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Preparing for SOA-C01 AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate Exam

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A quick article on how to prepare for SOA-C01 AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate Exam

AWS Sysops Associate!

It’s a short article on AWS Sysops Associate certification exam. These are extracts from my personal experience which might help you in clearing the exam.

Sysops exam is aimed at you have good knowledge about a few core services like EC2, Cloudformation, Cloudwatch, etc. and AWS CLI. There are many references to CLI options or commands. This exam does not judge you for knowing all AWS services like Solution Architect one but it does check you for a few core services with deeper knowledge.

You must have already gone through the AWS certification page for details about this exam. Let me jot it down for your quick reference.

  • Total of 65 questions
  • Cost $150
  • Exam guide
  • Sample questions
  • The exam result will appear on the screen as soon as you submit the exam.
  • Questions vary in length (short/long) but time should not be constraint here as it could be in SA professional exam.

Topics you should study

Its recommended that you should at least consider clearing AWS certified solution architect exam before appearing this one. It will firm your AWS foundational knowledge for many services and help you get a grip on the learning path for Sysops.

Below are few service which you should deep dive –

  • Cloudwatch
    • Built-in and custom matrics
    • AWS CLI commands and options
    • Deep dive for custom matrics
    • Cloudwatch console (what, when, where)
    • Cloudwatch alarm deep dive
  • Cloudformation
    • All template references and their use cases
    • How to re-use templates in other regions/accounts etc.
    • Create, update, and delete template/stack. All its stages, CLI options, console, etc.
  • EC2
    • Pricing classes, how EC2 is billed and use cases
    • I did not get many questions on EC2 apart from identifying the correct EC2 class in a given scenario
    • Spot block
    • System status checks and Instance status checks
    • Autoscaling group deep dive
    • Root cause analysis of EC2 termination on launch
    • AWS Systems Manager deep dive
    • AWS Inspector
  • S3
    • Different classes and use cases
    • Encryption
    • Security using ACL and bucket policies
    • CORS and CRR
    • Cross account Access control & signed URLs
    • Website hosting basics
    • MFA delete deep dive along with CLI options
    • Versioning fundamentals
  • RDS, Redshift
    • I got the only couple of questions on RDS
    • Enhanced monitoring
    • Multi-AZ and read replica deep dive
    • How to DR, HA, and FT in RDS
    • Redshift enhanced VPC routing
    • Redshift basics
  • VPC and networking
    • VPC flow logs deep dive
    • Security group, NACLs, and route tables
    • NAT, IG, VPC Endpoints
    • Public, private subnets
    • VPC peering process
    • VPC, On-prem connectivity
    • On-prem extension services for AWS
    • WAF, Cloudfront
  • Assorted
    • IAM, KMS deep dive
    • AWS Trusted advisor
    • AWS config deep dive
    • Shared responsibility model
    • AWS certificate manager
    • ELB – ALB, NLB and Classis LB
    • AWS Beanstalk, AWS Op works
    • SNS, SQS, Lambda
    • Health dashboards
    • Billing tools

Online courses

I relied on only one course for this exam since I backpacked foundational, associate, and professional level certifications before this one. So a few refreshers were required. Here is a list of online courses from well-known websites –

Practice tests

Here is a list of practice tests that you can take online to test your knowledge. If you are already certified you can get a free practice test from AWS itself. You have to claim it under benefits in your AWS certification portal.

I am linking here my last day revision notes which may help you in your preparation.

Our other certification preparation articles

  1. Preparing for 1Z0-1085-20 Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Foundations 2020 Associate Exam
  2. Journey to AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional Certification SAP-C01
  3. Preparing for CLF-C01 AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam

Preparing for CLF-C01 AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam

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A quick article on how to prepare for CLF-C01 AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam

AWS CLF!

I am writing this article as a preparation guide for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Certification exam. I recently cleared the exam and hence thought of sharing a few pointers which may help you in your journey to get certified.

This is foundational level certification from AWS and aims at getting acquainted with Cloud and then AWS Cloud fundamentals. If you are looking for a career in the AWS ecosystem then this is your first step. This is also helpful for sales personals, managers, etc i.e. non-technical population to get familiar with Cloud and AWS terminologies.

If you are coming from a background of working locally or remotely on traditional data center equipment like servers, storage, network, etc or if you are possessing another cloud technology background then it’s a walk-in garden for you. Since I completed professional level AWS certification, I literally sit for this one with no such prior study.

You can refer to AWS’s own study guide for a detailed curriculum for the exam and other details.

  • Its a 90-minute exam with 60 questions to attend. Questions and choices are fairly short hence there should not be a time constraint for you.
  • Passing score is 700 out of 1000 and your result will be shown on screen PASS/FAIL immediately after you submit the exam.
  • The exam costs USD $100. If you have completed any previous AWS certification then you can make use of a 50% discount coupon in your AWS certification account.

Topic you should study

Cloud and on-prem
  • What is cloud
  • Difference between cloud and on-prem
  • Benefits and trade-offs for cloud over on-prem
  • The economics behind both. CAPEX, OPEX.
  • Different cloud architecture designs
Basics of AWS
  • AWS infrastructure. Understand each element infrastructure.aws
  • How to use or interact with AWS services
  • Understand AWS core services
    • IAM, KMS
    • EC2, ELB, Autoscaling, Lambda
    • S3, EFS, EBS
    • VPC
    • Cloudfront
    • Route 53
    • Cloudwatch
    • Cloud trail
    • SNS, SQS
    • RDS, Dynamodb
  • It won’t hurt to know a few more services around the above core ones at a very high level i.e. name of service and what it is used for.
  • AWS Billing and pricing, how it works, how to get discounts etc.
  • AWS support tiers
  • Differnt AWS support teams
Cloud security
  • Security of the cloud (AWS responsibility)
  • Security in the cloud (User’s responsibility)
  • Learn the shared responsibility model
  • AWS Access management
  • Compliance aspect of AWS

While studying AWS services make sure you know their use cases, billing logics, pricings, service limits, integration with other services, access control, types/classes within, etc. You are not expected to remember numbers of any kind but you should know the contextual comparison. Like you are not expected to remember IO or throughput exact numbers of EBS volumes but you should know which EBS type gives more throughput or IOPS than others.

Online courses

I try to curate few online course list here which you can take to build solid AWS foundation.

Practice test exams

There are practice test exams included in the above courses by LA and ACG. But if you want to purchase practice exams only then you can do so. AWS offers a practice exam too for USD $20. You can attempt it only once and no point in re-purchasing since every time you will see the same questions. You can get a free voucher for this to practise test if you have completed other AWS certification.

I created my last day revision notes here but I mainly referred by notes from AWS SAP-C01 exam and only added what’s missing there in these new notes.

That’s all I wanted to share. All the best!

Our other certification preparation articles

  1. Preparing for 1Z0-1085-20 Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Foundations 2020 Associate Exam
  2. Journey to AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional Certification SAP-C01