A realistic ten-week plan at roughly 6 to 8 hours per week. Pair every topic with hands-on practice in a free-tier account — design judgement comes from building, not reading.
| Week | Focus | Checkpoint |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | AWS basics, global infrastructure, Well-Architected Framework | You can name the six pillars |
| 2 | IAM and account security | You can write a least-privilege policy |
| 3 | Compute: EC2, Auto Scaling, Lambda, containers | You can choose compute for a workload |
| 4 | Storage: S3, EBS, EFS and storage classes | You can pick the right storage and class |
| 5 | Databases: RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, ElastiCache | You can choose SQL vs NoSQL for a case |
| 6 | Networking: VPC, subnets, security groups, Route 53, CloudFront | You can design a secure VPC |
| 7 | Resilience: multi-AZ, decoupling (SQS/SNS), backups | You can make a design highly available |
| 8 | Cost optimisation and pricing models | You can reduce cost in a scenario |
| 9 | Review weak areas + hands-on mini-projects | You can build a small end-to-end app |
| 10 | Full-length timed reviews | You consistently pass timed reviews |
Final-week tips
Focus on the security and resilience domains (over half the exam) and drill scenario judgement against the Well-Architected pillars. Avoid “exam dump” sites — they breach AWS policy and copyright.