All certifications
SOA-C02 to SOA-C03
SysOps Administrator became CloudOps Engineer
AWS renamed the exam from SysOps Administrator to CloudOps Engineer. The old guide had six domains and the new guide has five. Containers are now in scope.
Older version
SOA-C02
Retired
Newer version
SOA-C03
Dates
- SOA-C02 was in use until 29 Sep 2025
- SOA-C03 has been in use since 30 Sep 2025
Domain weights
| SOA-C02 domains | % |
|---|---|
| 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 |
| Total | 100 |
| SOA-C03 domains | % |
|---|---|
| Domain 1: Monitoring, Logging, Analysis, Remediation, and Performance Optimization | 22 |
| Domain 2: Reliability and Business Continuity | 22 |
| Domain 3: Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation | 22 |
| Domain 4: Security and Compliance | 16 |
| Domain 5: Networking and Content Delivery | 18 |
| Total | 100 |
New
- Containers are in scope.
- More modern services and features, with more emphasis on multi-account, multi-Region architectures, automation and infrastructure as code.
- Task 1.1: configure and manage the CloudWatch agent to collect metrics and logs from EC2 instances, Amazon ECS clusters or Amazon EKS clusters.
- Task 3.1: create and manage stacks of resources with CloudFormation and the AWS CDK.
- Task 4.1: enforce compliance requirements, for example Region and service selections.
- Task 5.3: configure and analyze CloudWatch network monitoring services.
Removed
- Task 5.2: configuring S3 static website hosting.
Changed
- Domain 6 (Cost and Performance Optimization) no longer exists. Its tasks 6.1 and 6.2 moved to Task 1.3, in the renamed Domain 1.
- Domains 1, 2 and 3 carry more weight (22% each, up from 20%, 16% and 18%).
- VPNs moved from Task 4.2 to Task 5.1.
- AWS states that no task statements were removed, and that the content outline is more detailed with some reorganization of task statements.
Exam format
- SOA-C03: 50 scored questions and 15 unscored questions, multiple choice and multiple response.
- SOA-C03: scaled score of 100 to 1,000, minimum passing score 720.
- The SOA-C03 guide does not state the exam duration.
Sources
- SOA-C03 exam guide(opens in a new tab)
- Comparison of SOA-C02 and SOA-C03(opens in a new tab)
- AWS blog: exam update and new name(opens in a new tab)
This is a summary of the pages above. Check the official exam guide before you book an exam.