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🇺🇸 AWS Certified Solutions Architect · subject

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Core AWS Services and Global Infrastructure Syllabus

The Core AWS Services and Global Infrastructure syllabus for AWS Certified Solutions Architect in full: 3 chapters, 9 topics and 22 sub-topics, every one listed below, plus 52 Core AWS Services and Global Infrastructure flashcards with answers.

3Chapters
9Topics
22Sub-topics
52Flashcards

Core AWS Services and Global Infrastructure syllabus: all 3 chapters

Expand any chapter to see its topics and sub-topics.

  1. AWS Global Infrastructure

     3 topics
    • Regions, AZs, and Edge Locations
      • Region selection criteria (latency, cost, compliance)
      • Availability Zone isolation and fault domains
      • Edge locations and Local Zones / Outposts / Wavelength
    • Shared Responsibility and Well-Architected
      • AWS Shared Responsibility Model
      • Well-Architected Framework six pillars
      • Well-Architected Tool reviews
    • Service Categories Overview
      • Compute, storage, database, and networking families
      • Managed vs unmanaged service trade-offs

  2. Amazon VPC Networking Foundations

     3 topics
    • VPC Building Blocks
      • CIDR blocks, subnets, and route tables
      • Internet Gateway and NAT Gateway
      • Elastic IPs and elastic network interfaces
    • DNS and IP Addressing
      • Route 53 routing policies (weighted, latency, geolocation)
      • Private hosted zones and Route 53 Resolver
      • IPv6 in VPC design
    • Hybrid Connectivity Foundations
      • VPN and Direct Connect basics
      • Transit Gateway hub-and-spoke topology

  3. Compute and Storage Services

     3 topics
    • EC2 and AMIs
      • Instance lifecycle, AMIs, and user data
      • Key pairs and metadata service (IMDSv2)
    • Storage Service Selection
      • Object vs block vs file storage decision framework
      • Storage Gateway hybrid modes
    • Database Service Selection
      • Relational vs NoSQL workload mapping
      • Migration with AWS DMS and SCT

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Core AWS Services and Global Infrastructure flashcards — 52 questions with answers

  1. What is an AWS Region?

    A separate geographic area containing a cluster of data centers; each Region is isolated and independent, and you choose Regions based on latency, cost, compliance, and service availability.

  2. What is an AWS Availability Zone (AZ)?

    One or more discrete data centers within a Region, each with redundant power, networking, and connectivity, physically separated but connected via low-latency, high-bandwidth private links.

  3. What is the minimum number of Availability Zones in an AWS Region?

    At least 3 AZs per Region (most Regions have 3 or more).

  4. What is an AWS Edge Location?

    A site used by CloudFront and other services to cache content and terminate connections close to users; there are far more Edge Locations than Regions, used for low-latency content delivery.

  5. How do you achieve high availability for an application within a single Region?

    Deploy resources across multiple Availability Zones so the failure of one AZ does not take down the whole application.

  6. What is a Local Zone in AWS?

    An extension of an AWS Region that places compute, storage, and select services closer to large population/industry centers to deliver single-digit-millisecond latency to nearby users.

  7. Under the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, what is AWS responsible for?

    Security 'of' the cloud: the physical hardware, global infrastructure (Regions, AZs, edge), and the underlying compute, storage, database, and networking services.

  8. Under the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, what is the customer responsible for?

    Security 'in' the cloud: customer data, IAM, OS/network/firewall configuration, application security, encryption settings, and client/server-side data protection.

  9. On a managed service like Amazon RDS, who patches the underlying operating system?

    AWS patches the OS and database engine for managed services like RDS; the customer manages data, access, and configuration. (On EC2, the customer patches the guest OS.)

  10. What are the pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework?

    Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, and Sustainability (six pillars).

  11. Which Well-Architected pillar focuses on minimizing the environmental impact of running cloud workloads?

    The Sustainability pillar.

  12. Which Well-Architected pillar covers the ability to recover from failures and meet demand?

    The Reliability pillar.

  13. What are the three main service category types in AWS compute, storage, and networking overview?

    AWS services group broadly into Compute (e.g., EC2, Lambda), Storage (e.g., S3, EBS, EFS), and Networking (e.g., VPC, Route 53, CloudFront), plus Databases, Security, and Management categories.

  14. What is the difference between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS examples in AWS?

    IaaS = EC2/VPC (you manage OS and up); PaaS = Elastic Beanstalk/RDS (AWS manages platform); SaaS = fully managed apps like Amazon WorkMail/Chime.

  15. Which AWS compute service is serverless and event-driven?

    AWS Lambda runs code in response to events without provisioning or managing servers, billing per request and execution duration.

  16. What is a VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)?

    A logically isolated virtual network within an AWS Region where you launch resources, defined by a CIDR block and divided into subnets across AZs.

  17. What is the difference between a public and a private subnet?

    A public subnet has a route to an Internet Gateway (resources can reach/be reached from the internet); a private subnet has no direct route to an Internet Gateway.

  18. What is an Internet Gateway (IGW) in a VPC?

    A horizontally scaled, redundant VPC component that allows communication between resources in the VPC and the internet; one IGW attaches to one VPC.

  19. What is a NAT Gateway used for?

    It lets instances in a private subnet initiate outbound traffic to the internet (e.g., for updates) while preventing the internet from initiating inbound connections to them.

  20. What is the difference between a Security Group and a Network ACL?

    A Security Group is stateful and operates at the instance/ENI level (allow rules only); a Network ACL is stateless and operates at the subnet level (allow and deny rules).

Show the other 32 Core AWS Services and Global Infrastructure flashcards

  1. Are Security Groups stateful or stateless?

    Stateful — if you allow inbound traffic, the response is automatically allowed outbound regardless of outbound rules.

  2. What is a route table in a VPC?

    A set of rules (routes) that determines where network traffic from subnets or gateways is directed; each subnet must be associated with one route table.

  3. What is a VPC Endpoint?

    A component that lets you privately connect your VPC to supported AWS services without using an Internet Gateway, NAT, or public IPs; types are Gateway endpoints (S3, DynamoDB) and Interface endpoints (powered by PrivateLink).

  4. What is the role of Amazon Route 53?

    AWS's scalable, highly available DNS web service that translates domain names to IP addresses, performs health checks, and provides routing policies and domain registration.

  5. What are the common Route 53 routing policies?

    Simple, Weighted, Latency-based, Failover, Geolocation, Geoproximity, and Multivalue answer routing.

  6. What is the difference between an A record and a CNAME record in DNS?

    An A record maps a hostname directly to an IPv4 address; a CNAME maps a hostname to another hostname (alias). Route 53 Alias records can point apex/zone domains to AWS resources, which CNAMEs cannot.

  7. What is a Route 53 Alias record and how does it differ from a CNAME?

    An Alias record maps a name to an AWS resource (like an ELB, CloudFront, or S3 website) and can be used at the zone apex; it is free and AWS-specific, unlike a standard CNAME.

  8. What is CIDR notation, e.g., 10.0.0.0/16?

    Classless Inter-Domain Routing notation; the /16 indicates the number of network prefix bits. /16 = 65,536 addresses, with smaller numbers meaning larger address ranges.

  9. How many usable IP addresses does AWS reserve in each subnet, and how many total are reserved?

    AWS reserves 5 IP addresses in every subnet (network address, VPC router, DNS, future use, and broadcast), so a /28 (16 addresses) yields 11 usable.

  10. What is the difference between a public IP and an Elastic IP on EC2?

    A public IP is dynamic and changes when the instance stops/starts; an Elastic IP (EIP) is a static, allocatable public IPv4 address you own and can remap between instances.

  11. What is the allowed VPC CIDR block size range?

    A VPC CIDR can be between /16 (65,536 addresses) and /28 (16 addresses).

  12. What is AWS Direct Connect?

    A dedicated, private network connection from your on-premises data center to AWS, providing consistent low latency and bandwidth, bypassing the public internet.

  13. What is an AWS Site-to-Site VPN?

    An encrypted IPsec tunnel over the public internet connecting your on-premises network to your VPC via a Virtual Private Gateway or Transit Gateway.

  14. What is the main trade-off between Direct Connect and Site-to-Site VPN?

    Direct Connect offers consistent, dedicated low-latency bandwidth but takes time to provision and costs more; VPN is quick to set up and cheaper but rides the public internet with variable performance.

  15. What is AWS Transit Gateway?

    A network transit hub that connects multiple VPCs and on-premises networks through a central gateway, simplifying many-to-many connectivity instead of complex VPC peering meshes.

  16. What is the difference between VPC Peering and Transit Gateway?

    VPC Peering is a one-to-one, non-transitive connection between two VPCs; Transit Gateway is a hub-and-spoke that scales to thousands of VPCs with transitive routing.

  17. What is an Amazon EC2 instance?

    A virtual server in the AWS cloud providing resizable compute capacity, launched from an AMI with a chosen instance type, networking, and storage.

  18. What is an Amazon Machine Image (AMI)?

    A template containing the OS, application server, and applications used to launch an EC2 instance; it defines the root volume, launch permissions, and block device mapping.

  19. What are the EC2 instance purchasing options?

    On-Demand (pay per second/hour, no commitment), Reserved Instances/Savings Plans (1-3 yr commitment for discount), Spot Instances (spare capacity at steep discount, can be interrupted), and Dedicated Hosts/Instances.

  20. When should you use EC2 Spot Instances?

    For fault-tolerant, flexible, or stateless workloads (batch jobs, CI/CD, big data) where interruptions are acceptable, in exchange for up to ~90% discount.

  21. What is the difference between stopping and terminating an EC2 instance?

    Stopping halts the instance but keeps the EBS root volume and data (you stop paying for compute); terminating deletes the instance and, by default, its root EBS volume.

  22. What are EC2 instance families optimized for?

    General Purpose (balanced, T/M), Compute Optimized (C), Memory Optimized (R/X), Storage Optimized (I/D), and Accelerated Computing (P/G with GPUs).

  23. What is the difference between Amazon EBS, EFS, and S3?

    EBS = block storage attached to a single EC2 instance (like a virtual disk); EFS = shared file storage (NFS) mountable by many instances; S3 = object storage accessed via API over HTTP(S).

  24. What is Amazon S3 and what is its durability?

    Amazon Simple Storage Service is object storage offering 99.999999999% (11 nines) durability, storing data as objects in buckets accessed via a globally unique namespace.

  25. What is the difference between Amazon EBS and an instance store?

    EBS is network-attached, persistent block storage that survives instance stop/terminate (if retained); an instance store is physically attached ephemeral storage that is lost when the instance stops or terminates.

  26. Which S3 storage class is best for infrequently accessed data needing rapid retrieval?

    S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (Standard-IA), or One Zone-IA for non-critical data stored in a single AZ at lower cost.

  27. Which AWS storage service is best for archival data with retrieval times of minutes to hours?

    Amazon S3 Glacier (Flexible Retrieval or Deep Archive) for low-cost long-term archive storage.

  28. Can an EBS volume be attached to multiple instances at once?

    By default no (one instance per volume in the same AZ); only certain provisioned IOPS io1/io2 volumes support EBS Multi-Attach within the same AZ for clustered apps.

  29. What is Amazon RDS and which engines does it support?

    Amazon Relational Database Service is a managed relational database supporting MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server, and Amazon Aurora; AWS handles patching, backups, and failover.

  30. When should you choose Amazon DynamoDB over Amazon RDS?

    Choose DynamoDB for serverless, key-value/document workloads needing single-digit-millisecond latency at any scale with flexible schema; choose RDS when you need relational structure, joins, and ACID SQL transactions.

  31. What is Amazon Aurora and what advantage does it offer?

    A MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible managed relational database built for the cloud, offering up to ~5x MySQL/3x PostgreSQL throughput, storage that auto-scales, and six-way replication across three AZs.

  32. Which AWS database service is purpose-built for in-memory caching to reduce database load?

    Amazon ElastiCache (Redis or Memcached), used to cache frequently accessed data for sub-millisecond read performance.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Core AWS Services and Global Infrastructure FAQ

What is in the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Core AWS Services and Global Infrastructure syllabus?

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Core AWS Services and Global Infrastructure is split into 3 chapters: AWS Global Infrastructure, Amazon VPC Networking Foundations and Compute and Storage Services. Together they contain 9 topics and 22 sub-topics.

How many chapters are in AWS Certified Solutions Architect Core AWS Services and Global Infrastructure?

3 chapters, containing 9 topics and 22 sub-topics. The largest chapter is AWS Global Infrastructure, with 3 topics.

Are there flashcards for AWS Certified Solutions Architect Core AWS Services and Global Infrastructure?

Yes — a 52-card Core AWS Services and Global Infrastructure deck, printed in full in the flashcards section of this page and available in the Examius app with spaced repetition. The free plan covers one exam of your choice, including its flashcards; Examius Pro, a one-time purchase, unlocks every other exam and deck.