Event 1

Event 1 AWS Cloud Architecture Championship: CLF, SAA & SAP Battle - 20/06/2026

1. Overview

The AWS Cloud Architecture Championship was an interactive competitive event focused on evaluating cloud architectural knowledge, scenario analysis under time pressure, and system design expertise.

The event brought together 8 competing teams of cloud engineers, solutions architects, and students to compete through 3 elimination rounds. The competition was strictly question-based, featuring 10 scenario-based questions per round (30 questions total) with a progressive difficulty curve across three AWS certification levels: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02), AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03), and AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C02).

Attending this competition as an observer provided deep insights into how experienced engineers analyze complex exam scenarios, evaluate cost versus reliability trade-offs, and choose optimal cloud designs under strict time limits. 20-06-2026

2. Competition Structure & Exam Domains

2.1. Event Setup & Competition Format

The competition featured 8 teams competing in a knockout format across 3 distinct rounds. Each round contained exactly 10 scenario-based questions with a structured ratio of Cloud Practitioner, Solutions Architect Associate, and Solutions Architect Professional questions:

  • 8 Competing Teams: Formed from university groups, cloud community members, and enterprise builder teams.
  • 3 Knockout Rounds (10 Questions Each): 30 total scenario-based questions with a progressive certification tier distribution.
  • Pure Question-Based Format: No live whiteboard design or coding; focus was 100% on analyzing complex architectural scenarios and selecting optimal AWS solutions.

2.2. Round 1: 10 Questions — Breakdown: 7 CLF / 2 SAA / 1 SAP

The opening round tested all 8 teams across 10 scenario questions with a heavy focus on foundational Cloud Practitioner concepts while introducing associate and professional scenarios:

  • 7 Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) Questions: AWS Region, Availability Zone, Edge Location benefits, IAM users vs roles, Security Groups, EC2/S3/EFS service selection, AWS Cost Explorer, and AWS Budgets.
  • 2 Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) Questions: Designing basic public/private VPC subnets and configuring NAT Gateways with Auto Scaling.
  • 1 Solutions Architect Professional (SAP-C02) Question: Multi-tier application high availability and basic cost optimization.

Out of 8 teams, the 4 highest-scoring teams advanced to Round 2.

2.3. Round 2: 10 Questions — Breakdown: 6 CLF / 2 SAA / 2 SAP

Round 2 elevated the technical difficulty for the 4 surviving teams, increasing the proportion of advanced architecture questions:

  • 6 Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) Questions: Advanced Shared Responsibility Model scenarios, IAM role delegation, AWS KMS vs Secrets Manager, and billing alarm configurations.
  • 2 Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) Questions: Amazon RDS Multi-AZ vs Read Replicas, ALB path-based routing, and S3 Lifecycle transition policies.
  • 2 Solutions Architect Professional (SAP-C02) Questions: Asynchronous event-driven architectures (SQS, SNS, Lambda) and cross-region data replication.

The top 2 surviving teams secured their spots in the Grand Final.

2.4. Round 3: 10 Questions — Breakdown: 5 CLF / 2 SAA / 3 SAP

The final round pitted the top 2 teams against each other in a high-pressure championship round with the highest concentration of professional-level scenarios:

  • 5 Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) Questions: Complex AWS Well-Architected Framework reviews, enterprise support plans, and global service governance.
  • 2 Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) Questions: Resilient microservices integration, API Gateway throttling, and SQS Dead-Letter Queue (DLQ) error handling.
  • 3 Solutions Architect Professional (SAP-C02) Questions: Multi-region active-active vs active-passive disaster recovery (RTO < 5 minutes, RPO < 1 minute), AWS Transit Gateway hybrid routing, and enterprise migration strategies using AWS Migration Hub and DMS.

3. What I Learned

Observing the AWS Cloud Architecture Championship provided valuable lessons across all three certification tiers:

  1. Evolution Across CLF, SAA, and SAP Mindsets:

    • CLF (Practitioner) focuses on identifying core AWS services, billing models, and the Shared Responsibility Model.
    • SAA (Associate) focuses on selecting the single best AWS service for a given functional requirement.
    • SAP (Professional) focuses on multi-region enterprise synthesis, complex trade-offs, cost governance, RTO/RPO compliance, and disaster recovery.

  2. RTO and RPO Trade-offs:

    • Scenario questions demonstrated how lower RTO/RPO requirements increase cost and architectural complexity, requiring engineers to balance business impact against cost.

  3. Importance of Asynchronous Decoupling:

    • High-availability architecture questions highlighted asynchronous messaging (Amazon SQS), Lambda event processing, and dead-letter queues to prevent cascading system failures.

  4. Scenario Analysis under Time Pressure:

    • Analyzing exam questions under time limits requires quickly identifying key requirements (e.g., “least operational overhead”, “most cost-effective”, “highest availability”) and eliminating distractors.

4. Feedback

The event was exceptionally engaging, structured, and informative. The question-based format allowed participants and spectators to test their certification readiness across CLF, SAA, and SAP domains.

5. Expectations

After observing Event 1, I plan to:

  • Continue studying for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) and AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) certifications.
  • Apply multi-region resilience and asynchronous queue decoupling patterns to my future serverless projects.
  • Practice scenario-based exam questions to improve speed and accuracy in analyzing complex AWS requirements.