The Amazon AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate certification is the first one on the Operations track in the AWS Certification program. This designation proves your proficiency in deploying, operating, and managing workloads on AWS. Systems administrators with at least 1-year of experience with AWS technology are the best audience for this certification. In addition, experience in using security controls requirements, AWS Management Console, and AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) will be beneficial. Besides, understanding of the AWS networking and security services, as well AWS Well-Architected Framework is required.
If you are curious about how to gain this AWS certification, then consider the fact that passing the SOA-C02 exam is a must. It’s a 180-minute exam which contains 65 questions of multiple choice, multiple response, and exam lab types. Only 50 items will affect your final score, while the rest 15 will be unscored. The exam is rated at $150. To sit for this evaluation, you need to perform as a system admin in a cloud operations role and be able to use networking concepts as DNS, firewalls, TCP/IP, apply architectural requirements, provide business continuity & disaster recovery procedures, be able to distinguish, classify, and remediate issues.
Speaking of the exam content, the test consists of 6 domains each of which will check definite skills. The first domain is centered on monitoring, logging, and remediation. Here you should demonstrate your skills to work with filters, alarms, and metrics with the help of AWS monitoring and logging services, as well as deal with issues that refer to monitoring and availability metrics.
The second domain is about reliability and business continuity. In this part, your ability to use scalability and elasticity, work with HA, resilient environments, backup and implement restore strategies will be testified. That’s why before opting for the certification, you should be able to utilize caching, loosely coupled architectures, Amazon Aurora Replicas, and Amazon RDS. Besides, you should be ready to demonstrate your skills in configuring Amazon Route 53 health checks, using Route 53 routing policies, and differentiating Multi-AZ and a single Availability Zone deployments. In addition, your familiarity with Amazon Lifecycle Manager, RDS snapshots, AWS backup, and retention policy will also be assessed.
The third domain is focused on deployment, provisioning, and automation. Your in-depth knowledge and skills to maintain cloud resources and automate repeatable and manual processes will be testified. That’s why you should be able to create and operate cloud recourses and AMIs, choose deployment scenarios and services, find deployment issues, use AWS services to schedule automated tasks.
The fourth domain is dedicated to security and compliance. In this part, your skills to apply and manage security, as well as compliance policies, will be checked. For that you should demonstrate your proficiency in using IAM features, troubleshooting access issues through using AWS services, working with AWS Trusted Advisor and AWS Region. In addition, you should be able to apply strategies related to data and infrastructure protection.
The fifth domain is about networking and content delivery. In this section, you should possess solid skills in using networking features and connectivity. For that, you should be able to configure a VPC, private connectivity, and AWS network protection services. You also should be able to configure domains, content delivery, and DNS services. And to add more, your skills in troubleshooting network connectivity issues will also be assessed.
In the sixth section, exam questions will assess your skills in cost and performance optimization. That’s why you should be ready to demonstrate that you are able to use strategies related to cost optimization and performance optimization.
If you are ready to develop all these skills and obtain the Amazon AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate certification, you will need to pass the accreditation exam. With this designation, you can earn about $100,898 per annum, according to ZipRecruiter website.
