The Grand Map: the AWS Solutions Architect Exam on One Sheet
The whole AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam drawn as one kingdom on a single two-sided sheet, checked against current AWS documentation, free to download, print and punch for a binder.
This summer, studying for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam, I kept drawing the material as a map. By July the map fit on one sheet of paper, both sides. I carried it around and kept going back to it, along with my other print packets and my flashcards. It never went into the exam room; nothing does. The habit behind it is an old one.
Download the Grand Map (PDF, two sides)
What is on it
The study system I built for that exam drew AWS as a kingdom you can rent but never own, and the Grand Map is the whole kingdom on one sheet. A request walks it in order. It finds its way in, crosses over from the old datacenter, proves who it is, travels the network, does its work, hands off to other services, stores what it made, gets watched, survives a failure and pays the bill. Each of those steps is a region, with its own color.
Every region holds the same parts in the same order, so the eye learns where to look:
| Part | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| Two names | A landmark and the AWS service it stands for, so the place carries the name |
| The map | Which service answers which need |
| Signals | The words in a question that point at an answer |
| Traps and laws | The wrong answers that look right, and the short rule that rules them out |
| Monsters | The failure that lives in that region, named so you can spot it |
Side B adds what runs across all of it: a bestiary, the pairs the exam likes to set against each other, twenty laws, and a ribbon of the numbers worth knowing cold.
Region 01, the Global Sky, enlarged. The print is small on purpose. It is meant to be read up close and then from memory.
Checked this week
The map was finished in August, and the cloud kept moving after I stopped studying it. So before giving it away I had every number and every can or cannot on it checked against AWS's own documentation. A good share had changed. These are the ones most likely to catch you:
| On the August map | Now |
|---|---|
| S3 objects up to 5 TB | Up to 50 TB |
| Snowcone, Snowball Edge, Snowmobile | Snowball Edge only, closed to new customers; new customers use Data Transfer Terminal |
| QLDB for a verifiable ledger | QLDB ended in July 2025 |
| Migration Hub, App Runner | Closed to new customers; AWS Transform, ECS Express Mode |
| RDS read replicas up to 5 | Up to 15 |
| Aurora Global promotes in under a minute | A planned switchover takes about 30 seconds |
| Firehose buffers about 60 seconds | 300 seconds by default |
| API Gateway 29 second hard timeout | 29 seconds by default, raisable on REST APIs |
The exam can lag the service. Where it may still expect the old answer, the sheet says so in place.
Printing it
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Paper | US Letter, landscape |
| Scale | 100%, not fit to page |
| Sides | Double-sided, flip on long edge |
| Color | If you have it; each region has its own |
One long edge carries a punch margin with the three holes marked, so the sheet can go in a binder. Printed this way the holes line up through both sides, and the back reads right side up when you turn the page.
The rest of the kingdom
The Grand Map is one of three sheets. The rest of the set is print packets that go into depth on everything this sheet and the other two cover, region by region. They are getting the same check against current AWS documentation now, and they will be available to buy soon.
If you find a mistake on the map, or have a question about it, write to me at hello@joshuaayson.com.
Not affiliated with or endorsed by Amazon Web Services. Amazon Web Services and AWS are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. The Grand Map is free for personal use; please link to this page rather than rehosting the file.
Related reading: Walking a Rented Kingdom and The Mind Places Things on Paper.