AWS Certified CloudOps Administrator Associate Exam Guide (2026)

AWS Certified CloudOps Administrator - Associate (SOA-C02) - Complete Exam Guide

Introduction: Why Become an AWS CloudOps Administrator?

The AWS Certified CloudOps Administrator - Associate certification validates your expertise in deploying, managing, and operating scalable, highly available, and fault-tolerant systems on AWS.

Unlike the Solutions Architect role which focuses on design, the CloudOps Administrator role emphasizes operational excellence- keeping systems running smoothly, monitoring performance, automating tasks, and troubleshooting issues.

CloudOps Administrators are the operational backbone of AWS environments. They ensure systems are monitored, secured, backed up, and running efficiently. This certification proves you can handle the day-to-day operational responsibilities that keep businesses running on AWS. As companies increase their cloud adoption, skilled CloudOps professionals who can maintain and optimize AWS infrastructure are in high demand.

_____

Exam Overview: What You're Getting Into

Exam Details at a Glance

• Exam Code: SOA-C02
• Duration: 130 minutes (plus 30 minutes for exam lab)
• Number of Questions: 65 questions (including practical lab scenarios)
• Question Format: Multiple choice, multiple response, and hands-on exam labs
• Passing Score: 720 out of 1000 (approximately 72%)
• Cost: $150 USD
• Validity: 3 years
• Delivery Method: Pearson VUE testing centers or online proctored exam
• Prerequisites: None (but AWS Cloud Practitioner recommended)
• Experience Level: Associate (requires 1+ years of hands-on AWS operations experience)

_____

What Makes This Exam Unique

The CloudOps Administrator exam is unique because it includes hands-on exam labs. During the exam, you'll be asked to perform actual tasks in the AWS Management Console or AWS CLI, such as creating resources, troubleshooting issues, or configuring services. This tests your practical ability to work with AWS, not just theoretical knowledge.

Scenario-based questions will test your operational decision-making: choosing the right monitoring strategy, implementing automated remediation, optimizing costs, or troubleshooting performance issues. Questions often involve analyzing metrics, logs, or system behaviors to identify problems and implement solutions.

_____

Exam Domains: Breaking Down What's Tested

The SOA-C02 exam is divided into six domains, each weighted differently. Understanding these weightings helps you allocate your study time effectively.

Domain 1: Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation (20% of exam)

What This Domain Covers:

This is the largest domain and focuses on implementing monitoring solutions, analyzing logs, and creating automated remediation strategies. Monitoring is the foundation of good operations.

Key Topics You'll Encounter:

• Amazon CloudWatch: Metrics, custom metrics, alarms, dashboards, logs, log insights, anomaly detection
• AWS CloudTrail: API logging, event history, trails, multi-region trails, log file integrity
• AWS Systems Manager: Session Manager, Run Command, Patch Manager, State Manager, Automation documents
• Automated Remediation: CloudWatch alarms triggering Lambda, EventBridge rules, Systems Manager automation
• Log Analysis: CloudWatch Log Insights queries, filter patterns, metric filters
• Health Checks: Route 53 health checks, ALB/NLB health checks, monitoring application health
• AWS Config: Configuration history, compliance monitoring, remediation actions
• AWS Trusted Advisor: Best practice checks, performance improvements, cost optimization recommendations

What Success Looks Like:

You should be able to set up comprehensive monitoring for AWS resources, create meaningful alarms, analyze logs to troubleshoot issues, and implement automated responses to common operational problems.

Exam Question Style:

"An application's CPU utilization frequently spikes above 80% for short periods but then returns to normal. The CloudOps team wants to be notified only when this happens three times within 15 minutes. How should the CloudWatch alarm be configured?"

__

Domain 2: Reliability and Business Continuity (16% of exam)

What This Domain Covers:

This domain tests your ability to implement high availability strategies, disaster recovery plans, and backup solutions to ensure business continuity.

Key Topics You'll Encounter:

• High Availability Design: Multi-AZ deployments, Auto Scaling, load balancing, failover strategies
• Backup Strategies: AWS Backup, EBS snapshots, RDS automated backups, S3 replication
• Disaster Recovery: Backup and restore, pilot light, warm standby, multi-site active-active, RTO/RPO requirements
• Data Replication: Cross-region replication, RDS read replicas, DynamoDB global tables
• Fault Tolerance: Understanding failure scenarios, implementing redundancy
• Auto Scaling: Dynamic scaling, scheduled scaling, target tracking, step scaling policies
• Elastic Load Balancing: Health checks, target groups, connection draining, cross-zone load balancing

What Success Looks Like:

You should be able to design backup strategies that meet RTO/RPO requirements, implement high availability solutions across Availability Zones, and create disaster recovery plans for different scenarios.

Exam Question Style:

"A company requires a DR solution with an RTO of 1 hour and RPO of 15 minutes for their database. Which disaster recovery strategy meets these requirements at the lowest cost?"

__

Domain 3: Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation (18% of exam)

What This Domain Covers:

This domain focuses on automating infrastructure deployment, implementing CI/CD pipelines, and using Infrastructure as Code to manage resources.

Key Topics You'll Encounter:

• AWS CloudFormation: Template creation, stacks, stack sets, change sets, drift detection, nested stacks
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk: Application deployment, environment management, configuration files
• AWS Systems Manager: Automation documents, State Manager, Maintenance Windows
• CI/CD Pipelines: CodePipeline, CodeDeploy, CodeBuild, deployment strategies
• AMI Management: Creating AMIs, sharing AMIs, AMI lifecycle
• Resource Provisioning: Launch templates, launch configurations, user data scripts
• Configuration Management: Systems Manager Parameter Store, managing configurations

What Success Looks Like:

You should be able to create CloudFormation templates, automate deployments using Systems Manager, implement blue/green deployments, and manage infrastructure as code effectively.

Exam Question Style:

"A CloudOps administrator needs to update the application on 50 EC2 instances without downtime. The application must be gradually rolled out, with the ability to roll back if issues occur. What is the most operationally efficient solution?"

__

Domain 4: Security and Compliance (16% of exam)

What This Domain Covers:

This domain tests your ability to implement security best practices, manage access controls, ensure compliance, and monitor for security issues.

Key Topics You'll Encounter:

• IAM Best Practices: Least privilege, MFA, password policies, credential rotation, service roles
• Data Encryption: S3 encryption, EBS encryption, RDS encryption, encryption at rest and in transit
• Network Security: Security groups, NACLs, VPC Flow Logs, private subnets, VPC endpoints
• AWS Secrets Manager: Secret storage, automatic rotation, integration with services
• Compliance Monitoring: AWS Config rules, compliance frameworks, automated compliance checks
• Security Monitoring: GuardDuty threat detection, Security Hub, CloudTrail analysis
• Patch Management: Systems Manager Patch Manager, patch baselines, maintenance windows
• Certificate Management: ACM, certificate renewal, SSL/TLS configuration

What Success Looks Like:

You should be able to implement least privilege access, encrypt sensitive data, monitor for security threats, ensure compliance with organizational policies, and automate security controls.

Exam Question Style:

"A company must ensure all EBS volumes are encrypted at rest. Existing unencrypted volumes must be identified and remediated. What combination of services should be used?"

__

Domain 5: Networking and Content Delivery (18% of exam)

What This Domain Covers:

This domain focuses on VPC design, DNS management, content delivery, and network troubleshooting.

Key Topics You'll Encounter:

• VPC Configuration: Subnets, route tables, internet gateways, NAT gateways, VPC endpoints
• VPC Connectivity: VPC peering, Transit Gateway, VPN connections, Direct Connect
• Amazon Route 53: DNS management, routing policies, health checks, DNS failover
• Amazon CloudFront: CDN configuration, distributions, origins, cache behaviors, signed URLs
• Network Troubleshooting: VPC Flow Logs analysis, connectivity issues, security group misconfigurations
• Load Balancing: ALB, NLB, GWLB, target groups, health checks, sticky sessions
• Hybrid Networking: Site-to-Site VPN, Direct Connect, hybrid DNS resolution

What Success Looks Like:

You should be able to configure VPCs properly, troubleshoot network connectivity issues, optimize content delivery with CloudFront, and implement hybrid cloud networking solutions.

Exam Question Style:

"An EC2 instance in a private subnet cannot reach the internet through the NAT gateway. VPC Flow Logs show traffic reaching the NAT gateway but not returning. What is the most likely cause?"

__

Domain 6: Cost and Performance Optimization (12% of exam)

What This Domain Covers:

This domain tests your ability to optimize AWS costs, right-size resources, implement efficient architectures, and monitor spending.

Key Topics You'll Encounter:

• Cost Optimization: Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, Spot Instances, S3 storage class transitions
• Right-Sizing: Using Compute Optimizer, analyzing CloudWatch metrics, downsizing overprovisioned resources
• Cost Monitoring: Cost Explorer, Cost and Usage Reports, Budgets, cost allocation tags
• Performance Optimization: Caching strategies, database optimization, EBS volume types
• Resource Tagging: Tag strategies, cost allocation, resource organization
• Auto Scaling Optimization: Scaling policies, cooldown periods, instance warm-up times
• Storage Optimization: S3 lifecycle policies, EBS snapshot cleanup, Intelligent-Tiering

What Success Looks Like:

You should be able to identify cost optimization opportunities, implement tagging strategies, right-size resources based on utilization, and monitor costs effectively.

Exam Question Style:

"A company's monthly AWS bill has increased significantly. After analyzing Cost Explorer, you find most costs are from data transfer out to the internet. What is the most cost-effective solution to reduce these costs?"

_____

The Must-Know Services: Your Priority List

CloudOps Administrators need operational knowledge of core services.

Critical Services (Master These)

Monitoring & Logging:

• Amazon CloudWatch: Metrics, logs, alarms, dashboards, log insights, anomaly detection, composite alarms
• AWS CloudTrail: API logging, event history, multi-region trails, log file validation
• AWS Config: Resource inventory, compliance monitoring, configuration history, remediation
• VPC Flow Logs: Network traffic monitoring, troubleshooting connectivity issues

Systems Management:

• AWS Systems Manager: Session Manager, Run Command, Patch Manager, State Manager, Automation, Parameter Store, Maintenance Windows, Inventory
• AWS Systems Manager Distributor: Package distribution and installation
• AWS Systems Manager Documents: SSM Documents, automation runbooks

Compute & Scaling:

• Amazon EC2: Instance types, Auto Scaling, launch templates, user data, instance metadata
• Auto Scaling: Dynamic scaling, scheduled scaling, target tracking, step scaling, lifecycle hooks
• Elastic Load Balancing: ALB, NLB, health checks, target groups, sticky sessions, connection draining

Storage & Backup:

• Amazon S3: Lifecycle policies, versioning, replication, storage classes, encryption
• Amazon EBS: Volume types, snapshots, encryption, snapshot lifecycle
• AWS Backup: Centralized backup, backup plans, vault policies

Networking:

• Amazon VPC: Subnets, route tables, security groups, NACLs, VPC endpoints, NAT gateways
• Amazon Route 53: Hosted zones, routing policies, health checks, DNS failover
• Amazon CloudFront: Distributions, origins, cache behaviors, invalidations

Deployment & Automation:

• AWS CloudFormation: Templates, stacks, change sets, drift detection, stack sets
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk: Environment management, deployment strategies
• AWS CodeDeploy: Deployment groups, deployment configurations, rollback

Security:

• AWS IAM: Roles, policies, MFA, credential rotation, service-linked roles
• AWS KMS: Key management, encryption, key policies
• AWS Secrets Manager: Secret storage, rotation, integration

Cost Management:

• AWS Cost Explorer: Cost analysis, forecasting, filtering
• AWS Budgets: Budget creation, alerts, cost tracking
• AWS Compute Optimizer: Right-sizing recommendations

Important Services (Know These Well)

• Database services (RDS, DynamoDB) operational aspects
• Container services (ECS, ECR) for deployment
• Lambda for automation and event-driven architecture
• SNS and SQS for notifications and decoupling
• AWS Organizations for multi-account management
• AWS Service Catalog for standardized deployments

High-Frequency Exam Topics

These concepts appear repeatedly:

1. CloudWatch Alarms and Metrics - Creating effective alarms, using statistics, composite alarms
2. Auto Scaling Policies - Target tracking vs. step scaling vs. scheduled scaling
3. Systems Manager Automation - Automating operational tasks, remediation workflows
4. Backup and Recovery - RTO/RPO, backup strategies, cross-region replication
5. IAM Roles for Services - EC2 instance roles, Lambda execution roles, service-linked roles
6. VPC Troubleshooting - Route tables, security groups, NACLs, connectivity issues
7. Cost Optimization - Reserved Instances, right-sizing, tagging strategies
8. CloudFormation - Template creation, updating stacks, drift detection
9. Patch Management - Patch baselines, maintenance windows, compliance
10. Log Analysis - CloudWatch Log Insights queries, identifying patterns

______

Study Strategy: Your Path to Success

Phase 1: Monitoring and Logging Mastery (2-3 Weeks)

Start with CloudWatch and CloudTrail—these are fundamental to operations.

Focus Areas:

• Create custom CloudWatch dashboards
• Write CloudWatch Log Insights queries
• Set up alarms with proper statistics and thresholds
• Analyze CloudTrail logs for API activity

Phase 2: Systems Manager Deep-Dive (2 Weeks)

Systems Manager is critical for operational automation.

Focus Areas:

• Practice using Session Manager, Run Command
• Create automation documents
• Set up patch management workflows
• Use Parameter Store for configuration management

Phase 3: High Availability and Backup (2 Weeks)

Learn to implement reliable, fault-tolerant systems.

Focus Areas:

• Configure Multi-AZ deployments
• Create backup plans with AWS Backup
• Implement Auto Scaling policies
• Design disaster recovery strategies

Phase 4: Networking and Troubleshooting (2-3 Weeks)

Network configuration and troubleshooting are heavily tested.

Focus Areas:

• Design VPCs with proper subnets and routing
• Troubleshoot connectivity issues using VPC Flow Logs
• Configure Route 53 routing policies
• Implement CloudFront distributions

Phase 5: Deployment Automation (1-2 Weeks)

Master Infrastructure as Code and deployment strategies.

Focus Areas:

• Write CloudFormation templates
• Deploy applications with Elastic Beanstalk
• Implement CI/CD with CodeDeploy
• Use Systems Manager for automated deployments

Phase 6: Cost and Performance Optimization (1-2 Weeks)

Learn to optimize costs and improve performance.

Focus Areas:

• Analyze costs with Cost Explorer
• Implement resource tagging strategies
• Right-size instances using Compute Optimizer
• Optimize storage with lifecycle policies

Phase 7: Hands-On Practice Labs (2-3 Weeks)

The exam includes practical labs—you must practice in the console.

Practice Tasks:

• Create and configure Auto Scaling groups
• Set up CloudWatch alarms and dashboards
• Deploy applications with CloudFormation
• Troubleshoot VPC connectivity
• Implement backup and recovery solutions
• Configure Systems Manager automations

Phase 8: Practice Exams and Refinement (2 Weeks)

Use practice exams to identify weak areas.

Strategy:

• Take Practice Set 1 under exam conditions
• Analyze weak domains
• Do hands-on labs for weak areas
• Take Practice Set 2 and measure improvement
• Repeat until consistently scoring 85%+

_____

Exam Day Strategy: Maximizing Your Performance

Before the Exam

• Practice hands-on tasks in the AWS Console the day before
• Review common CloudWatch metrics and statistics
• Review Systems Manager capabilities
• Get adequate rest—troubleshooting requires clear thinking

During the Exam

• Multiple Choice First: Complete all multiple choice/response questions first
• Flag Difficult Questions: Don't get stuck—move on and return later
• Labs Last: Save hands-on lab scenarios for the end when you have dedicated time
• Read Requirements Carefully: Labs have specific requirements—make sure you meet all of them
• Test Your Solutions: In labs, verify your configuration works before submitting
• Time Management: Reserve at least 30 minutes for lab scenarios

Hands-On Lab Tips

• Read all requirements before starting
• Work systematically through each requirement
• Use the AWS Console search to find services quickly
• Verify configurations (health checks, connectivity, etc.)
• Don't overthink—straightforward solutions usually work
• If stuck, move to the next requirement and come back

Common Traps to Avoid

• Alarm Statistics: Using the wrong statistic (Average vs. Maximum vs. Sum)
• Scaling Policies: Confusing target tracking with step scaling
• Security Groups vs. NACLs: Understanding stateful vs. stateless rules
• Route Table Confusion: Missing routes or incorrect route priorities
• IAM Roles: Using access keys instead of roles for EC2/Lambda

_____

Resources for Success

Official AWS Resources

• AWS Free Tier: Practice operational tasks hands-on
• AWS Skill Builder: CloudOps-specific training courses
• AWS Documentation: Especially CloudWatch, Systems Manager, and CloudFormation
• AWS Workshops: Hands-on operational labs (workshops.aws)
• AWS Well-Architected Framework: Operational Excellence Pillar

CloudFluently Course Package Includes

• Comprehensive Study Notes: Operations-focused explanations with practical examples
• 195 Practice Questions: Three full-length exams with detailed explanations
• Hands-On Projects: Operational scenarios to practice console tasks
• Quick Reference Cheatsheets: CloudWatch metrics, Systems Manager commands, troubleshooting guides
• Flashcards: Active recall for key operational concepts

______

After You Pass: What's Next?

Career Advancement

• Update Credentials: Add certification to LinkedIn and resume
• Build Operational Portfolio: Document automation scripts and operational improvements
• Pursue Advanced Certifications: CloudOps Professional (when available), DevOps Engineer, Security Specialty
• Join Communities: AWS User Groups, r/aws, AWS re:Post

Continued Learning

• Master Automation: Learn Terraform, Ansible, Python for AWS automation
• Deep Dive: Advanced CloudWatch, X-Ray, advanced Systems Manager features
• Learn DevOps: CI/CD, GitOps, infrastructure as code best practices
• Stay Current: AWS releases new operational features regularly—follow AWS blogs

_____

Final Thoughts: You're Ready for This

The AWS CloudOps Administrator - Associate certification validates your operational expertise on AWS. This exam tests both theoretical knowledge and practical skills through hands-on labs. If you've spent time managing AWS resources, monitoring systems, and troubleshooting issues, you're well-prepared.

Remember: CloudOps is about keeping things running smoothly. Think operationally- how do you monitor this? How do you automate this? How do you recover from failures? Every question is an operational scenario.

The combination of study notes, practice exams, and hands-on projects in this package gives you everything you need to pass with confidence. Practice in the console, automate operational tasks, and learn from troubleshooting.

Good luck, future AWS Certified CloudOps Administrator! ⚙️☁️