Alibaba Cloud Architect Professional study plan

Map each of the four domains to its exam weight and write a one-page outline of the architecture-design decisions the exam expects you to justify

Sketch three reference architectures from scratch (single-region web tier, multi-tier with managed database, hybrid connectivity) and label every component with its Alibaba Cloud service category

Explain aloud, without notes, the tradeoffs between ECS, SLB, and Auto Scaling for a variable-traffic workload

List the design questions you would ask a stakeholder before choosing between a single VPC and a multi-VPC topology

Design a multi-AZ, highly available three-tier application and document the failure mode each redundancy layer addresses

Compare at least four data-tier options (RDS, PolarDB, Tablestore, OSS) against consistency, scaling, and cost criteria

Draft a cost and performance comparison for two candidate architectures serving the same workload

Identify and correct three deliberately flawed architectures (single points of failure, cross-region latency traps, over-permissioned designs)

Inventory a sample on-premises estate and classify each workload as rehost, replatform, refactor, or retire with a stated justification

Sequence a migration wave plan across three waves, ordering by dependency and risk

Select the appropriate migration tool category for server, database, and object-storage moves and state why each fits

Draft a cutover and rollback runbook for one workload, including validation checks and a go/no-go gate

Design a landing-zone structure with account/resource hierarchy, VPC segmentation, and centralized logging

Specify infrastructure-as-code coverage for a repeatable two-environment deployment and note what must stay manual

Define the observability baseline: which metrics, logs, and alerts every deployed workload must ship with

Write the acceptance criteria a migrated workload must pass before it is declared production-ready

Build an operations runbook for one workload covering incident triage, escalation, and post-incident review

Diagnose five given symptom descriptions (latency spikes, throttling, connection exhaustion, disk pressure, cost anomaly) and name the first three diagnostic steps for each

Define SLOs and error budgets for two services and derive the alert thresholds from them

Produce a cost-optimization review identifying at least six levers (rightsizing, commitment discounts, storage tiering, idle-resource reclamation) with estimated impact

Model a least-privilege identity design covering human roles, service roles, and cross-account access

Map data-classification tiers to encryption, key-management, and retention controls

Design network security controls (segmentation, security groups, WAF, DDoS posture) for the week-1 reference architecture

Assemble the compliance evidence checklist an auditor would request for one regulated workload

Red-team your own week-2 architecture and document at least eight weaknesses with remediations

Reconcile security controls against architecture decisions and resolve every conflict where a control degrades availability or performance

Rewrite the weakest section of your architecture notes so a reviewer could defend it in a design review

Produce a one-page executive summary of the design, its risks, and its cost profile

Answer timed practice sets across all four domains and log every miss by domain and root cause

Re-teach your three weakest sub-topics from first principles in writing, without consulting notes

Rehearse scenario-based explanations aloud for migration sequencing, cost optimization, and security tradeoffs

Consolidate all prior deliverables into a single indexed study binder with a personal weakness list