- Implement metrics, alarms, and filters by using AWS monitoring and logging services
- Identify and remediate issues by using monitoring and availability metrics
- Implement performance optimization strategies for compute, storage, and database resources
AWS Certification Training Course
AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer Associate Training
We'll get you ready for the AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer Associate (SOA-C03) exam, the operations credential that replaced SysOps Administrator Associate.
Course focus: Monitoring and remediation, reliability and continuity, deployment and automation, security and compliance, and networking and content delivery, mapped to the five SOA-C03 domains.
Course Overview
What the CloudOps Engineer Associate course covers and who it's for.
AWS renamed SysOps Administrator Associate to CloudOps Engineer Associate with the SOA-C03 exam. AWS says the new name only applies to people who pass SOA-C03, and existing SysOps Administrator holders keep their title. If you came here for SysOps, this is the course we teach now.
AWS says SOA-C03 validates the ability to deploy, manage and operate workloads on AWS. Monitoring, reliability and deployment are 22% each, so we split lab time evenly across CloudWatch, backups and scaling, and infrastructure as code, then cover security and networking.
Live virtual instructor-led classes with hands-on labs and practice questions.
Accumentum is an AWS Authorized Training Partner. AWS sets exam content, fees and policies, so check aws.amazon.com/certification before you book.
Course Objectives
Get ready for CloudOps Engineer Associate the way the exam is built.
01
Cover the Whole Exam Guide
Work through all 5 domains in the official SOA-C03 exam guide, weighted the way AWS weights them.
02
Go Deep on the Biggest Domain
Monitoring, Logging, Analysis, Remediation, and Performance Optimization is 22% of the scored content per AWS, so it gets the most class time.
03
Practice in Real AWS Labs
Hands-on lab work on the tasks the SOA-C03 guide lists, not just slides.
04
Be Ready for Test Day
The exam has 65 multiple choice and multiple response questions in 130 minutes. We practice both question types under time.
Who Should Attend
- Cloud operations and support engineers.
- Systems administrators moving workloads to AWS.
- Former SysOps Administrator candidates.
- Engineers working toward DevOps Engineer Professional.
Prerequisites
- AWS doesn't require another certification first, and we don't have enrollment prerequisites either.
- AWS recommends about 1 year of experience deploying, managing and operating workloads on AWS.
Pathway Map
The CloudOps Engineer Associate course in 5 modules.
Each module is one domain from the official SOA-C03 exam guide, with its exam weight.
Course Content
- Implement scalability and elasticity
- Implement highly available and resilient environments
- Implement backup and restore strategies
- Provision and maintain cloud resources
- Automate the management of existing resources
- Implement and manage security and compliance tools and policies
- Implement strategies to protect data and infrastructure
- Implement and optimize networking features and connectivity
- Configure domains, DNS services, and content delivery
- Troubleshoot network connectivity issues
Course Features
How we teach CloudOps Engineer Associate.
Instructor-Led Classes
Live virtual instruction with time for questions, so you aren't figuring out the hard parts alone.
Hands-On Labs
Lab work in AWS tied to the tasks in the SOA-C03 exam guide.
Exam Guide Mapping
Every module maps to a domain in the official SOA-C03 exam guide.
Exam Strategy
Timed practice with multiple choice and multiple response questions, plus test day tips for the center or online.
Certification Exam
About the CloudOps Engineer Associate exam.
CloudOps Engineer Associate Exam Readiness
Our students pass at a 98.8% rate across Accumentum courses. We'll get you ready for CloudOps Engineer Associate the same way.
Per AWS, AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer Associate (SOA-C03) is a Associate level exam with 65 multiple choice and multiple response questions in 130 minutes, priced at 150 USD. You can take it at a Pearson VUE test center or as an online proctored exam.
AWS certifications are valid for three years. Full details are on the official AWS CloudOps Engineer Associate page and in the SOA-C03 exam guide.
Accumentum is an AWS Authorized Training Partner. AWS sets exam content, fees and policies, so check aws.amazon.com/certification before you book. We're also an Army CA and Air Force COOL Approved Vendor.
Exam Objectives
What SOA-C03 actually tests, task by task.
AWS publishes 13 task statements across the 5 SOA-C03 domains. We have laid each one out with the knowledge and skills AWS expects, straight from the exam guide.
Domain 1: Monitoring, Logging, Analysis, Remediation, and Performance Optimization (22%)
Task 1.1: Implement metrics, alarms, and filters by using AWS monitoring and logging services
- Use AWS services (for example, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus) to configure monitoring and logging for workloads (for example, serverless, compute, AI).
- Configure and manage the CloudWatch agent to collect metrics and logs from EC2 instances, Amazon ECS clusters, or Amazon EKS clusters.
- Configure, identify, and troubleshoot CloudWatch alarms that can invoke AWS services directly or through Amazon EventBridge (for example, by creating composite alarms and identifying their invokable actions).
- Create, implement, and manage customizable and shareable CloudWatch dashboards that display metrics and alarms for AWS resources across multiple accounts and AWS Regions.
- Configure AWS services to send notifications to Amazon SNS and to invoke alarms that send notifications to Amazon SNS.
Task 1.2: Identify and remediate issues by using monitoring and availability metrics
- Analyze performance metrics and automate remediation strategies by using AWS services and functionality (for example, CloudWatch, Lambda, AWS Systems Manager, CloudTrail, Kiro, AWS DevOps Agent).
- Use EventBridge to route, enrich, and deliver events, and troubleshoot any issues with event bus rules.
- Create or run custom and predefined Systems Manager Automation runbooks (for example, by using AWS SDKs or custom scripts) to automate tasks and streamline processes on AWS.
Task 1.3: Implement performance optimization strategies for compute, storage, and database resources
- Optimize compute resources and remediate performance problems by using performance metrics, resource tags, and AWS tools.
- Analyze Amazon EBS performance metrics, troubleshoot issues, and optimize volume types to improve performance and reduce cost.
- Implement and optimize S3 performance strategies (for example, AWS DataSync, S3 Transfer Acceleration, multipart uploads, S3 Lifecycle policies) to enhance data transfer, storage efficiency, and access patterns.
- Evaluate and select shared storage solutions (for example, Amazon EFS, Amazon FSx, Amazon S3 Files), and optimize the solutions (for example, EFS lifecycle policies) for specific use cases and requirements.
- Monitor Amazon RDS metrics (for example, Amazon RDS Performance Insights, CloudWatch alarms) and modify configurations to increase performance efficiency (for example, Performance Insights proactive recommendations, RDS Proxy).
- Implement, monitor, and optimize EC2 instances and their associated storage and networking capabilities (for example, EC2 placement groups).
Domain 2: Reliability and Business Continuity (22%)
Task 2.1: Implement scalability and elasticity
- Configure and manage scaling mechanisms in compute environments.
- Implement caching by using AWS services to enhance dynamic scalability (for example, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon ElastiCache).
- Configure and manage scaling in AWS managed databases (for example, Amazon RDS, DynamoDB).
Task 2.2: Implement highly available and resilient environments
- Configure and troubleshoot Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) and Amazon Route 53 health checks.
- Configure fault-tolerant systems (for example, Multi-AZ deployments).
Task 2.3: Implement backup and restore strategies
- Automate snapshots and backups for AWS resources (for example, EC2 instances, RDS DB instances, EBS volumes, S3 buckets, DynamoDB tables) by using AWS services (for example, AWS Backup).
- Use various methods to restore databases (for example, point-in-time restore) to meet recovery time objective (RTO), recovery point objective (RPO), and cost requirements.
- Implement versioning for storage services (for example, Amazon S3, Amazon FSx).
- Follow disaster recovery procedures and best practices (for example, backup and restore, pilot light, warm standby, active/active).
Domain 3: Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation (22%)
Task 3.1: Provision and maintain cloud resources
- Create and manage AMIs and container images (for example, EC2 Image Builder).
- Create and manage AWS resources by using CloudFormation and the AWS CDK.
- Identify and remediate deployment issues (for example, subnet sizing issues, CloudFormation errors, permissions issues).
- Provision and share resources across multiple Regions and accounts (for example, AWS Resource Access Manager [AWS RAM], CloudFormation StackSets).
- Implement deployment strategies and services.
- Use and manage third-party tools to automate resource deployment (for example, Terraform, Git).
Task 3.2: Automate the management of existing resources
- Use AWS services to automate operational processes (for example, Systems Manager).
- Implement event-driven automation by using AWS services and features (for example, Lambda, S3 Event Notifications, EventBridge, AWS DevOps Agent).
Domain 4: Security and Compliance (16%)
Task 4.1: Implement and manage security and compliance tools and policies
- Implement IAM features (for example, password policies, multi-factor authentication [MFA], roles, federated identity, resource policies, policy conditions).
- Troubleshoot and audit access issues by using AWS tools (for example, CloudTrail, IAM Access Analyzer, IAM policy simulator).
- Implement multi-account strategies securely (for example, AWS Organizations, service control policies, IAM Identity Center).
- Implement remediation based on the results of AWS Trusted Advisor security checks.
- Enforce compliance requirements and continuous monitoring (for example, Region and service selections, AWS Config conformance packs).
Task 4.2: Implement strategies to protect data and infrastructure
- Implement and enforce a data classification scheme.
- Implement, configure, and troubleshoot encryption at rest (for example, AWS KMS).
- Implement, configure, and troubleshoot encryption in transit (for example, AWS Certificate Manager [ACM]).
- Securely store secrets by using AWS services.
- Configure reports and remediate findings from AWS services (for example, AWS Security Hub, Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Config, Amazon Inspector, AWS Security Agent).
Domain 5: Networking and Content Delivery (18%)
Task 5.1: Implement and optimize networking features and connectivity
- Configure a VPC (for example, subnets, route tables, network ACLs, security groups, NAT gateways, internet gateway, egress-only internet gateway).
- Configure private networking connectivity (for example, VPC endpoints, AWS PrivateLink, VPC peering).
- Audit AWS network protection services (for example, Route 53 Resolver DNS Firewall, AWS WAF, AWS Shield, AWS Network Firewall) in a single account.
- Optimize the cost of network architectures.
Task 5.2: Configure domains, DNS services, and content delivery
- Configure DNS (for example, Route 53 Resolver).
- Implement Route 53 routing policies, configurations, and query logging.
- Configure content and service distribution (for example, CloudFront, AWS Global Accelerator).
Task 5.3: Troubleshoot network connectivity issues
- Troubleshoot VPC configurations (for example, subnets, route tables, network ACLs, security groups, transit gateways, NAT gateways).
- Collect and interpret networking logs to troubleshoot issues (for example, VPC flow logs, ELB access logs, AWS WAF web ACL logs, CloudFront logs, container logs).
- Identify and remediate CloudFront caching issues.
- Identify and troubleshoot hybrid connectivity issues and private connectivity issues.
- Configure and analyze CloudWatch network monitoring services.
Before You Start
What AWS expects from a SOA-C03 candidate.
AWS describes a target candidate for every exam. Here is how it describes the person who should sit SOA-C03, in its words.
Who AWS wrote this exam for
The target candidate should have 1 year of experience with deployment, management, troubleshooting, networking, and security on AWS. The target candidate also should have at least 1 year of experience in a related operations role such as system administrator.
Knowledge AWS recommends you bring
- Techniques for monitoring, logging, and troubleshooting
- Networking concepts (for example, DNS, TCP, IP, firewalls)
- Implementation of architectural requirements (for example, high availability, performance, capacity)
- Familiarity with at least one scripting language
- Familiarity with at least one major operating system
- Understanding of cloud computing
- Containerization and orchestration basics
- Understanding of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) and Git
- The AWS Well-Architected Framework
- AWS storage and container solutions
- AWS monitoring tools
- How to use the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, infrastructure as code (IaC) solutions, and AWS CloudFormation
- AWS networking and security services
- How to implement AWS security controls and compliance requirements
- Cloud financial management
- Operations within hybrid and multi-VPC environments
- AWS database services (for example, Amazon RDS, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon ElastiCache)
- AWS compute services (for example, Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, Amazon ECS)
What AWS says is out of scope
- Design distributed architectures.
- Design CI/CD pipelines.
- Design hybrid and multi-VPC networking.
- Develop software.
- Define security, compliance, and governance requirements.
- Develop ransomware defense strategies.
- Assess and plan resource capacity.
- Analyze costs and total cost of ownership.
- Manage billing and invoicing for AWS services.
You can skip these in your study plan. AWS says the target candidate is not expected to do them.
Scoring and Format
Inside the SOA-C03 exam.
SOA-C03 has 65 questions in total. 50 of them count toward your score and 15 are unscored questions AWS uses to gather data for future exams. You won't know which ones are unscored, so give every question your full attention.
AWS reports results as a scaled score from 100 to 1,000, and the minimum passing score for SOA-C03 is 720. The exam uses compensatory scoring, which means you pass on your overall score and don't have to pass each domain on its own.
The question types listed in the SOA-C03 exam guide are multiple choice and multiple response. You get 130 minutes, and the exam fee AWS lists is $150.
Plan your study time around the weights. Monitoring, Logging, Analysis, Remediation, and Performance Optimization carries 22% of the exam, more than any other domain.
Career Outcomes
What SOA-C03 does for your career.
CloudOps Engineer Associate maps to cloud operations, site reliability and systems administrator roles. It is the hands-on operator exam in the AWS lineup, so it carries weight with teams that run production workloads every day.
For a sense of pay, BLS puts the May 2025 median annual wage for network and computer systems administrators at $99,130. Treat it as a reference point and not a promise. Location, experience and the employer drive what any one person earns. Source: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook.
Funding and PathPay
Ways to pay for SOA-C03 training.
Accumentum is an Army CA and Air Force COOL Approved Vendor. If you're serving, start with your education center and read our Army CA and Air Force COOL pages for the steps. We'll help you line up the course with your request.
Paying on your own? Our funding page covers every way to pay, and PathPay lists the courses that qualify for monthly plans.
Veterans can also look at VR&E benefits for career training.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about our CloudOps Engineer Associate course.
AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer Associate is a Associate level certification from AWS. Details are on the official page at https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-cloudops-engineer-associate/
Yes. We're an AWS Authorized Training Partner, and our course follows the official AWS exam guide domain by domain.
AWS lists the exam at 150 USD. Exam pricing can change and foreign exchange rates may apply, so check the AWS exam pricing page before you buy.
Yes. AWS offers the exam at Pearson VUE test centers or as an online proctored exam.
AWS certifications are valid for three years. AWS publishes recertification options on its certification pages.
AWS doesn't require another certification first, and we don't have enrollment prerequisites either. AWS recommends about 1 year of experience deploying, managing and operating workloads on AWS.
Live virtual instructor-led classes with hands-on labs and practice questions. Ask us about upcoming class dates.
Yes. We're an Army CA and Air Force COOL Approved Vendor. Email info@accumentum.net and we'll walk you through the options.
Use the registration page linked below, or email info@accumentum.net and we'll follow up with dates and next steps.
50 of the 65 questions are scored. The other 15 are unscored questions AWS uses for research, and they aren't marked.
AWS uses a scaled score from 100 to 1,000. The minimum passing score for SOA-C03 is 720.
Monitoring, Logging, Analysis, Remediation, and Performance Optimization at 22% of the scored content, per the official AWS exam guide.
The target candidate should have 1 year of experience with deployment, management, troubleshooting, networking, and security on AWS. The target candidate also should have at least 1 year of experience in a related operations role such as system administrator.
AWS lists these as out of scope: design distributed architectures., design CI/CD pipelines., design hybrid and multi-VPC networking., develop software..
Enrollment
Enroll in CloudOps Engineer Associate training with Accumentum.
Enroll in our CloudOps Engineer Associate course to get ready for the AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer Associate exam with instructor-led classes and hands-on labs.
For dates and next steps, use the registration page linked below or email info@accumentum.net.
Ready to start on CloudOps Engineer Associate?
Tell us your target date and we'll help you plan the path.