The New AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C03 This August 2022

Last updated on May 26, 2023

Heads up! AWS just announced today that there would be a new version of their popular AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam. The new SAA exam code will be upgraded to SAA-C03 this coming August.

Mark your calendars as the last day to take the current SAA-C02 exam version would be on August 29, 2022. Thus, if you need to recertify, you have to make sure that you book the current exam on or before that date. The updated SAA-C03 exam will be available for registration as early as July 26 and the first available day to take it would be this August 30.

What has changed from SAA-C02 to SAA-C03?

Looking at the official exam guide of the new SAA-C03, it seems that its exam domains are almost the same as the previous SAA-C02 version. You’ll see on the diagram below that it still has its 4 original exam domains. The “Design Secure Applications and Architectures” was renamed to “Design Secure Architectures”.

SAA-C02 vs SAA-C03 Comparison AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate 2022

These updates will incorporate the brand new cloud services that AWS recently released. It is also interesting to note that this new version does not have any Exam Labs section. So far, only the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate (SOA-C02) has exam labs included in its test.

What are the New Topics that I should expect on the SAA-C03 exam?

To view the new SAA-C03 topics that you should prepare for, you have to check the official Exam Guide and look at its Appendix section. It contains an enumerated list of the related AWS services that are included in the exam. Moreover, it even includes a list of non-related AWS services that won’t show up in your actual AWS exam.

In Analytics, prepare to see Amazon Athena, AWS Data Exchange, AWS Data Pipeline, Amazon EMR, AWS Glue, Amazon Kinesis, AWS Lake Formation, Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK), Amazon OpenSearch Service (Amazon Elasticsearch Service), Amazon QuickSight and Amazon Redshift. For Application Integration, we’ll have Amazon AppFlow, AWS AppSync, Amazon EventBridge (Amazon CloudWatch Events), Amazon MQ, Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), and AWS Step Functions.

The new exam also includes a lot of Machine Learning topics, such as Amazon Comprehend, Amazon Forecast, Amazon Fraud Detector, Amazon Kendra, Amazon Lex, Amazon Polly, Amazon Rekognition, Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Textract, Amazon Transcribe, Amazon Translate, and many more.

What AWS topics are Out-of-Scope for the SAA-C03 exam?

The answer to this question is quite easy. The official exam guide for SAA-C03 already includes a list of out-of-scope items.

Machine Learning

• Apache MXNet on AWS • Amazon Augmented AI (Amazon A2I) • AWS DeepComposer • AWS Deep Learning AMIs (DLAMI) • AWS Deep Learning Containers • AWS DeepLens • AWS DeepRacer • Amazon DevOps Guru • Amazon Elastic Inference • Amazon HealthLake • AWS Inferentia • Amazon Lookout for Equipment • Amazon Lookout for Metrics • Amazon Lookout for Vision • Amazon Monitron • AWS Panorama • Amazon Personalize • PyTorch on AWS • Amazon SageMaker Data Wrangler • Amazon SageMaker Ground Truth • TensorFlow on AWS

Management and Governance

• AWS Chatbot • AWS Console Mobile Application • AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry • AWS OpsWorks

Media Services:

• AWS Elemental Appliances and Software • AWS Elemental MediaConnect • AWS Elemental MediaConvert • AWS Elemental MediaLive • AWS Elemental MediaPackage • AWS Elemental MediaStore • AWS Elemental MediaTailor • Amazon Interactive Video Service (Amazon IVS)

Migration and Transfer

• Migration Evaluator (formerly TSO Logic)

Networking and Content Delivery

• AWS App Mesh • AWS Cloud Map

Is there an Updated SAA-C03 Practice Exam?

As of this writing, the official SAA-C02 practice exam is not yet available. It would probably take about 3 more months before AWS finally releases the official version of the SAA-C03 practice exam for the new AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate. In the meantime, you can try the new SAA-C03 sample exam so you can have a better idea of what will be the topic coverage would be, and how the scenarios will be presented.

This sample SAA-C03 sample exam PDF file can provide you with a hint of what the real SAA-C03 exam will look like in your upcoming test. In addition, the SAA-C03 sample questions also contain the necessary explanation and reference links that you can study.

Are there any Updated SAA-C03 Review Materials?

Even though there is no official SAA-C03 practice exam yet, you can start your exam preparations by using our AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate practice exams and video course. We are actively updating our content to conform with the upcoming SAA-C03 exam.

ANS-C01 , PAS-C01 and Other AWS Exam Updates

The current AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty exam, which has an exam code of ANS-C00, will be updated as well this year. By now, you should have guessed the value of its new exam code. The next one is ANS-C01 since the last digit is usually iterated on every new exam version release.

It is expected that by July 2022, the new AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty exam version will be available. The beta version of this exam is currently open from February 22 to April 4, 2022. Take note that beta exams are usually discounted at 50% off from the standard price.

Rest assured that we are actively updating our content to accommodate these changes in the official AWS certification exams. Our team has already taken the beta exam for the AWS Certified Advanced Certified Networking Specialty and we’ll be adding new scenarios on our practice tests soon. The same process will also be done for the new SAA-C03 exam.