The current successor to AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate is AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate (SOA-C03). Prepare against the SOA-C03 guide, practice its operations tasks, and use the worked CloudWatch example below to check your reasoning. Existing SysOps holders keep their original credential and validity period.
What happened to the SysOps exam?
SOA-C02 retired on September 29, 2025. Its successor, AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate (SOA-C03), became available on September 30, 2025.
The name change is not retroactive. If you earned AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate, your badge keeps that name and the credential remains valid for three years from the date you earned it. AWS does not require you to take CloudOps just because the name changed.
New candidates should use SOA-C03 study materials. The updated exam includes containers and increased coverage of multi-account and multi-Region operations, automation, and infrastructure as code. Compare older SysOps material with the current tasks before relying on it.
Sources: AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate (AWS certification page) — Exam overview and FAQ sections; AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate: Exam Guide (SOA-C03) — AWS official exam guide PDF, version 1.1; Register now: Exam update and new name for cloud operations certification — AWS Training and Certification Blog
What background is recommended?
The target candidate has about one year of AWS operations experience and at least one year in a related operations role, such as system administration.
The guide recommends familiarity with monitoring, troubleshooting, networking, a scripting language, an operating system, containers, and CI/CD. On AWS, it includes the Management Console, command-line interface (CLI), infrastructure as code, and the services used to operate workloads.
These are preparation recommendations. AWS does not require a training course or prerequisite certification. For candidates without IT work experience, AWS suggests Cloud Practitioner as a way to build foundational knowledge.
Sources: AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate (AWS certification page) — Exam overview and FAQ sections; AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate: Exam Guide (SOA-C03) — AWS official exam guide PDF, version 1.1; AWS Certification FAQs — Schedule your exam; Exam scoring and content; About AWS Certification
What to expect on the exam
You have 130 minutes for 65 multiple-choice or multiple-response questions. Fifty questions are scored, and 15 unscored questions are not identified.
Multiple-choice questions have one correct answer among four options. Multiple-response questions have two or more correct answers among five or more options. Follow each question’s selection instructions. Unanswered questions count as incorrect, and there is no penalty for guessing.
The minimum passing score is 720 on a scale of 100–1,000. It is a scaled score, not a statement that you need 72% correct. You pass on the overall result; there is no separate passing requirement for each domain.
Most AWS exams do not show a pass or fail result immediately on screen. Detailed results appear in your AWS Certification Account within five business days.
Sources: AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate (AWS certification page) — Exam overview and FAQ sections; AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate: Exam Guide (SOA-C03) — AWS official exam guide PDF, version 1.1; AWS Certification FAQs — Schedule your exam; Exam scoring and content; About AWS Certification
What to study in each of the five domains
Use the domain tasks to plan your preparation, then allocate extra practice to your gaps. Domain percentages describe scored content, rather than a fixed study-time allocation.
SOA-C03 focuses on deploying, managing, and operating workloads. The guide excludes specific tasks such as designing distributed architectures and CI/CD pipelines, but still includes operating related services. Follow the detailed role boundaries rather than ruling out a whole technology.
The table pairs the official domains with suggested study activities. Read the complete tasks and supporting skills in the exam guide, whose content and service lists are not exhaustive.
| Domain | Weight | Topics and suggested practice |
|---|---|---|
| Monitoring, Logging, Analysis, Remediation, and Performance Optimization | 22% | Metrics, alarms, logs, remediation, and performance. Interpret a sample alarm configuration and explain which observed values meet its threshold. |
| Reliability and Business Continuity | 22% | Scaling, resilient environments, backups, and restores. Practice documenting a restore exercise and comparing its result with the stated recovery requirements. |
| Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation | 22% | Provisioning and maintaining resources and automating management. Read an infrastructure-as-code template and investigate a sample deployment error. |
| Security and Compliance | 16% | Security tools, policies, and protection of data and infrastructure. Review a sample access issue and identify the information needed to investigate it. |
| Networking and Content Delivery | 18% | Connectivity, DNS, content delivery, and network troubleshooting. Review a network diagram alongside sample logs and list the next checks you would make. |
Sources: AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate: Exam Guide (SOA-C03) — AWS official exam guide PDF, version 1.1; AWS Certification FAQs — Schedule your exam; Exam scoring and content; About AWS Certification
Practice: evaluate a CloudWatch alarm
For an M-out-of-N alarm, N is the number of evaluated periods and M is how many must breach the threshold. Apply that rule to the complete data in this exercise.
EvaluationPeriods supplies N; DatapointsToAlarm supplies M. The exercise uses a single metric, a one-minute period, the Average statistic for each period, and a threshold strictly greater than 80%. All five evaluated periods have data.
Evaluate the five individual period values. This example does not ask you to choose a missing-data policy or determine whether a notification was delivered.
Practice exercise
A CloudWatch metric alarm uses Average CPU utilization for each one-minute period and a threshold strictly greater than 80%. EvaluationPeriods is 5 and DatapointsToAlarm is 3. The five evaluated completed periods all have data: 70%, 85%, 82%, 60%, and 88%. Does this evaluation meet the ALARM condition? Which values count? What would change if DatapointsToAlarm were 5 instead?
Show answer
Yes. The three breaching values are 85%, 82%, and 88%, so the 3-out-of-5 condition is met. With DatapointsToAlarm set to 5, these values would not meet the ALARM condition.
Compare each period’s value with 80%: 70 and 60 do not breach; 85, 82, and 88 do. The configured rule needs three breaches among five periods, so the intervening 60% value does not prevent the condition being met. If M were 5, all five periods would need to breach. The Average statistic here applies within each one-minute period; averaging these five displayed period values together would answer a different question. The exercise establishes the threshold condition, not whether any configured action ran.
Sources: Using Amazon CloudWatch alarms — Amazon CloudWatch User Guide; PutMetricAlarm — Amazon CloudWatch API Reference
Your SOA-C03 preparation checklist
Use this suggested sequence to connect reading with practical operations work.
AWS’s four-step preparation path includes exam-style questions, learning to address gaps, practice, and a readiness assessment. Choose exercises that address the tasks you have not yet practiced or cannot explain clearly.
- Confirm SOA-C03 on your booking and review the full current exam guide.
- Map any older SysOps course notes to the five current domains; add practice for missing tasks.
- Use the official practice question set to learn the format and identify gaps.
- Choose relevant labs or operations exercises. Record the goal, configuration, observed result, and explanation, including what you would troubleshoot next.
- Revisit the CloudWatch example and explain the difference between M and N using the five supplied values.
- Use a practice exam to identify remaining weaknesses, and review the testing instructions and appointment-change deadline.
Sources: AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate (AWS certification page) — Exam overview and FAQ sections; AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate: Exam Guide (SOA-C03) — AWS official exam guide PDF, version 1.1; Using Amazon CloudWatch alarms — Amazon CloudWatch User Guide; PutMetricAlarm — Amazon CloudWatch API Reference; AWS Certification FAQs — Schedule your exam; Exam scoring and content; About AWS Certification
Booking, fees, and exam languages
The listed fee is USD 150, with applicable taxes and local-currency pricing. Pearson VUE offers test-center and online-proctored appointments.
AWS lists English, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese for SOA-C03. The Korean and Simplified Chinese exams will retire after November 19, 2026. That announcement applies to those two languages; it does not retire the English or Japanese exam.
The standard policy permits cancellation or rescheduling up to 24 hours before your appointment. Check the full policy for your circumstances. After a failed attempt, wait 14 calendar days before retaking; AWS states that each attempt requires the full registration fee and that there is no limit on attempts.
Sources: AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate (AWS certification page) — Exam overview and FAQ sections; AWS Certification FAQs — Schedule your exam; Exam scoring and content; About AWS Certification
Keeping your credential current
CloudOps Engineer - Associate is valid for three years.
AWS lists recertification through the latest version of this Associate exam or AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional. If you still hold the earlier SysOps credential, check the recertification route for your existing credential rather than assuming its badge has been renamed.
Sources: AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate (AWS certification page) — Exam overview and FAQ sections; Register now: Exam update and new name for cloud operations certification — AWS Training and Certification Blog
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