Additional resources
Good places to study alongside our practice questions. These are other people's sites: we don't run them and aren't affiliated with them.
Official exam information
Straight from AWS: what the exam covers and how it works.
AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate (opens in a new tab)
aws.amazon.com
AWS's own page for the certification (formerly SysOps Administrator): who it is for, how to book, the price and format, and links to its preparation material.
SOA-C03 exam guide (opens in a new tab)
docs.aws.amazon.com
The definitive list of what the exam covers: the five domains and their weightings, the skills under each, and which AWS services are in scope. Our domains and topics follow it.
Comparison of SOA-C02 and SOA-C03 (opens in a new tab)
docs.aws.amazon.com
What changed from the old SysOps exam. Useful if you started studying with SOA-C02 material: it shows which skills were added, moved or dropped.
Free courses
Structured courses you can follow from the start, at no cost.
AWS Skill Builder (opens in a new tab)
skillbuilder.aws
AWS's own training site. Search for the CloudOps Engineer – Associate exam prep plan; the standard prep course is free with a Skill Builder account, while labs and the official practice exam may need a subscription.
Reference reading
For going deeper on the ideas behind the questions.
AWS Systems Manager User Guide (opens in a new tab)
docs.aws.amazon.com
Systems Manager runs through every domain of this exam: Automation runbooks, Run Command, Patch Manager, Session Manager and Parameter Store. Knowing what each tool does saves a lot of marks.
Amazon CloudWatch User Guide (opens in a new tab)
docs.aws.amazon.com
Metrics, alarms, composite alarms, dashboards, the CloudWatch agent and Logs Insights. The monitoring domain leans on these heavily.
Disaster Recovery of Workloads on AWS (opens in a new tab)
docs.aws.amazon.com
AWS's whitepaper on backup and restore, pilot light, warm standby and active/active, with how each trades cost against RPO and RTO.