Amazon Web Services · 2026 Edition
A complete preparation guide written by Amazon Web Services-certified engineers. Covers the exam format,all 6 blueprint domains, a week-by-week study plan, and proven tips for passing first time.
3–4 months
Prep time
Intermediate
Difficulty
65
Exam questions
720/1000
Pass mark
Exam code
SOA-C02
Full name
AWS SysOps Administrator Associate
Vendor
Amazon Web Services
Duration
180 minutes
Questions
65 items
Passing score
720/1000 (scaled)
Domains covered
6 blueprint domains
Recommended experience
AWS Cloud Practitioner or equivalent AWS exposure; 1+ year of AWS administration experience
Typical prep time
3–4 months
SOA-C02 earns the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate designation. It is the operations-focused AWS associate credential, validating the skills to deploy, manage, and operate scalable, highly available, and fault-tolerant systems on AWS.
Job roles this opens
Domain percentage weights are not currently available for this exam. The checklist below is still useful for planning your study.
Weeks 1–3
Monitoring, Logging and Remediation: CloudWatch, CloudTrail, AWS Config, EventBridge
Tip: CloudWatch Metrics vs CloudWatch Logs vs CloudTrail: Metrics are numerical data points (CPU utilisation, request count), Logs are text streams from services and applications, CloudTrail records API calls for auditing. Questions describe what you are trying to capture and ask which service provides it.
Weeks 4–5
Reliability, Continuity and Recovery: Route 53, RDS Multi-AZ, S3 versioning, AWS Backup
Tip: RDS Multi-AZ vs Read Replicas: Multi-AZ is for high availability (synchronous replication, automatic failover), Read Replicas are for read scaling (asynchronous replication, no automatic failover). Questions almost always use HA vs performance as the distinguishing criterion.
Weeks 6–8
Deployment, Provisioning and Automation: CloudFormation, AWS Systems Manager, Elastic Beanstalk
Tip: AWS Systems Manager is one of the most tested services on SOA-C02. Know the key capabilities: Session Manager (browser-based shell, no SSH required), Patch Manager (automated OS patching), Parameter Store (secure config/secret storage), Run Command (execute scripts across a fleet).
Weeks 9–12
Security, Compliance, Networking, and Cost Optimisation
Tip: AWS Config Rules are tested in remediation scenarios. Know the difference between AWS Config Rules (detect non-compliant resources) and AWS Config Conformance Packs (bundled rules for a compliance standard like PCI DSS or HIPAA). Remediation actions use SSM Automation documents.
SOA-C02 includes an exam lab — you complete real AWS tasks in a live AWS environment. Practice using the AWS Console and AWS CLI to perform operations tasks (creating CloudWatch alarms, setting up S3 lifecycle policies, patching instances with Systems Manager).
EC2 status checks: System status checks cover the underlying host (AWS infrastructure); instance status checks cover the OS and networking inside the instance. Know how to automate recovery from each type of failure using CloudWatch alarms with EC2 Auto Recovery.
S3 storage classes tested on SOA-C02: Standard, Intelligent-Tiering, Standard-IA, One Zone-IA, S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, Glacier Flexible Retrieval, Glacier Deep Archive. Know the retrieval time and minimum storage duration for each — exam questions give a use case and ask which class is most cost-effective.
AWS Cost Explorer vs AWS Budgets vs AWS Cost and Usage Report: Cost Explorer (visualise and analyse historical costs), Budgets (alert when spending exceeds a threshold), Cost and Usage Report (detailed granular billing data for custom analysis). Know which tool answers which business question.
High availability architecture on SOA-C02: know the difference between active-passive failover (one environment is idle until failover) and active-active failover (both environments serve traffic simultaneously). Route 53 routing policies — Failover, Latency, Weighted, Geolocation — implement each HA pattern.
Apply everything in this guide with adaptive practice questions, detailed answer explanations, and domain analytics.
Deep-dive explanations of the key topics tested on SOA-C02 — with exam key points and common misconceptions.