## Commitment and Effort Requirements

**IMPORTANT:** This is an advanced technical class that will require significant investment of effort on the side of the student. Please make sure that you have time to attend to teaching and lab sessions. Attending teaching and lab sessions twice each week will reduce the amount of self study student has to do! Taking self study path on this course is possible, but it will be a challening path to take even for experienced Cloud professionals.

## Overview

AWS Cloud Architecting course is meant as an advanced class about acting as a Solution Architect for Public Cloud technologies. Solution Architect is able to transform customer requirements into a solution that delivers on those requirements in Public Cloud environment. Solution Architect is a an experienced technical member of DevOps Team or Project Team and they have some particular skills in Public Cloud context:

- Business Mindset - Solution Architect understand that Cloud Services are only usefull if they are used to deliver a service that has Business Rationale.
- Public Cloud Service Knowhow - Solution Architect understand which Public Cloud services match to or expand on similar Traditional ICT Infrastructure elements.
- General Technical Skills - Solution Architect has wide spread of technical skills from Automation platforms to CLI Commands, Scripting Languages and Programming Languages.
- Cloud Architecture - Solution Architect is able to design, visualize and implement modern Cloud Architectures:
- Elasticity, High Availability, and Monitoring
- Client-Server Architectures
- Decoupled Architectures
- Microservice Architectures
- Serverless Architectures
- Content Caching
- Disaster Prevention and Recovery
- Public Cloud Design Best Practices - Solution Architect knows how to apply the Six Pillars of Azure/Amazon Web Services Well Architected Framework:
- Operational Excellence
- Security
- Reliability
- Performance Efficiency
- Cost Optimization
- Sustainability
- Cloud Infrastructure Management - Solution Architect is able to create, modify and delete Cloud Resources in core Cloud Service Categories:
- Identity and Access Management
- Billing and Cost Management
- Management, Governance and Monitoring
- Networking Services
- Compute Services
- Storage Services
- Database Services

AWS has following to say about Target Candidates: *The target candidate should have at least 1 year of hands-on experience designing cloud solutions that use AWS services.*

Completing an AWS Cloud Architecting course does not immediately confer the title of Solution Architect. However, it does offer a deeper understanding and hands-on experience in designing, evaluating, visualizing, and implementing solutions using Public Cloud technologies. Over time, the skills acquired in this course can pave the way for students to progress toward becoming Solution Architects.

Taking actual **AWS Certified Solutions Architect (SAA-C03)** certification examination is not mandatory part of this course, but historically AWS and Microsoft have provided free or discounted examination vouchers for students so that test can be optionally taken.

There are some courses that are recommended to be taken before taking this course:

- Introduction to ICT Infrastructure and Cloud Services
- Networking Basics
- Server Administration, Linux Servers and Windows Servers
- Cloud Service Techologies
- Programming I and Programming II

Hands-on experience about some or all of the following topics is a great benefit:

- Hands-on experience about Code Editors (Visual Studio Code, Cloud 9)
- Hands-on experience about troubleshooting issues with Computers, Operating Systems, Software and Networks
- Hands-on experience about Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) ICT Services
- Hands-on experience about administering Windows and Linux servers and IP Networks
- Hands-on experience about managing Public Cloud Resources from Management Console, CLIs, SDKs or APIs
- Hands-on experience about managing web service enablers (Domain, DNS Server, DNS Records, TLS Certificate, HTTPS Protocol)
- Hands-on experience about implementing three tier web services (web, app, database)
- Hands-on experience about administering SQL or noSQL databases (database servers, database files, tables/collections, queries)

Course content is delivered with **Amazon Web Services** materials and course helps students to prepare for [SAA-C03: AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate](https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-solutions-architect-associate) certification examination.

Course delivery contains following top level topics:

- Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
- Introducing Cloud Architecting Module
- Adding a Storage Layer Module
- Adding a Compute Layer Module
- Adding a Database Layer
- Creating a Networking Environment
- Connecting Networks
- Securing User and Application Access
- Implementing Elasticity, High Availability, and Monitoring
- Automating Your Architecture
- Caching Content
- Building Decoupled Architectures
- Building Microservices and Serverless Architectures
- Planning for Disaster
- Bridging to Certification
- Cafe Project

## Learning Objectives

Learning Objectives for this course are lightened version of SAA-C03 syllabus.

- [SAA-C03 Syllabus](https://d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-sa-assoc/AWS-Certified-Solutions-Architect-Associate_Exam-Guide.pdf)

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

- Make architectural decisions based on AWS architectural principles and best practices
- Use AWS services to make infrastructure scalable, reliable, and highly available
- Use AWS managed services to enable greater flexibility and resiliency in an infrastructure
- Increase performance and reduce cost of a cloud infrastructure built on AWS
- Use the AWS Well-Architected Framework to improve architectures that use AWS solutions

When the implementation type of the course is CONTACT, ONLINE or BLENDED it is required that the student is present during those teaching hours that are marked in the study schedule. If you are absent more than 25 %, your grade will be lowered by one. If you are absent more than 50 %, the course is failed.

Students will work on following deliveries during the implementations of this course and are able to gather 0 to 100 total score from the following components:

Assignments and Laboratories
- Assignments may contain Group and/or Individual Assignments
- Learning Environment Laboratories

Exam
- Typically single and multiple choice questions.
- Exam is graded according to 50% scale as must have a passing grade so that student can pass this course.

Students are graded according to following 50% scale:

- Score 0-49 = Grade 0 (Fail)
- Score 50-60 = Grade 1 (Learning Opportunity, Opportunity for Improvement)
- Score 61-70 = Grade 2 (Satisfactory)
- Score 71-80 = Grade 3 (Good)
- Score 81-90 = Grade 4 (Very good)
- Score 91-100 = Grade 5 (Excellent)