Exam Code: AD0-E117
Exam Name: Adobe Experience Manager Sites Architect Master
Price: $68.00 $58.88
Exam Questions: 87 Q&As
Last Updated: 2026-10-15
Prepare for the AD0-E117 exam with architecture-focused practice covering discovery, solution design, implementation decisions, production troubleshooting, upgrades, scalability, security, and migration.
The Adobe Experience Manager Sites Architect Master certification validates your ability to translate business requirements into resilient AEM Sites solutions across Adobe Managed Services and Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service.
AD0-E117 is aimed at architects who can assess an existing AEM landscape, define functional and nonfunctional requirements, and turn those findings into a detailed solution design. The exam expects more than product familiarity. You must recognize tradeoffs involving security, integrations, migration, performance, resilience, testing, and long-term operations.
A strong candidate can work in both Adobe Managed Services and AEM as a Cloud Service. That includes setting up environments and infrastructure, guiding implementation teams, reviewing design issues discovered during delivery, and resolving production problems without losing sight of the original business goals.
Adobe recommends at least three years of experience as an AEM Sites architect. You should have practical experience with architecture discovery, solution documentation, deployment environments, integrations, migration planning, performance testing, security reviews, and production support.
Most scenarios contain several technically possible choices. The best answer usually satisfies the business goal while reducing customization, operational risk, migration effort, or long-term maintenance. Identify constraints and nonfunctional requirements before selecting a feature or implementation pattern.
Solution Design represents 44% of the exam, but the four domains form one lifecycle. Discovery supplies the design inputs, implementation tests the design, and maintenance reveals whether the architecture continues to meet its requirements.
Translate high-level business goals into functional requirements, assess the current architecture, and identify nonfunctional requirements. Expect to separate confirmed facts from assumptions, constraints, risks, dependencies, and questions that still require stakeholder input.
Design detailed AEM architecture from business requirements and select suitable security, integration, performance, testing, scalability, resilience, and migration approaches. This domain rewards tradeoff analysis: a correct design must work technically and remain supportable under expected load and change.
Resolve design gaps uncovered during delivery, recommend implementation approaches, and choose effective proof-of-concept methods. Be ready to diagnose issues that cross code, content, configuration, deployment, and external integrations rather than treating each layer in isolation.
Diagnose production issues, plan adoption of new features and upgrades, and optimize the solution against nonfunctional requirements. Focus on evidence from logs, monitoring, performance results, release history, and reproducible behavior before proposing a change.
Requirement versus solution: “Editors need faster publishing” is a need; a specific cache or workflow change is a proposed solution. Functional versus nonfunctional: page authoring is functional, while response time, availability, scalability, and recovery targets are nonfunctional. Cloud Service versus older operating assumptions: architecture choices must respect immutable deployments, cloud-managed operations, and supported extension patterns rather than relying on direct production changes.
Day 1: discovery workshops, current-state assessment, and requirement classification. Days 2 and 3: architecture, security, integrations, performance, resilience, and testing. Day 4: content and code migration strategies. Day 5: implementation troubleshooting and proof-of-concept design. Day 6: production diagnosis, upgrades, and optimization. Day 7: complete a timed mixed set and write one sentence explaining why each rejected option fails.
These independently written examples reflect the architectural decisions described in the exam objectives. They are not official Adobe exam questions.
A client recently purchased Smart Content Service and is considering Enhanced Smart Tagging. The client created a new tagging taxonomy that has not yet been applied to any assets.
An architect needs to demonstrate the feature on a subset of the client's assets before applying it to all assets. How should the architect proceed?
Correct answer: C
Explanation: The architect should limit the demonstration to one folder by enabling Smart Tagging in its properties, then run the Smart Tags Training workflow so the service can learn from the new taxonomy.
Architect checkpoint: The scenario requires both a controlled scope and a training step. Folder configuration defines the subset; the workflow trains the enhanced tagging model.
Common mistake: Choosing an option that prepares or tags sample assets but never enables Smart Tagging for the target folder.
Why the other options are wrong: A omits the training workflow. B does not enable Smart Tagging through the folder properties. D enables the feature but does not train it with the new taxonomy.
An architect must design a zero-downtime deployment process. The environment contains one AEM author, two AEM publishers, two publish Dispatchers, and a centrally managed load balancer. The publishers serve some content that cannot be cached.
Which two actions should the architect take? (Choose two.)
Correct answers: B and E
Explanation: Each Dispatcher can route to either publisher, while rolling the package to one publisher at a time keeps another publisher available for uncached requests during deployment.
Architect checkpoint: Zero downtime requires both routing redundancy and a rolling deployment sequence. Either measure alone leaves a failure or interruption path.
Common mistake: Connecting each Dispatcher to only one publisher. That creates fixed pairs and reduces the routing flexibility needed while a publisher is unavailable.
Why the other options are wrong: A creates a dependency between a Dispatcher and one publisher. C uses replication as a deployment mechanism and does not provide controlled rolling deployment. D bypasses the Dispatcher tier and changes the traffic path unnecessarily.
An enterprise client is onboarding the AEM Desktop application so authors can mount the AEM repository virtually in the file system. The application cannot connect to the SSL-enabled AEM Author. The intermediate certificate is installed on Apache.
How should the architect resolve the issue?
Correct answer: B
Explanation: Install the root certificate in the AEM truststore so the SSL certificate chain presented through Apache can be trusted.
Architect checkpoint: A keystore supplies an identity and private key. A truststore contains certificates used to trust remote or presented identities. This scenario describes a trust-chain problem.
Common mistake: Selecting a keystore option because the problem involves SSL. The missing requirement is trust, not an AEM service identity.
Why the other options are wrong: A and C place certificates in service-user keystores and do not address the required trust anchor. D adds the certificate chain rather than the requested root trust certificate.
A large AEM enterprise site requires authentication and true optimal load balancing across multiple AEM publish instances. Which approach should the architect take?
Correct answer: C
Explanation: The Encapsulated Token option allows authentication state to travel securely with the request rather than depending on one publish instance, which supports effective load balancing across publishers.
Architect checkpoint: Authentication state and traffic distribution must be designed together. Session affinity may preserve state, but it prevents traffic from being distributed freely.
Common mistake: Choosing sticky connections because they solve session continuity. They bind a user to one publisher and conflict with the requirement for optimal balancing.
Why the other options are wrong: A reduces balancing flexibility. B concerns the Dispatcher's runtime identity, not authenticated session portability. D distributes requests but does not by itself solve authentication state across publishers.
A customer requires authors to access AEM through single sign-on. The architect must integrate AEM with the customer's identity management system.
Which two actions could the architect take? (Choose two.)
Correct answers: A and D
Explanation: The architect can implement the generic SSO Authentication Handler interface for the required integration behavior and configure the generic handler to connect AEM authentication with the identity system.
Architect checkpoint: Separate implementation from configuration. One action supplies the handler behavior; the other activates and configures it for the environment.
Common mistake: Selecting every authentication-related feature. The question asks for two actions that form one generic SSO approach.
Why the other options are wrong: B defines authentication requirements for paths but does not implement the identity integration. C is appropriate for a specifically SAML-based design, which the scenario does not state. E changes the login-module layer and is not required for the generic handler approach.
Content is reviewed when Adobe changes the exam guide, objective weights, AEM terminology, or supported architecture guidance. Check the product page for the latest update date before purchasing.
Yes. The five examples above show the scenario-based format, answer explanation, architect checkpoint, common mistake, and analysis of the incorrect choices.
The exam profile expects familiarity with both environments. Review the current product description for the exact coverage and edition included in the available study package.
Yes. Practice questions can expose weak areas, but a Master-level architecture exam expects experience evaluating real constraints, implementation decisions, integrations, operational evidence, and production tradeoffs.
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Review discovery, requirements, solution design, security, integrations, performance, resilience, migration, implementation, troubleshooting, upgrades, and optimization.
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