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From Zero to AWS Solutions Architect: A 90-Day Plan That Actually Works

I passed the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam on my first attempt after 90 days of focused study while working full-time. Here's the exact plan.

The Framework: 3 Phases

Phase 1: Foundations (Days 1-30)

Week 1-2: Core Services

  • EC2, S3, VPC, IAM — understand these cold
  • Create a VPC from scratch with public/private subnets
  • Set up an EC2 instance with proper security groups

Week 3-4: Networking & Storage

  • Route 53, CloudFront, ELB/ALB
  • EBS vs EFS vs S3 — know when to use each
  • Build a static website with S3 + CloudFront + Route 53

Daily routine: 1 hour study + 30 min hands-on lab

Phase 2: Architecture Patterns (Days 31-60)

Week 5-6: High Availability

  • Multi-AZ deployments
  • Auto Scaling groups
  • RDS Multi-AZ vs Read Replicas

Week 7-8: Serverless & Decoupling

  • Lambda + API Gateway
  • SQS, SNS, EventBridge
  • Step Functions for orchestration

Daily routine: 1 hour study + 1 hour practice exams

Phase 3: Exam Prep (Days 61-90)

Week 9-10: Practice Exams

  • Take 3 full practice exams (Tutorials Dojo recommended)
  • Score below 75%? Go back to weak areas
  • Review every wrong answer — understand WHY

Week 11-12: Final Push

  • Focus on your 3 weakest domains
  • Take 2 more practice exams
  • Score 80%+ consistently? You're ready

5 Mistakes That Fail Candidates

  1. Studying theory without labs — you need hands-on
  2. Ignoring the Well-Architected Framework — it's 30% of the exam
  3. Skipping networking — VPC questions are the most common trap
  4. Only using one study resource — combine video + reading + practice
  5. Not timing practice exams — 65 questions in 130 minutes is tight

Resources I Used

  • A Cloud Guru (video course)
  • Tutorials Dojo (practice exams — essential)
  • AWS Free Tier (hands-on labs)
  • AWS Well-Architected Framework whitepaper

Free Cloud Courses

We offer 17 free cloud courses covering AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, Terraform, and more. No login required, no credit card: Free Courses

For production-ready architecture blueprints and study materials: Architecture Blueprints

What's your AWS certification journey been like?

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