudFront for global content delivery and caching.
• Often integrated with other services like MediaPackage or Kinesis Video Streams.

Memory trick: Live streams flow, MediaLive's glow, S3's storage, CloudFront's show.

AWS Transit Gateway is a network transit hub that you can use to interconnect your virtual private clouds (VPCs) and on-premises networks.

• Simplifies network topology by acting as a central hub.
• Scales efficiently for connecting hundreds of VPCs.
• Provides centralized routing and network security.
• Supports inter-region peering and Direct Connect Gateway integration.

Memory trick: Transit Gateway: Transform Traffic, Transparently.

A managed cluster platform for big data processing (e.g., Spark, Hadoop) that leverages EC2 Spot Instances for cost optimization on interruptible workloads.

• EMR simplifies big data framework deployment and management.
• Spot Instances offer significant cost savings (up to 90% off On-Demand).
• Ideal for fault-tolerant, flexible batch processing jobs.
• Integrates well with data stored in Amazon S3.

Memory trick: Big data crunch, EMR's punch, Spot saves cash, for the big lunch.

Combining Amazon S3 Standard for object storage with Amazon CloudFront for content delivery creates a highly available, scalable, and low-latency solution for serving frequently accessed static content globally.

• S3 Standard: high availability, durability, frequent access.
• CloudFront: global CDN, caches content at edge locations.
• Reduces latency for users worldwide.
• Cost-effective for global content delivery.

Memory trick: S3 holds the treasures, CloudFront delivers them fast around the world.

AWS Direct Connect provides private, physical network connections to AWS. AWS Transit Gateway centralizes routing between VPCs and on-premises networks, simplifying complex network architectures.

• Direct Connect: dedicated, private, high-bandwidth path.
• Transit Gateway: central hub for VPC and on-premises connectivity.
• Simplifies network management for hybrid cloud.

Memory trick: Directly connect to a central transit hub for all your cloud needs.

Amazon Route 53 Latency Routing Policy directs user requests to the AWS region that provides the lowest network latency for the user.

• Optimizes user experience by reducing access time.
• Requires resources in multiple AWS regions.
• Based on the measured latency between end-users and AWS regions.
• Suitable for applications with globally distributed users and multi-region deployments.

Memory trick: Route 53: Rules for Routing, Right to the Region.

The default S3 storage class for general-purpose storage of frequently accessed data, offering high durability, availability, and performance.

• Excellent for frequently accessed data.
• High durability (11 nines) and availability.
• Low latency access.

Memory trick: Standard for frequent, IA for infrequent, Glacier for deep freeze.

The lowest-cost Amazon S3 storage class, designed for long-term archiving of data that is accessed rarely (e.g., once or twice a year).

• Retrieval times typically range from 12 to 48 hours.
• Offers the lowest storage price per GB of all S3 classes.
• Ideal for regulatory compliance archives and long-term data retention.
• Provides 99.999999999% (11 nines) durability.

Memory trick: S3's classes, cost with graces, Standard, IA, Glacier's paces.

EC2 Auto Scaling with target tracking automatically adjusts the desired capacity of an Auto Scaling group to maintain a specified metric value (e.g., CPU utilization, request count) at a target level.

• Automatically scales based on a specific metric.
• Maintains performance while optimizing costs.
• Ideal for unpredictable workloads.
• Scales both out and in.

Memory trick: Auto-scaling tracks the target, always hitting the bullseye of demand.

Combining S3 Multi-Region Access Points with AWS Global Accelerator creates a highly performant and resilient architecture for global file distribution, providing low-latency access and high throughput for large object transfers.

• S3 MRAPs provide a single global endpoint for S3 buckets across regions.
• Automatically routes requests to the nearest S3 bucket.
• Global Accelerator further optimizes network path over AWS backbone.
• Ideal for large file transfers (uploads/downloads) globally.

Memory trick: MRAPs are like global S3 doors, and Global Accelerator is the express lane to them.

Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is a fully managed service that delivers real-time streaming data to destinations such as Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, Splunk, and other custom HTTP endpoints.

• Fully managed, no servers to manage.
• Automatically scales to match data throughput.
• Batches, compresses, and encrypts data before delivery.
• Cost-effective for loading large volumes of streaming data into data lakes/warehouses.

Memory trick: Firehose: Fast, Fully-managed, Forwards data.

Running Amazon EMR clusters on EC2 Spot Instances provides a highly cost-effective solution for processing large datasets with distributed frameworks, especially for workloads that are fault-tolerant and can handle interruptions.

• Significant cost savings (up to 90% off On-Demand).
• Ideal for interruptible, fault-tolerant workloads.
• EMR handles distributed processing and job retries.
• Suitable for big data analytics (Spark, Hadoop, Hive, Presto).

Memory trick: Spot Instances are like bargain hunters for your EMR jobs, finding the cheapest compute.

Amazon CloudFront improves content delivery performance by storing copies of content at geographically distributed edge locations.

• Reduces latency for end-users by serving content from a closer location.
• Decreases load on origin servers (e.g., S3, EC2).
• Can cache various content types (images, videos, web pages).
• Cache invalidation allows for updating cached content.

Memory trick: CloudFront's core: Cache, Secure, Direct, and more!

An EC2 Auto Scaling policy type that allows you to configure capacity changes based on a predictable schedule.

• Ideal for known traffic patterns (e.g., daily, weekly).
• Proactively adjusts instance count before demand changes.
• Helps optimize costs by scaling down during off-peak periods.
• Can be combined with dynamic scaling policies for unexpected spikes.

Memory trick: Auto Scaling's brain, policies explain: Target's goal, Simple's call, Scheduled's time, Step's climb.

Amazon EC2 Spot Instances allow you to bid on unused EC2 capacity, providing the largest potential cost savings (up to 90% off On-Demand prices). They are ideal for flexible, fault-tolerant workloads that can withstand interruptions, such as batch processing, big data analytics, and continuous integration/delivery (CI/CD).

• Up to 90% cost savings compared to On-Demand.
• Can be interrupted with a two-minute warning.
• Best for fault-tolerant, flexible, and stateless workloads.

Memory trick: Spot: The deepest discount, if you don't mind a little bounce.

AWS Key Management Service (KMS) is a managed service that makes it easy for you to create and control the encryption keys used to encrypt your data. Customer Managed Keys (CMKs) give you full control over key policies and rotation.

• Creates and manages cryptographic keys.
• Integrates with most other AWS services.
• Supports automatic key rotation for CMKs.
• Highly available and secure hardware security modules (HSMs).

Memory trick: KMS is the master locksmith of your cloud, keeping your keys safe and turning them regularly.

Enhanced Networking provides significantly higher packet per second (PPS) performance, lower network latency, and lower jitter using specialized network interfaces like Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) or Intel 82599 Virtual Function (VF) interface.

• Boosts network performance (PPS, latency, jitter).
• Uses ENA on most modern instance types.
• Essential for performance-sensitive applications like gaming or HPC.

Memory trick: ENA: Your network's turbo boost for a smooth game host.

An Amazon S3 storage class that automatically optimizes storage costs for data with unknown or changing access patterns by moving data between frequent, infrequent, and archive access tiers.

• Automatically moves objects between tiers based on access patterns.
• No retrieval fees in frequent or infrequent access tiers.
• Ideal for data with unpredictable access patterns.
• Can enable optional Archive Access and Deep Archive Access tiers for further savings.

Memory trick: Intelligent-Tiering is smart enough to find the cheapest shelf for your data.

Customer Managed Keys (CMKs) in AWS Key Management Service (KMS) are encryption keys that you create, own, and manage. You have full control over their lifecycle, including creation, rotation, and access policies, which is essential for meeting specific regulatory compliance requirements for data encryption.

• Customer has full control over key lifecycle and access policies.
• Integrates with many AWS services for encryption at rest.
• Essential for compliance requirements needing customer control over encryption keys.

Memory trick: CMKs: Your keys, your rules, your compliance tools.

AWS Auto Scaling Scheduled Scaling allows you to adjust the desired capacity of your Auto Scaling group based on a predictable schedule.

• Ideal for predictable traffic patterns (e.g., daily, weekly spikes).
• Configured using cron expressions or specific dates/times.
• Ensures capacity is available when needed and scales down to save costs.
• Reduces manual intervention for known demand changes.

Memory trick: Scheduled Scaling: Set the Clock, Cut the Cost.