AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate Practice Exam
AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate Practice Exam
AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate Practice Exam
About AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate Exam
The AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate (formerly AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate) is designed to validate the hands-on skills needed to manage and optimize workloads on AWS. This certification focuses on the operational side of cloud computing, ensuring candidates can effectively monitor and maintain AWS environments, implement strong security controls, manage networking configurations, carry out business continuity and disaster recovery procedures, and apply cost and performance optimization strategies. As AWS environments continue to scale and evolve, this certification confirms that professionals have the expertise to keep infrastructure secure, resilient, and efficient.
Who should take the Exam?
This certification is intended for IT professionals with approximately one year of practical experience deploying, managing, and operating workloads on AWS. It is particularly well-suited for individuals who want to demonstrate their operational proficiency in running workloads securely and reliably in the AWS cloud.
The exam is organized into five content domains, each testing your ability to manage, secure, and optimize AWS environments. Below is a detailed breakdown of tasks and skills you need to master.
Domain 1: Monitoring, Logging, Analysis, Remediation, and Performance Optimization
Task 1.1: Configure monitoring and logging solutions
Set up monitoring with services like Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, and Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus.
Deploy and manage the CloudWatch Agent for EC2, ECS, and EKS.
Configure and troubleshoot CloudWatch alarms and integrate them with EventBridge.
Build and share CloudWatch dashboards across accounts and Regions.
Configure notifications with Amazon SNS for automated alerts.
Task 1.2: Troubleshoot and remediate issues with metrics and availability data
Analyze system metrics and implement automated remediation with Lambda, Systems Manager, and auto scaling.
Use EventBridge to manage event routing and troubleshoot rules.
Leverage Systems Manager Automation runbooks or custom scripts for operational fixes.
Task 1.3: Optimize system performance
Tune compute resources using performance metrics and tagging.
Analyze and improve Amazon EBS performance and cost efficiency.
Enhance Amazon S3 performance with features like Transfer Acceleration, multipart uploads, and lifecycle policies.
Select and optimize shared storage solutions such as EFS and FSx.
Monitor and fine-tune Amazon RDS using Performance Insights, RDS Proxy, and CloudWatch alarms.
Improve EC2 efficiency with placement groups and storage/network tuning.
Domain 2: Reliability and Business Continuity
Task 2.1: Enable scalability and elasticity
Configure auto scaling in compute environments.
Implement caching with CloudFront and ElastiCache.
Manage scaling for databases like RDS and DynamoDB.
Task 2.2: Build highly available and resilient systems
Configure and troubleshoot Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) and Route 53 health checks.
Design fault-tolerant architectures with Multi-AZ deployments.
Task 2.3: Backup and recovery strategies
Automate snapshots and backups using services like AWS Backup.
Restore databases with point-in-time recovery while meeting RTO and RPO targets.
Implement versioning in storage services (S3, FSx).
Follow disaster recovery best practices.
Domain 3: Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation
Task 3.1: Provision and maintain resources
Build and manage AMIs and container images (e.g., EC2 Image Builder).
Deploy stacks with CloudFormation and the AWS CDK.
Identify and resolve deployment errors (permissions, subnet sizing, CloudFormation failures).
Share resources across accounts and Regions with AWS RAM and StackSets.
Implement deployment strategies using AWS-native tools.
Leverage third-party automation tools like Terraform and Git.
Task 3.2: Automate operational tasks
Use AWS Systems Manager for process automation.
Implement event-driven automation with Lambda and S3 Event Notifications.
Domain 4: Security and Compliance
Task 4.1: Apply security policies and compliance frameworks
Configure IAM features (roles, MFA, federated identity, policies, conditions).
Troubleshoot access with IAM Access Analyzer, CloudTrail, and policy simulator.
Manage multi-account security strategies.
Respond to Trusted Advisor security checks with remediation actions.
Enforce compliance via Region/service restrictions.
Task 4.2: Secure data and infrastructure
Apply data classification frameworks.
Configure and troubleshoot encryption at rest with KMS.
Implement encryption in transit with ACM.
Securely store secrets using AWS services.
Monitor and resolve findings from Security Hub, GuardDuty, Config, and Inspector.
Domain 5: Networking and Content Delivery
Task 5.1: Configure and optimize networking
Build and manage VPCs (subnets, route tables, NACLs, SGs, gateways).
Set up private networking connectivity.
Audit network protections with WAF, Shield, Network Firewall, Route 53 Resolver DNS Firewall.
Optimize network cost and performance.
Task 5.2: Manage DNS and content delivery
Configure DNS using Route 53.
Apply routing policies and query logging in Route 53.
Deliver global content via CloudFront and AWS Global Accelerator.