Complete SOA-C02 study guide — monitoring, reliability, storage, compute, networking, and cost on AWS.
This guide works best as a loop: read a chapter, test yourself with practice questions, look up unfamiliar terms in the glossary, then move to the next chapter.
104 chapters covering every exam objective. Each chapter includes key concepts, exam tips, common traps, comparison tables, and a 5-question quiz at the end.
Start Chapter 1Free timed and untimed practice with instant feedback and full explanations. Pick 10–120 questions per session. Filter by domain to drill your weak areas.
Go to practice testEvery SOA-C02term defined and searchable. Use it when a chapter mentions a concept you haven't seen before or want a quick refresher on.
Browse glossaryExam blueprint, domain weights, passing score, duration, cost, and registration links. Start here if you're new to this certification.
View exam guide18 chapters
CloudWatch Metrics and Alarms
Objective 1.1 · Monitoring
CloudTrail and AWS Config
Objective 1.2 · Monitoring
CloudWatch Composite Alarms and Anomaly Detection
Objective 1.1 · Monitoring
CloudWatch Container Insights for ECS and EKS
Objective 1.1 · Monitoring
EventBridge for Automated Remediation
Objective 1.2 · Monitoring
AWS Health Dashboard and EventBridge Integration
Objective 1.2 · Monitoring
CloudTrail Insights for Unusual API Activity
Objective 1.2 · Monitoring
CloudWatch Logs Agent and Unified Agent
Objective 1.1 · Monitoring
CloudWatch Metric Filters from Log Groups
Objective 1.1 · Monitoring
CloudWatch Contributor Insights
Objective 1.1 · Monitoring
CloudWatch Synthetics Canaries
Objective 1.1 · Monitoring
AWS X-Ray for SysOps Monitoring
Objective 1.1 · Monitoring
EC2 Enhanced Monitoring and CloudWatch Agent
Objective 1.1 · Monitoring
Lambda for Automation and Remediation
Objective 1.2 · Monitoring
AWS Service Health Dashboard and Personal Health
Objective 1.2 · Monitoring
AWS Systems Manager Incident Manager
Objective 1.2 · Monitoring
S3 Server Access Logs and Request Monitoring
Objective 1.2 · Monitoring
CloudWatch Log Metric Alarms
Objective 1.1 · Monitoring
14 chapters
Auto Healing and Auto Scaling
Objective 2.1 · Reliability
AWS Backup
Objective 2.2 · Reliability
Auto Scaling Policies: Target Tracking, Step, Simple
Objective 2.1 · Reliability
S3 Replication: CRR and SRR
Objective 2.2 · Reliability
RDS Automated Backups and Snapshots
Objective 2.2 · Reliability
RDS Multi-AZ vs Read Replicas
Objective 2.1 · Reliability
EC2 Status Checks and Auto Recovery
Objective 2.1 · Reliability
EC2 Placement Groups: Cluster, Spread, Partition
Objective 2.1 · Reliability
EC2 Hibernation and Spot Interruption Handling
Objective 2.1 · Reliability
DR Strategies: Backup/Restore, Pilot Light, Warm Standby, Multi-Site
Objective 2.2 · Reliability
AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS)
Objective 2.2 · Reliability
Aurora Clusters and Failover for SysOps
Objective 2.2 · Reliability
S3 Multi-Region Access Points
Objective 2.2 · Reliability
AWS Backup Plans and Policies
Objective 2.2 · Reliability
24 chapters
CloudFormation for SysOps
Objective 3.1 · Deployment
AWS Systems Manager
Objective 3.2 · Deployment
AMI Management and Lifecycle
Objective 3.3 · Deployment
SSM Patch Manager
Objective 3.2 · Deployment
S3 Lifecycle Policies and Storage Classes
Objective 3.3 · Deployment
Golden AMI Strategy and Image Builder
Objective 3.3 · Deployment
SSM Inventory and Managed Instance Management
Objective 3.2 · Deployment
SSM Run Command for Bulk Operations
Objective 3.2 · Deployment
SSM Automation Runbooks
Objective 3.2 · Deployment
SSM Parameter Store for Configuration
Objective 3.2 · Deployment
EFS Performance Modes and Throughput
Objective 3.3 · Deployment
FSx for Windows File Server
Objective 3.3 · Deployment
FSx for Lustre for HPC Workloads
Objective 3.3 · Deployment
S3 Intelligent-Tiering Storage Class
Objective 3.3 · Deployment
AWS Control Tower for Landing Zones
Objective 3.1 · Deployment
CloudFormation Drift Detection
Objective 3.1 · Deployment
AWS CDK for Infrastructure as Code
Objective 3.1 · Deployment
AWS Managed Services (AMS)
Objective 3.2 · Deployment
AWS Proton for Platform Engineering
Objective 3.1 · Deployment
Elastic Beanstalk Management and Updates
Objective 3.1 · Deployment
AWS OpsWorks for Chef and Puppet
Objective 3.2 · Deployment
SSM Change Manager and Change Calendar
Objective 3.2 · Deployment
AWS Resource Groups and Tag Editor
Objective 3.2 · Deployment
Elastic Beanstalk Worker Environments
Objective 3.1 · Deployment
20 chapters
IAM for SysOps
Objective 4.1 · Security
AWS Inspector and GuardDuty
Objective 4.2 · Security
SSM Session Manager for Secure Access
Objective 4.1 · Security
AWS Security Hub and Findings
Objective 4.2 · Security
AWS Organizations and Service Control Policies
Objective 4.1 · Security
AWS Config Rules and Conformance Packs
Objective 4.2 · Security
AWS Config Aggregator for Multi-Account
Objective 4.2 · Security
AWS Config Auto-Remediation Actions
Objective 4.2 · Security
CloudTrail Log File Validation
Objective 4.1 · Security
EC2 Instance Connect and Session Manager
Objective 4.1 · Security
AWS IAM Identity Center (SSO)
Objective 4.1 · Security
AWS Audit Manager
Objective 4.2 · Security
Amazon Security Lake
Objective 4.2 · Security
AWS WAF and Shield for SysOps
Objective 4.2 · Security
Multi-Account Architecture with AWS Organizations
Objective 4.1 · Security
Tag Policies in AWS Organizations
Objective 4.1 · Security
Amazon Detective for Investigation
Objective 4.2 · Security
AWS Resource Access Manager (RAM)
Objective 4.1 · Security
AWS Firewall Manager
Objective 4.2 · Security
Amazon Macie for Data Security
Objective 4.2 · Security
17 chapters
ELB and Route 53 for SysOps
Objective 5.2 · Networking
VPC for SysOps
Objective 5.1 · Networking
ELB Types: ALB, NLB, and Gateway Load Balancer
Objective 5.2 · Networking
Route 53 Routing Policies
Objective 5.2 · Networking
Route 53 Health Checks and DNS Failover
Objective 5.2 · Networking
CloudFront Distributions for SysOps
Objective 5.1 · Networking
AWS Global Accelerator
Objective 5.1 · Networking
VPC Flow Logs Analysis
Objective 5.1 · Networking
VPC Reachability Analyzer
Objective 5.1 · Networking
VPC Network Access Analyzer
Objective 5.1 · Networking
Transit Gateway for Network Architecture
Objective 5.1 · Networking
AWS Direct Connect for SysOps
Objective 5.1 · Networking
CloudFront Origin Access Control (OAC)
Objective 5.1 · Networking
Network ACLs vs Security Groups Deep Dive
Objective 5.1 · Networking
Route 53 Private Hosted Zones
Objective 5.2 · Networking
AWS Network Firewall
Objective 5.1 · Networking
Route 53 Resolver for Hybrid DNS
Objective 5.2 · Networking
11 chapters
Cost Allocation and Tagging
Objective 6.1 · Cost
Trusted Advisor and Cost Explorer
Objective 6.2 · Cost
AWS Budgets and Cost Anomaly Detection
Objective 6.1 · Cost
Reserved Instances vs Savings Plans
Objective 6.2 · Cost
AWS License Manager
Objective 6.1 · Cost
AWS Cost Categories and Cost Allocation
Objective 6.1 · Cost
Cost Explorer Rightsizing Recommendations
Objective 6.2 · Cost
AWS Compute Optimizer
Objective 6.2 · Cost
Spot Instances and Interruption Management
Objective 6.2 · Cost
AWS Cost Anomaly Detection
Objective 6.1 · Cost
RDS Performance Insights
Objective 6.2 · Cost
Free SOA-C02 practice questions with full explanations. Test what you learn chapter by chapter.
SOA-C02 Practice Questions