Design deployment strategies, business continuity solutions, security controls, reliability, performance objectives, and cost optimization strategies (~29% of exam).
Covers designing deployment strategies including Infrastructure as Code (CloudFormation), CI/CD pipelines, change management processes, configuration management with Systems Manager, upgrade paths for new services, deployment strategies with rollback mechanisms, and adopting managed services. Also covers business continuity including AWS Global Infrastructure, Route 53 routing methods, RTO/RPO requirements, disaster recovery scenarios (backup/restore, pilot light, warm standby, multi-site), DR solution configuration, data and database replication, DR testing, automated backup solutions, and centralized monitoring for proactive recovery. Also covers security controls including IAM, route tables, security groups, network ACLs, encryption for data at rest and in transit, service endpoints, credential management, AWS managed security services (Shield, WAF, GuardDuty, Security Hub), least privilege access, attack mitigation strategies, and patch management. Additionally covers reliability including AWS storage services, replication strategies, Multi-AZ and multi-Region architectures, auto scaling, application integration (SNS, SQS, Step Functions), service quotas, DNS routing policies, and high-availability architectures. Also covers performance objectives including monitoring technologies, storage options, instance families, purpose-built databases, large-scale architecture design, caching, buffering, replicas, and rightsizing. Finally covers cost optimization including cost monitoring tools, pricing models, storage tiering, data transfer costs, and expenditure awareness strategies.
5 minutes
5 Questions
Design for New Solutions is a critical domain in the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional exam, focusing on creating scalable, resilient, and cost-effective architectures from the ground up. This domain typically represents approximately 31% of the exam content, making it the largest weighted area.
Key aspects include:
**Business Requirements Translation**: Architects must interpret business needs and translate them into technical solutions. This involves understanding compliance requirements, security mandates, and operational constraints while selecting appropriate AWS services.
**Scalability and Elasticity**: Solutions should leverage AWS auto-scaling capabilities, including EC2 Auto Scaling, Application Auto Scaling, and serverless architectures using Lambda, API Gateway, and DynamoDB. Designing for variable workloads ensures optimal performance during peak demands.
**High Availability and Fault Tolerance**: Implementing multi-AZ and multi-Region deployments, utilizing services like Route 53 for DNS failover, Elastic Load Balancing for traffic distribution, and RDS Multi-AZ for database redundancy are essential patterns.
**Security Architecture**: Incorporating defense-in-depth strategies using VPCs, security groups, NACLs, IAM policies, KMS encryption, and AWS Organizations helps protect resources at multiple layers.
**Cost Optimization**: Selecting appropriate pricing models (Reserved Instances, Spot Instances, Savings Plans), right-sizing resources, and implementing lifecycle policies for storage contribute to efficient spending.
**Decoupled Architectures**: Using SQS, SNS, EventBridge, and Step Functions enables loosely coupled systems that improve maintainability and resilience.
**Data Management**: Choosing suitable database solutions (relational, NoSQL, data warehousing) and implementing proper backup, replication, and caching strategies using ElastiCache or CloudFront.
**Migration Considerations**: Understanding how to design solutions that facilitate future migrations or hybrid connectivity using AWS Direct Connect, VPN, or AWS Transit Gateway.
Successful architects must balance these technical considerations while meeting business objectives, ensuring solutions are operationally excellent, secure, reliable, performant, and cost-efficient according to the AWS Well-Architected Framework.Design for New Solutions is a critical domain in the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional exam, focusing on creating scalable, resilient, and cost-effective architectures from the ground up. This domain typically represents approximately 31% of the exam content, making it the largest we…