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SOA-C02
SOA-C02 Amazon Web Services

CloudOps Engineer Associate

The course teaches AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate (SOA‑C02) exam topics, covering monitoring, reliability, automation, security, and networking to prepare professionals for production‑grade AWS operations.

130
Minutes
65
Questions
720/1000
Passing Score
$150
Exam Cost
10
Languages

Who Should Take This

It is designed for cloud engineers, system administrators, or DevOps specialists who have at least one year of hands‑on experience managing AWS resources in production. These learners aim to validate their operational expertise, deepen their knowledge of AWS best practices, and earn the SysOps Associate certification to advance their careers.

What's Covered

1 Implement metrics, alarms, and filters using AWS monitoring and logging services, and remediate issues based on monitoring data.
2 Implement scalability and elasticity, high availability and resilient environments, and backup and restore strategies.
3 Provision and maintain cloud resources, automate manual or repeatable processes, and manage infrastructure as code.
4 Implement and manage security and compliance policies, and implement data and infrastructure protection strategies.
5 Implement networking features and connectivity, configure domains, DNS services, and content delivery, and troubleshoot network connectivity issues.
6 Implement cost optimization strategies, define and implement performance optimization strategies for AWS resources.

Exam Structure

Question Types

  • Multiple Choice
  • Multiple Response

Scoring Method

Scaled scoring from 100 to 1000, minimum passing score of 720

Delivery Method

Pearson VUE testing center or online proctored

Recertification

Recertify every 3 years by passing the current exam or earning a higher-level AWS certification.

What's Included in AccelaStudy® AI

Adaptive Knowledge Graph
Practice Questions
Lesson Modules
Console Simulator Labs
Exam Tips & Strategy
20 Activity Formats

Course Outline

73 learning goals
1 Domain 1: Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation
4 topics

Implement metrics, alarms, and filters using AWS monitoring and logging services

  • Identify CloudWatch core components and explain how metrics, namespaces, dimensions, statistics, and periods organize monitoring data for AWS resources.
  • Implement CloudWatch alarms with static thresholds, anomaly detection bands, metric math expressions, and composite alarms to detect operational anomalies across services.
  • Implement CloudWatch Logs metric filters, subscription filters, and Logs Insights queries to extract operational signals from log data and drive automated responses.
  • Configure CloudWatch dashboards with custom widgets, cross-account and cross-region data sources, and automatic refresh to provide unified operational visibility.
  • Analyze monitoring signal quality to reduce alert fatigue by tuning alarm thresholds, evaluation periods, missing data treatment, and composite alarm logic.

Implement logging and event management across AWS services

  • Identify AWS logging services and explain how CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs, S3 access logs, ELB access logs, and RDS logs capture operational and security events.
  • Configure CloudTrail trails with multi-region coverage, S3 log delivery, CloudWatch Logs integration, log file validation, and organization-level trails for audit compliance.
  • Implement EventBridge rules to capture AWS API events, service state changes, and scheduled triggers and route them to remediation targets including Lambda, SNS, and Systems Manager.

Remediate issues based on monitoring and availability metrics

  • Identify incident categories from observability data and explain how CloudWatch alarm states, health checks, and event notifications indicate resource-level and service-level failures.
  • Execute remediation actions using Systems Manager Run Command, Automation runbooks, and CloudWatch alarm actions to restore service health for EC2, RDS, and Auto Scaling targets.
  • Implement automated remediation workflows using EventBridge rules triggering Systems Manager Automation documents and Lambda functions for self-healing infrastructure patterns.
  • Analyze incident patterns and remediation outcomes to determine root causes, improve runbook effectiveness, and reduce mean time to recovery for recurring operational failures.

Manage AWS Config for compliance monitoring

  • Identify AWS Config capabilities and explain how configuration recorders, delivery channels, managed rules, and conformance packs track resource compliance over time.
  • Implement AWS Config rules with managed and custom Lambda-based evaluations and configure automatic remediation actions using Systems Manager Automation for non-compliant resources.
2 Domain 2: Reliability and Business Continuity
3 topics

Implement scalability and elasticity

  • Identify Auto Scaling components and explain how launch templates, Auto Scaling groups, scaling policies (target tracking, step, simple), and cooldown periods manage EC2 capacity.
  • Implement EC2 Auto Scaling groups with target tracking policies, scheduled scaling actions, predictive scaling, and instance warm-up periods to match capacity to workload demand.
  • Implement Application Auto Scaling for DynamoDB, ECS services, Aurora replicas, and Lambda provisioned concurrency using target tracking and step scaling policies.
  • Analyze scaling policy behavior using CloudWatch metrics and scaling activity history to adjust thresholds, cooldowns, and warm-up periods for stable workload performance.

Implement highly available and resilient environments

  • Identify AWS high availability constructs and explain how Availability Zones, Regions, Multi-AZ deployments, and health checks provide fault isolation and failover capability.
  • Implement Multi-AZ architectures for RDS, ElastiCache, and EFS with automatic failover, read replicas, and cross-AZ networking to achieve high availability for stateful workloads.
  • Implement ELB health checks, connection draining, cross-zone load balancing, and target group configurations across ALB, NLB, and CLB to distribute traffic resiliently.
  • Analyze resilience architecture tradeoffs across single-AZ, Multi-AZ, and multi-Region patterns to balance recovery time, data durability, cost, and operational complexity.

Implement backup and restore strategies

  • Identify AWS backup mechanisms and explain how EBS snapshots, RDS automated backups, S3 versioning, DynamoDB point-in-time recovery, and AWS Backup support data durability.
  • Implement AWS Backup plans with scheduled rules, lifecycle policies, cross-Region copy, and vault lock to enforce centralized backup governance across accounts and services.
  • Analyze recovery test outcomes against RPO and RTO targets to identify backup coverage gaps, improve restoration procedures, and validate disaster recovery readiness.
3 Domain 3: Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation
5 topics

Provision and maintain cloud resources using CloudFormation

  • Identify CloudFormation template components and explain how resources, parameters, mappings, conditions, outputs, and intrinsic functions define infrastructure as code.
  • Implement CloudFormation stacks with nested stacks, cross-stack references, change sets, stack policies, and rollback configuration for controlled multi-resource provisioning.
  • Implement CloudFormation drift detection, import existing resources, and use stack sets with service-managed permissions for multi-account and multi-Region deployments.
  • Analyze CloudFormation deployment failures by interpreting stack events, resolving dependency errors, and determining rollback causes to improve template reliability.

Provision and manage EC2 instances and AMIs

  • Identify EC2 instance lifecycle states and explain how launch templates, instance types, placement groups, tenancy options, and user data scripts control provisioning behavior.
  • Implement EC2 provisioning using launch templates with user data, instance profiles, EBS volume configurations, and instance metadata service (IMDSv2) hardening.
  • Create and manage custom AMIs with EC2 Image Builder pipelines including image recipes, test components, and distribution settings for standardized instance provisioning.

Manage storage provisioning and lifecycle

  • Identify AWS storage types and explain when to use EBS (gp3, io2, st1, sc1), EFS, FSx, S3, and S3 Glacier based on performance, durability, and access pattern requirements.
  • Implement S3 bucket configurations with versioning, lifecycle policies, replication rules, storage class transitions, object lock, and access logging for data lifecycle management.
  • Implement EBS volume management including volume type selection, snapshot scheduling, encryption with KMS, volume resizing, and RAID configurations for EC2 workloads.
  • Analyze storage performance and cost patterns to recommend optimal volume types, storage class transitions, and data tiering strategies for evolving workload requirements.

Automate operational processes with Systems Manager

  • Identify Systems Manager capabilities and explain how SSM Agent, managed instances, Run Command, Patch Manager, State Manager, Parameter Store, and Automation orchestrate operations.
  • Implement Systems Manager Patch Manager baselines with approval rules, patch groups, and maintenance windows to automate OS and application patching across EC2 fleets.
  • Implement Systems Manager Automation documents with multi-step workflows, approval gates, error handling, and rate controls for safe operational task execution across accounts.
  • Implement Session Manager for secure, auditable shell access to EC2 instances without SSH keys or bastion hosts using IAM-controlled access and CloudTrail logging.
  • Analyze automation execution history and compliance drift to identify unreliable runbooks, patching gaps, and configuration inconsistencies requiring operational improvements.

Manage deployment strategies and application platforms

  • Identify deployment strategies and explain how in-place, rolling, blue/green, canary, and immutable deployments differ in risk profile, rollback capability, and downtime impact.
  • Implement Elastic Beanstalk environments with platform selection, deployment policies (all-at-once, rolling, immutable), configuration files (.ebextensions), and environment cloning.
  • Analyze deployment failure scenarios and select the appropriate rollback strategy based on workload criticality, data persistence requirements, and acceptable downtime windows.
4 Domain 4: Security and Compliance
4 topics

Implement and manage identity and access management

  • Identify IAM components and explain how users, groups, roles, policies (identity-based, resource-based, SCPs), permission boundaries, and session policies control access to AWS resources.
  • Implement least-privilege IAM policies with condition keys, policy variables, and permission boundaries and configure MFA enforcement for console and API access.
  • Implement cross-account access using IAM role assumption, STS AssumeRole, external IDs, and confused deputy prevention for multi-account operational workflows.
  • Analyze IAM policy evaluation logic and troubleshoot access denied errors by interpreting policy simulation results, CloudTrail authorization events, and effective permission chains.

Manage multi-account governance with Organizations and Control Tower

  • Identify AWS Organizations components and explain how organizational units, service control policies, tag policies, and consolidated billing provide multi-account governance.
  • Implement service control policies to restrict actions at the organizational unit level and configure Control Tower guardrails (preventive and detective) for account governance.
  • Analyze multi-account governance policy conflicts between SCPs, IAM policies, and resource policies to determine effective permissions and resolve unintended access restrictions.

Implement data protection and encryption

  • Identify AWS encryption services and explain how KMS customer managed keys, AWS managed keys, S3 SSE options (SSE-S3, SSE-KMS, SSE-C), and ACM certificates protect data.
  • Implement encryption at rest for EBS, RDS, S3, and DynamoDB using KMS key policies, grants, and default encryption settings and enforce encryption through SCPs and bucket policies.
  • Implement secrets management using Secrets Manager with automatic rotation and Systems Manager Parameter Store with SecureString parameters for operational credential handling.

Implement security monitoring and threat detection

  • Identify AWS security monitoring services and explain how GuardDuty, Security Hub, Inspector, Macie, and AWS Config detect threats, vulnerabilities, and compliance violations.
  • Implement GuardDuty threat detection with trusted IP lists, threat lists, and finding suppression rules and route findings through EventBridge to automated remediation targets.
  • Implement Security Hub with standards (CIS, PCI DSS, Foundational Best Practices), aggregated findings from GuardDuty, Inspector, and Config, and custom actions for triage workflows.
  • Analyze security findings across GuardDuty, Inspector, and Security Hub to prioritize remediation by severity, determine blast radius, and improve security posture baselines.
5 Domain 5: Networking and Content Delivery
4 topics

Implement VPC networking features and connectivity

  • Identify VPC networking components and explain how subnets, route tables, internet gateways, NAT gateways, elastic IPs, and VPC peering provide connectivity for AWS workloads.
  • Implement VPC architectures with public and private subnets, NAT gateway placement, route table associations, and VPC endpoints (gateway and interface) for secure service access.
  • Implement hybrid networking connectivity using VPN connections (site-to-site), Direct Connect, and Transit Gateway for on-premises to AWS communication.
  • Implement VPC security controls using security groups with stateful rules, network ACLs with stateless rules, and VPC Flow Logs for traffic analysis and compliance auditing.

Configure DNS and domain management with Route 53

  • Identify Route 53 record types and routing policies and explain how simple, weighted, latency-based, failover, geolocation, and multivalue routing distribute DNS queries.
  • Implement Route 53 hosted zones with alias records, health checks, failover routing, and DNS-based active-passive disaster recovery for high availability across Regions.
  • Analyze DNS resolution failures and routing anomalies using Route 53 health check status, query logging, and TTL behavior to restore correct endpoint routing.

Configure content delivery and edge services

  • Identify CloudFront distribution components and explain how origins, behaviors, cache policies, origin request policies, and edge locations accelerate content delivery.
  • Implement CloudFront distributions with S3 and ALB origins, origin access control, SSL/TLS certificates, cache invalidation, and geographic restrictions for secure content delivery.

Troubleshoot network connectivity issues

  • Analyze network connectivity failures by examining VPC Flow Logs, security group rules, NACL entries, route tables, and DNS resolution to isolate blocked or misrouted traffic.
  • Analyze ELB connectivity and performance issues using access logs, target health status, and CloudWatch metrics to determine listener, target group, or backend misconfigurations.
6 Domain 6: Cost and Performance Optimization
2 topics

Implement cost optimization strategies

  • Identify AWS cost management tools and explain how Cost Explorer, Budgets, Cost Allocation Tags, and Savings Plans provide visibility and control over AWS spending.
  • Implement AWS Budgets with cost, usage, and reservation alerts and configure Cost Allocation Tags across accounts to attribute spending to business units and projects.

Implement performance optimization using AWS tools

  • Identify AWS performance optimization services and explain how Trusted Advisor, Compute Optimizer, and S3 Storage Lens provide right-sizing and efficiency recommendations.
  • Analyze Trusted Advisor and Compute Optimizer recommendations against workload requirements to prioritize right-sizing, underutilized resource cleanup, and Reserved Instance coverage improvements.

Hands-On Labs

25 labs ~535 min total Console Simulator

Practice in a simulated cloud console or Python code sandbox — no account needed. Each lab runs entirely in your browser.

Certification Benefits

Salary Impact

$132,000
Average Salary

Related Job Roles

Cloud Operations Engineer SysOps Administrator Systems Administrator DevOps Engineer Cloud Support Engineer

Industry Recognition

The AWS CloudOps Engineer Associate (formerly SysOps Administrator) certification validates operational expertise on AWS and is highly valued for cloud operations and infrastructure management roles. It complements the Solutions Architect and Developer associate certifications for well-rounded cloud team skill sets.

Scope

Included Topics

  • All domains and task statements in the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate (SOA-C02) exam guide: Domain 1 Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation (20%), Domain 2 Reliability and Business Continuity (15%), Domain 3 Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation (25%), Domain 4 Security and Compliance (20%), Domain 5 Networking and Content Delivery (15%), and Domain 6 Cost and Performance Optimization (5%).
  • Associate-level operations administration practices for monitoring, incident response, availability design, provisioning automation, security operations, network troubleshooting, and cost optimization in AWS.
  • Scenario-driven operations decision making for deploying, maintaining, and optimizing resilient AWS workloads under cost, compliance, reliability, and performance constraints.
  • Key AWS services for SysOps administrators: CloudWatch, CloudTrail, EventBridge, Config, Systems Manager, Organizations, Control Tower, CloudFormation, OpsWorks, Elastic Beanstalk, Auto Scaling, ELB, EC2, EBS, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, VPC, Route 53, CloudFront, IAM, KMS, Secrets Manager, GuardDuty, Inspector, Security Hub, Macie, WAF, Shield, Trusted Advisor, Cost Explorer, Budgets, Compute Optimizer.

Not Covered

  • Professional-level solutions architecture governance and enterprise operating model design that exceed SysOps associate objectives.
  • Deep application development implementation details not centered on operations and administration outcomes.
  • Transient service pricing details and short-lived promotional values that are not stable for durable domain specifications.
  • Non-AWS operational tooling specifics that do not directly map to SOA-C02 objectives and task statements.
  • AWS CLI command-level syntax memorization and SDK version-specific API signatures.

Official Exam Page

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