The 2026 AWS SAA-C03 Core Knowledge System strictly aligns with the four official domains, weighted as Security (30%), Resilience (26%), High Performance (24%), and Cost Optimization (20%). It focuses on scenario-based decision-making, service selection, and compliance implementation for cloud architecture design in European and American enterprises, closely matching the AWS Well-Architected Framework and actual production requirements.

1. Design Security Architecture (30%)

The core of designing a secure architecture is based on the shared responsibility model, building end-to-end security for identities, networks, and data to meet compliance requirements such as GDPR and HIPAA in Europe and the U.S.

Identity and Access Management (IAM): IAM users/groups/roles and least privilege policies, temporary credentials (STS) and cross-account access, IAM Identity Center (SSO) federation; root user MFA enforcement, permission boundaries and service control policies (SCPs), AWS Control Tower multi-account security baseline.

Network Security Isolation: VPC Design (Public/Private Subnets, NACLs vs Security Groups Hierarchy), Private Endpoints (VPC Endpoints) to Isolate Service Traffic, Secure Access via Site-to-Site VPN/Direct Connect; AWS WAF for Injection/XSS Protection, AWS Shield for DDoS Defense, Route 53 DNS Security.

Data Security and Compliance: Static data encryption (KMS customer master keys, S3 default encryption, RDS storage encryption) and TLS in transit, sensitive data masking and key rotation; S3 object locking (WORM) for compliance retention, CloudTrail audit logs, Config compliance rules, and Security Hub vulnerability management.

2. Designing an Elastic Architecture (26%)

The core focuses on high availability (HA), fault tolerance, and disaster recovery (DR), ensuring business continuity and meeting the multi-AZ/multi-region deployment requirements of European and American enterprises.

High Availability Infrastructure: Multi-AZ deployment (EC2, RDS, ElastiCache), Auto Scaling groups across AZs, Elastic Load Balancing (ALB/NLB/GLB) traffic distribution; Route 53 health checks and failover (weighted/geographic routing), S3 cross-region replication (CRR) and versioning.

Loose Coupling and Elastic Design: Event-driven architecture (SQS message queues, SNS notifications, Lambda serverless), API Gateway decouples frontend and backend; containerization (ECS/EKS+Fargate) and serverless architecture's elastic scaling, avoiding single points of failure.

Disaster Recovery Strategy: RPO/RTO Definitions and Solution Selection (Backup Recovery, Warm Standby, Hot Standby, Pilot Light), AWS Backup Centralized Backup, Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS) for Rapid Recovery, Automated Failover in Cross-Region Architecture.

3. Design high-performance architecture (24%)

The core is to select computing, storage, database, and network services based on workload characteristics, optimize latency, throughput, and scalability.

High performance computing and storage: EC2 instance selection (general/compute optimization/memory optimization/accelerated computing), Burst performance and CPU credit; S3 storage tiering (standard/intelligent tiering/low frequency/archiving), EBS Provisioned IOPS optimized database, EFS/FSx for Lustre to meet high concurrency file access.

Database and cache optimization: relational databases (RDS/Aurora multi AZ+read replicas), NoSQL (DynamoDB auto scaling+DAX caching), Redis/Memcached (ElastiCache) to alleviate database pressure; Data partitioning and indexing design, read-write separation to improve throughput.

Network and Content Distribution: CloudFront CDN reduces global latency, edge location, and caching strategies; VPC peer-to-peer connection/Transit Gateway simplifies cross VPC/cross regional networks, and Global Accelerator optimizes TCP/UDP traffic to reduce jitter.

4. Design cost optimization architecture (20%)

The core is to minimize TCO and achieve refined cost control for European and American enterprises through pricing models, resource selection, and lifecycle management while meeting business needs.

Pricing model and resource optimization: selection of on-demand instances, reserved instances (RI), and savings plans, with Spot instances used for fault-tolerant workloads; Right sizing EC2/RDS instance, stop idle resources, Auto Scaling dynamically adjusts capacity.

Storage and service cost optimization: S3 lifecycle rule automatic archiving/deletion, Glacier low-cost archiving, deleting unused EBS volumes and snapshots; Choose hosting services (such as RDS instead of self built databases) to reduce operation and maintenance costs, and pay per use for serverless architecture (Lambda).

Cost management tools: AWS Budgets for setting budgets and alerts, Cost Explorer for analyzing cost trends, AWS Cost Anomaly Detection for identifying abnormal expenses; The tag strategy implements cost allocation and batch management of resource groups.

5. Core Tools and 2026 Enhancement Direction

Core service stack: IAM、VPC、EC2、Lambda、S3、RDS、Aurora、DynamoDB、ELB、Route 53、CloudFront、CloudTrail、AWS Backup、Cost Explorer。

Essential skills: Scenario based architecture decision-making (balancing security/resilience/performance/cost), AWS CLI/CloudFormation IaC deployment, multi account governance, compliance auditing, and cost optimization.

2026 Enhancement Direction: Server free priority architecture, proactive deployment in multiple regions, Zero Trust security (private endpoints, minimum permissions), FinOps refined cost management, AI assisted architecture optimization (such as Amazon Bedrock integration).

Summary: The core of SAA-C03 is "architectural decision-making ability", rather than simply service memory. Preparation should be based on the official exam guide, combined with AWS free quota to complete multi scenario practical operations, with a focus on strengthening the common multi account security governance, cross regional disaster recovery, and cost optimization scenarios of European and American enterprises, ensuring seamless connection between skills and workplace needs.