AWS SysOps Is Now CloudOps Engineer: SOA-C03 Explained
AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate now has a new name: AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate. The exam code moved from SOA-C02 to SOA-C03. Here is what changed, what stayed the same, how the exam works today and how it leads on to DevOps Engineer – Professional, all taken from AWS’s official pages and exam guides.
What happened to SysOps Administrator
AWS renamed the certification as part of the SOA-C03 exam update. AWS says the new name reflects the evolving nature of cloud operations and a shift in industry terminology. The key dates were:
- 9 September 2025: registration for SOA-C03 opened, along with the new exam guide.
- 29 September 2025: the last day to take SOA-C02.
- 30 September 2025: the first day to take SOA-C03.
The new name only applies to people who pass SOA-C03. It is not changed retroactively. If you already hold SysOps Administrator – Associate, you do not need to take the new exam. Your certification stays valid for 3 years from the date you earned it, and you can keep showing its badge until it expires. If you later pass SOA-C03 as well, you get a separate CloudOps Engineer badge.
What changed in the content
AWS’s announcement names three main shifts. Containers are now in scope. There is more emphasis on multi-account and multi-Region architectures. And there is more on automation and infrastructure as code. AWS also says no task statements were removed, but the outline is more detailed and some tasks were reorganised.
The exam guide’s comparison page shows how the domains moved:
| SOA-C02 domain | SOA-C02 | SOA-C03 |
|---|---|---|
| Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation (now Monitoring, Logging, Analysis, Remediation, and Performance Optimization) | 20% | 22% |
| Reliability and Business Continuity | 16% | 22% |
| Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation | 18% | 22% |
| Security and Compliance | 16% | 16% |
| Networking and Content Delivery | 18% | 18% |
| Cost and Performance Optimization | 12% | merged into Domain 1 |
The comparison page also lists the specific changes:
- Moved: SOA-C02 Tasks 6.1 and 6.2 (cost and performance) now sit in Task 1.3. VPNs moved from Task 4.2 to Task 5.1.
- Added: the CloudWatch agent for EC2 instances, Amazon ECS clusters and Amazon EKS clusters; stacks with CloudFormation and the AWS CDK; enforcing compliance requirements such as Region and service selection; and CloudWatch network monitoring services.
- Removed: configuring S3 static website hosting.
The June 2026 exam guide update
AWS published version 1.1 of the SOA-C03 exam guide on 1 June 2026. It changed the wording or examples of ten skills. It also added five services to the in-scope list: Amazon Bedrock, AWS DevOps Agent, AWS Health Dashboard, Kiro and AWS Security Agent. The revision history lists no change to the domains or their weights. If your study notes date from before June 2026, check the in-scope services list again. The revision history now also lists a version 1.2, published on 29 October 2026, so check the revisions page for any later changes.
Exam labs
The SOA-C02 exam guide originally included exam labs: tasks performed in the AWS Management Console or AWS CLI. AWS removed them from 28 March 2023 “until further notice”. After that, SOA-C02 was 50 scored and 15 unscored multiple-choice and multiple-response questions in 130 minutes.
The SOA-C03 exam guide lists only two question types, multiple choice and multiple response. It does not list exam labs. So if you remember SysOps as the exam with labs, that no longer matches the current guide.
SOA-C03 at a glance
| Detail | SOA-C03 |
|---|---|
| Level | Associate |
| Questions | 65: 50 scored and 15 unscored |
| Time | 130 minutes |
| Question types | Multiple choice and multiple response |
| Passing score | 720 on a scaled score of 100–1,000 |
| Cost | 150 USD |
| Delivery | Pearson VUE test centre or online proctored |
| Languages | English, Japanese, Korean and Simplified Chinese |
| Valid for | 3 years |
AWS will retire the Korean and Simplified Chinese versions of SOA-C03 after 19 November 2026. English and Japanese continue.
Unscored questions are not identified on the exam. Unanswered questions are marked wrong and there is no penalty for guessing. The exam uses a compensatory scoring model, so you need to pass the exam as a whole, not each section.
The exam guide describes a target candidate with 1 year of experience with deployment, management, troubleshooting, networking and security on AWS. It also asks for at least 1 year in a related operations role, such as system administrator. If you have no IT work experience, AWS suggests earning Cloud Practitioner first.
The five domains
| Domain | Weight |
|---|---|
| Monitoring, Logging, Analysis, Remediation, and Performance Optimization | 22% |
| Reliability and Business Continuity | 22% |
| Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation | 22% |
| Security and Compliance | 16% |
| Networking and Content Delivery | 18% |
In short: CloudWatch, CloudTrail, EventBridge and Systems Manager for monitoring and remediation; scaling, health checks, Multi-AZ, AWS Backup and disaster recovery for reliability; CloudFormation, the AWS CDK, StackSets and event-driven automation for deployment; IAM, Organizations, AWS Config, KMS and GuardDuty for security; and VPCs, Route 53, CloudFront and flow logs for networking.
The path to DevOps Engineer – Professional
AWS’s exam page names DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C02) and Security – Specialty as certifications that people go on to earn after CloudOps Engineer. DOP-C02 is a bigger exam:
| Detail | SOA-C03 | DOP-C02 |
|---|---|---|
| Level | Associate | Professional |
| Questions | 65 (50 scored) | 75 (65 scored) |
| Time | 130 minutes | 180 minutes |
| Passing score | 720 | 750 |
| Cost | 150 USD | 300 USD |
| Target experience | 1 year on AWS | 2 or more years on AWS |
DOP-C02 has six domains: SDLC Automation (22%), Configuration Management and IaC (17%), Resilient Cloud Solutions (15%), Monitoring and Logging (15%), Incident and Event Response (14%), and Security and Compliance (17%). Its target candidate also needs experience with the software development lifecycle and with programming or scripting.
The link between the two matters for recertification. Earning DOP-C02 automatically recertifies CloudOps Engineer – Associate. It also works for older SysOps Administrator – Associate holders, who can recertify by upgrading to DevOps Engineer – Professional. People who hold both DevOps Engineer – Professional and SysOps Administrator – Associate can keep both current by passing the latest DOP-C02 exam. AWS also gives you a 50% discount voucher for your next exam once you earn a certification.
Our suggestions
This is our advice, not AWS’s. It is based on the official content above.
- Studying from SOA-C02 material: start with the comparison page. Put extra time into containers with the CloudWatch agent, the AWS CDK, multi-account tools such as StackSets and AWS RAM, and CloudWatch network monitoring. Skip S3 static website hosting.
- Planning your time: three domains carry 22% each, so 66% of the exam is monitoring, reliability and deployment. Give them most of your study hours.
- Thinking about DOP-C02 next: the overlap is strongest in monitoring, IaC, resilience and security. The biggest new area is CI/CD. SOA-C03 lists designing CI/CD pipelines as out of scope, while SDLC Automation is the largest DOP-C02 domain.
- Holding SysOps Administrator already: you do not have to sit SOA-C03. If DevOps Engineer – Professional is your goal anyway, passing it before your SysOps certification expires also recertifies it.
To check your readiness, ExamCrest has free SOA-C03 practice questions you can try first.
Confirm the latest details on AWS’s CloudOps Engineer – Associate page, the DevOps Engineer – Professional page and the recertification page before you book.
I run ExamCrest, where this post first appeared. Try free SOA-C03 practice questions: https://examcrest.com/exam/aws-soa-c03/free-questions?utm_source=devto&utm_campaign=soa-c03-blog-copy
原文：https://www.a8q9.cn/en/article/aws-sysops-is-now-cloudops-engineer-soa-c03-explained-c705e9.html