AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional (SAP-C02) Domain 3

Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions

Official Exam Guide: Domain 3: Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions

Skill Builder: AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional Exam Prep

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Domain Overview

Domain 3 (25% of exam) focuses on improving operational excellence, security, performance, reliability, and identifying cost optimization opportunities for existing solutions.

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Task 3.1: Determine a strategy to improve overall operational excellence

Knowledge Areas:

• Alerting and automatic remediation strategies
• Disaster recovery planning
• Monitoring and logging (CloudWatch)
• CI/CD pipelines and deployment strategies (blue/green, rolling)
• Configuration management (Systems Manager)

Essential Documentation:

• Amazon CloudWatch Monitoring
• AWS Systems Manager
• Operational Excellence Pillar - Well-Architected

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Task 3.2: Determine a strategy to improve security

Knowledge Areas:

• Data retention, sensitivity, regulatory requirements
• Automated monitoring and remediation (AWS Config rules)
• Secrets management (Systems Manager, Secrets Manager)
• Principle of least privilege
• Security-specific AWS solutions
• Patching and backup practices

Essential Documentation:

• AWS Config Developer Guide
• AWS Secrets Manager
• AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store
• Security Pillar - Well-Architected

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Task 3.3: Determine a strategy to improve performance

Knowledge Areas:

• High-performing systems (auto scaling, instance fleets, placement groups)
• Global service offerings (Global Accelerator, CloudFront, edge computing)
• Monitoring tools (CloudWatch)
• SLAs and KPIs

Essential Documentation:

• AWS Global Accelerator
• Amazon CloudFront Developer Guide
• Placement Groups
• Performance Efficiency Pillar

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Task 3.4: Determine a strategy to improve reliability

Knowledge Areas:

• AWS Global Infrastructure
• Data replication methods
• Scaling methodologies (load balancing, auto scaling)
• High availability and resiliency
• Disaster recovery methods
• Service quotas and limits

Essential Documentation:

• Elastic Load Balancing
• Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling
• Reliability Pillar - Well-Architected

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Task 3.5: Identify opportunities for cost optimizations

Knowledge Areas:

• Cost-conscious architecture (Spot Instances, scaling policies, rightsizing)
• Price model adoptions (Reserved Instances, Savings Plans)
• Networking and data transfer costs
• Cost management, alerting, reporting

Essential Documentation:

• Amazon EC2 Spot Instances
• AWS Cost Explorer
• Cost Allocation Tags
• Cost Optimization Pillar

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AWS Service FAQs

• Amazon CloudWatch FAQs
• AWS Config FAQs
• Amazon CloudFront FAQs
• Amazon EC2 Spot Instances FAQs

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Study Tips

1. Master CloudWatch - Understand metrics, custom metrics, alarms, dashboards, Logs Insights, ServiceLens for application monitoring.

2. Learn automated remediation - AWS Config rules with auto-remediation, Systems Manager Automation documents, EventBridge rules.

3. Understand performance optimization - CloudFront for content delivery, Global Accelerator for global applications, placement groups for HPC.

4. Practice reliability improvements - Multi-AZ deployments, cross-region replication, auto scaling, load balancing, health checks.

5. Study cost analysis - Cost Explorer for analysis, tagging strategies, Reserved Instances vs Savings Plans, Spot Instances for fault-tolerant workloads.

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Note: This is Domain 3 of 4, representing 25% of exam content.