AWS Architecture Patterns & Reference Diagrams
Production-ready AWS architecture patterns with detailed diagrams, component explanations, design decisions, and certification exam practice questions. Each architecture maps to specific AWS Professional and Specialty exam scenarios (SAP-C02, DOP-C02, SCS-C03, MLA-C01, AIF-C01, AIP-C01).
Generative AI & Machine Learning
| Architecture | Key Services | Exams |
|---|---|---|
| GenAI Application Architecture End-to-end Bedrock with RAG, Agents, Guardrails & Observability |
Bedrock, Knowledge Bases, Agents, Guardrails, CloudWatch | AIF-C01, AIP-C01, SAP-C02 |
| MLOps Pipeline Architecture Data Prep → Train → Evaluate → Registry → Deploy → Monitor → Retrain |
SageMaker Pipelines, Feature Store, Model Registry, Model Monitor | MLA-C01, AIP-C01 |
Security & Governance
| Architecture | Key Services | Exams |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-Account Organization & Governance Control Tower, SCPs, cross-account access, centralized logging |
Organizations, Control Tower, SCPs, IAM Identity Center, CloudTrail | SAP-C02, SCS-C03 |
| Zero Trust Security Architecture Identity-centric, per-request verification, no VPN needed |
Verified Access, VPC Lattice, IAM Identity Center, Verified Permissions | SCS-C03, SAP-C02 |
Networking & Hybrid Cloud
| Architecture | Key Services | Exams |
|---|---|---|
| Hybrid Cloud Networking On-premises connectivity, Transit Gateway hub, DNS resolution |
Direct Connect, Site-to-Site VPN, Transit Gateway, Route 53 Resolver | SAP-C02, ANS-C01 |
| Disaster Recovery — All 4 Strategies Backup/Restore, Pilot Light, Warm Standby, Multi-Site Active/Active |
Route 53, Aurora Global, S3 CRR, Elastic Disaster Recovery | SAP-C02, DOP-C02 |
Application & Compute
| Architecture | Key Services | Exams |
|---|---|---|
| Event-Driven Serverless Architecture Async patterns, fan-out, saga, choreography vs orchestration |
EventBridge, SQS, SNS, Lambda, Step Functions | SAP-C02, DOP-C02 |
| Container Platform — ECS/EKS Production Orchestration, Fargate/EC2, service mesh, auto-scaling, Blue/Green |
ECS, EKS, Fargate, ALB, Service Connect, Karpenter | DOP-C02, SAP-C02 |
DevOps & Data
| Architecture | Key Services | Exams |
|---|---|---|
| CI/CD Pipeline Architecture Source → Build → Test → Deploy → Monitor with deployment strategies |
CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CloudFormation | DOP-C02, SAP-C02 |
| Data Lake & Analytics Pipeline Ingest → Store → Catalog → Process → Analyze with governance |
S3, Glue, Lake Formation, Athena, Redshift, QuickSight | SAP-C02, MLA-C01 |
Exam Coverage Matrix
| Architecture | SAP-C02 | DOP-C02 | SCS-C03 | MLA-C01 | AIP-C01 | AIF-C01 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GenAI with Bedrock | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | |||
| Multi-Account Governance | ✅ | ✅ | ||||
| CI/CD Pipeline | ✅ | ✅ | ||||
| Zero Trust Security | ✅ | ✅ | ||||
| MLOps Pipeline | ✅ | ✅ | ||||
| Disaster Recovery | ✅ | ✅ | ||||
| Event-Driven Serverless | ✅ | ✅ | ||||
| Hybrid Networking | ✅ | |||||
| Data Lake & Analytics | ✅ | ✅ | ||||
| Container Platform | ✅ | ✅ |
How to Use These Architectures
- Exam preparation: Study the architectures mapped to your target certification. Focus on the design decisions and trade-offs — exams test “which combination of services” for specific requirements.
- Real-world design: Use as starting templates. Each architecture includes scaling considerations, cost optimization, and security patterns applicable to production workloads.
- Practice questions: Each architecture page includes 5 scenario-based questions with expandable answers — total of 50 exam-style questions across all 10 architectures.