There are several knowledge domains regarding questions, and the following breakdown will show you the topic measured by the exam and the extent to which they are represented as a percentage of all the questions. For instance, if you have 70 questions, you should expect to get 10 questions on monitoring and metrics, 10 on high availability, 8 on data management, and so on. The topics that are mentioned in the following breakdown do not constitute a full list, but rather, are summary that's intended for orientational purposes:
- Domain 1: Monitoring metrics and managing cost – 15%: The questions pertaining to domain 1 will allow AWS to assess your ability in monitoring availability and performance, cloud operations being issued, managing accounts and billing, following cost optimization best practices, and so on.
- Domain 2: High availability and scaling – 15%: This domain will assess your ability to implement scalable and elastic solutions based on certain scenarios, to deliver various levels of fault-tolerance based on the requirements outlined in the question that directly map to realistic business requirements, and so on.
- Domain 3: Analysis of your AWS environment – 15%: You should demonstrate your ability to optimize the environment to ensure maximum performance, to identify bottlenecks and issues, and so on. You will also be expected to be able to implement remedies depending on your application deployment and the AWS services being consumed.
- Domain 4: Deployment and provisioning – 15%: You should demonstrate your ability to build an environment and provision cloud resources in accordance with the AWS well-architected reference design. This domain is also highly focused on automation and delivering repeatable and reusable designs to your AWS environments.
- Domain 5: Data management – 12%: In domain 5, the ability to create and manage backups for different services is tested. Life cycling and enforcing compliance requirements is given a lot of weight, as is delivering disaster recovery processes.
- Domain 6: Security – 15%: Security is a very important – if not the most important – part of keeping AWS running smoothly. The questions in this domain will test your ability to implement and manage users, groups, roles and security policies, and access controls; to be able to prepare for a security assessment, your understanding of the shared responsibility model; and your understanding of the requirements for data integrity. You will also be quizzed on the features that are available for managing security on the AWS platform.
- Domain 7.0: Networking – 13%: The networking domain will test you on concepts that any individual with basic general IT knowledge should be able to demonstrate their knowledge of, such as the differentiation between LAN and WAN networks, the internet protocol addressing model, describing the functions of network function devices such as DNS, routers, NAT, firewalls, and so on. It will also test your ability to implement networking and connectivity features of AWS and configure services to allow for resolving computer names across a hybrid AWS and on-premises network.