Big News 🎉
I passed the AWS Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C02) last weekend!
The SAP-C02 is a relatively tough exam — scenario-heavy, long, and designed to test architectural reasoning rather than simple memorization.
This marks a meaningful milestone in my cloud journey.
How I Passed It
🧱 Daily Basis
(experience with modern web application architecture on AWS)
My daily work set up the foundation.
I’ve been working with VPC, EC2, EKS, CloudFront, S3, and Aurora, building and maintaining modern web application architectures on AWS.
That hands-on experience helped me develop an intuitive sense of how AWS services work together — from secure network design to scalability, availability, and cost optimization.
It made the long, scenario-based exam questions much easier to reason through and approach with real-world logic.
🎓 Udemy Course
To strengthen my knowledge and fill in the gaps, I studied Stephane Maarek’s “Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional” course on Udemy.
This course helped me:
- See the whole AWS ecosystem — how all services connect and complement each other
- Fill knowledge gaps beyond my daily work (Data Engineering, hybrid networking, machine learning, etc.)
- Understand architecture patterns — multi-AZ vs. multi-region, event-driven, async workflows, caching, and scaling
It gave me a complete view of AWS — not just individual services, but how to design reliable, cost-efficient systems that follow AWS best practices.
🧩 Mock Exams
After finishing the course, I focused heavily on mock exams.
Rather than memorizing answers, I practiced recognizing scenario patterns and keywords that reveal AWS’s preferred design approach.
This approach was much more effective for tackling real exam scenarios.
| Pattern | Trigger Words | Solution Direction |
|---|---|---|
| High Availability | ”no downtime”, “automatic failover”, “multi-Region”, “RTO/RPO” | Multi-AZ or multi-Region; Route 53 failover, Aurora Global DB, DynamoDB Global Tables |
| Cost Optimization | ”reduce cost”, “budget constraints”, “maintain performance”, “optimize usage” | Savings Plans, Spot Instances, right-sizing, S3 Intelligent-Tiering, Compute Optimizer |
| Security | ”must encrypt”, “private access only”, “compliance requirement” | KMS CMK, PrivateLink, VPC Endpoints, least-privilege IAM, AWS Config, CloudTrail |
| Multi-Account | ”multiple accounts”, “organization control”, “restrict usage”, “compliance boundary” | AWS Organizations, OUs + SCPs, Control Tower, AWS SSO, Service Catalog |
| Serverless | ”simplify management”, “reduce admin tasks”, “serverless preferred”, “no infrastructure maintenance” | Lambda, Fargate, Aurora Serverless v2, DynamoDB, EventBridge |
| Hybrid | ”on-premises”, “consistent IPs”, “DNS resolution”, “corporate network” | Direct Connect + VPN failover, Transit Gateway, Route 53 Resolver, Storage Gateway |
| Performance | ”low latency”, “high throughput”, “edge optimization”, “global users” | CloudFront, Global Accelerator, ElastiCache/DAX, Auto Scaling, multi-Region |
My approach
- Read the last line first — find the real question objective
- Eliminate extremes — avoid overly complex or expensive designs
- Flag and move on — revisit later with a clearer head
After enough mocks, I noticed the same reasoning patterns repeating — and that familiarity helped a lot during the real exam.
☁️ The Journey Continues
Passing the SAP-C02 is a big milestone, but there’s still so much more to learn.
The journey continues — hope we all have fun in the cloud! ☁️🚀