This certification Learning Path is specifically designed to prepare you for the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate (SOA-C02) exam released in July 2021. This learning path covers the knowledge required to master the domains outlined in the exam blueprint. Throughout this learning path, you will be guided via our courses, hands-on labs including some lab challenges, and a preparation exam, all of which are focused on areas that will be assessed within the exam.
Intended Audience
This learning path is suitable for anyone wanting to pass the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate SAA-C02 exam. As defined in the exam blueprint, which can be found here, the exam has been designed for system administrators in a cloud operations role who have at least 1 year of hands-on experience with deployment, management, networking, and security on AWS.
Learning Objectives
The aim of the certification is to validate your knowledge across a number of different key areas, which have been defined by AWS as being able to:
- Deploy, manage, and operate workloads on AWS
- Support and maintain AWS workloads according to the AWS Well-Architected Framework
- Perform operations by using the AWS Management Console and the AWS CLI
- Implement security controls to meet compliance requirements
- Monitor, log, and troubleshoot systems
- Apply networking concepts (for example, DNS, TCP/IP, firewalls)
- Implement architectural requirements (for example, high availability, performance, capacity)
- Perform business continuity and disaster recovery procedures
- Identify, classify, and remediate incidents
As a means of demonstrating this knowledge, you will be tested across 6 different domains, with each domain contributing to a total percentage of your overall score. These domains are broken down as:
- Domain 1: Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation 20%
- Domain 2: Reliability and Business Continuity 16%
- Domain 3: Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation 18%
- Domain 4: Security and Compliance 16%
- Domain 5: Networking and Content Delivery 18%
- Domain 6: Cost and Performance Optimization 12%
As you progress through the learning path, you will gain all the information and knowledge required to fulfill the domain expectations, gaining a deep understanding of each area.
Prerequisites
To get the most out of this learning path, you should already have some basic work knowledge of building cloud solutions on the AWS platform. If you are just starting out with AWS, we recommend taking our Fundamentals of AWS learning path first.
Feedback
We welcome all feedback and suggestions - please contact us at support@cloudacademy.com if you are unsure about where to start or if you would like help getting started.


Stuart has been working within the IT industry for two decades covering a huge range of topic areas and technologies, from data center and network infrastructure design, to cloud architecture and implementation.
To date, Stuart has created 150+ courses relating to Cloud reaching over 180,000 students, mostly within the AWS category and with a heavy focus on security and compliance.
Stuart is a member of the AWS Community Builders Program for his contributions towards AWS.
He is AWS certified and accredited in addition to being a published author covering topics across the AWS landscape.
In January 2016 Stuart was awarded ‘Expert of the Year Award 2015’ from Experts Exchange for his knowledge share within cloud services to the community.
Stuart enjoys writing about cloud technologies and you will find many of his articles within our blog pages.