The AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate (SOA-C02) exam had been the go-to certification for cloud operations and support folks for several years. However, as cloud roles continue to evolve, AWS recently announced plans to retire it and introduce a brand-new certification. Let’s look at what’s new with AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate (SOA-C03) and what to expect in the exam.
What’s new in the SOA-C03 exam?
The most important thing to note is that the exam is still intended for the same audience, and at least one year of experience in cloud operations roles is recommended.
Great news is that it still includes 65 multiple-choice and multiple-response questions, 15 of which are unscored, so you are only scored on 50 of the questions. Passing score is still 720 out of a possible 1000.
On the whole, the exam domains and topics have not changed very much. My interpretation is that nothing has really been removed from the exam, and just a few extra things have been added. The exam guide now explicitly calls out skills like containerization, orchestration, and a general understanding of CI/CD practices.
Exam Domains Compared
At first glance, the exam domains seem extremely similar. The Cost and Performance Optimization domain from SOA-S02 has been removed, however the content of that domain seems to have been distributed across the remaining domains. When reviewing the exam guide, I noticed that nothing has been removed.
Key shifts to pay attention to
The most significant shift in the new SOA-C03 exam is the increased emphasis on modern cloud operations practices, with a greater focus on the following:
Automation and IaC (infrastructure as code)
You should know how to manage stacks of resources using CloudFormation and the AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK).
Hands-on knowledge of containers and orchestration
Be familiar with the basics of running and orchestrating workloads on Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). You should also understand how to collect metrics and logs from these services using the Amazon CloudWatch Agent.
Multi-account and multi-region design skills
You'll need an understanding of operating in complex environments, including building CloudWatch dashboards to handle metrics and alarms across multiple accounts and AWS Regions, provisioning and sharing resources across accounts and regions, and securely implementing multiple accounts.
Cost optimization and cloud financial management
The ability to optimize for cost when configuring core AWS services like EBS, RDS, and for Networking services, as well as understanding how to use AWS Cost Explorer and Cost and Usage Reports will also be useful.
New AWS services to know
The SOA-C03 exam now includes additional AWS services, like:
Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus (used for monitoring & logging)
AWS Managed Grafana ( a widely used service for data visualization)
AWS Network Firewall (network-level traffic inspection and filtering)
Amazon Elastic Container Service (managed containerization orchestration service)
Amazon Elastic Container Registry (used to centrally store container images)
Amazon EKS (managed Kubernetes service)
IAM Identity Center (centralized identity management)
Wrapping up
In short, AWS has rebranded and revamped this exam to match the realities of modern cloud management and some newer technologies that many of us are using. The SOA-C03 is now all about proving you’re ready to manage AWS at scale in today’s cloud-driven world, using the latest tools and technologies.
I've booked to take the new exam on September 30th and will let you know what I think as soon as I can. Are you planning to try SOA-C03?
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