Prepare for AWS SysOps Administrator Associate Certification

In this article, we will recognize how to prepare for the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate certification exam. This is a difficult exam at the associate level exam. If you are preparing for the AWS certification, I would recommend you start with the Developer Associate Exam, which is the most straightforward exam. Then you can make for the Solutions Architect Associate exam. But, if you are right writing the SysOps exam, you will get most of the things that are not included in other associate level AWS exams.

Let’s concentrate on how to prepare for the AWS sysops administrator certification exam. This article would describe you step-by-step on what are the required resources for making this exam. Just reading the AWS website and documents would be sufficient for the exam.

Of course, this is the first place to begin your certification journey. You will see all the details like a blueprint, sample questions, exam information, video tutorials, etc.

The exam blueprint is the syllabus for the exam. This blueprint describes what the concepts that are covered in the exam and breakup of the sections and marks that are needed from each section are. This should be the first document one should know for preparing for the exam.

These are the essential details that are documented for each service and features that are uploaded by the AWS team. This whitepaper contains beneficial information about the services. The following are the essential whitepapers that are a requirement-read for the exam:

• Overview of Security Processes
• Storage Options in the Cloud
• Architecting for the AWS Cloud
• Overview of Amazon Web Services
• Compliance Whitepaper
• Defining Fault-Tolerant Applications in the AWS Cloud

Please read these documents many times to get a good understanding of the concepts. That is required for answering the questions in the exam. Note that the AWS SysOps exam would expect you to solve the more summary based questions and deployment related questions.

Once you have gone through the necessary study materials, FAQs, and white papers, then it is the time to take the practice questions. AWS provides a few samples questions on the website. But that is not enough for the exam. You have to obtain a good quality practice questions in the market to pass the exam. VMExam.com is one of the several popular practice questions for the AWS certification exam.

Hands-on experience is the best and effective way to learn AWS concepts. Nothing can provide you more faith in picking the right answer like having done it yourself.

Unfortunately, this also highlights one of the disadvantages of this kind of certification – sometimes the exams lag after the real world. There are some people that the AWS services now do things that are not shown in the certification exam.

If you do not have the benefit of using AWS at work, create a new AWS account and make the most of the free usage tier. Just set up a billing alarm to send you an email when you are in danger of being charged too much, and you can’t go to wrong.

The exam will have 55 multiple choice questions with an 80-minute time limit. Most questions would be single-answer responses, but some are multiple-answer responses. The correct pass mark does change without notice, according to statistical analysis. Also, you have to sign an NDA agreement before taking the exam. You are not permitted to write or talk about the exam details. It is against the policy. So, the practice questions given by various training are based on the syllabus topics that are shared by Amazon.

But, generally, AWS SysOps get good salary since employers more demand cloud computing Jobs.

Also, you cannot just decide the salary for one specific certification. Here Solutions Architect Associate and Developer Associate exams are very much similar. If you have passed the professional level exams, then you will have more advantage.

Here are some of the reasons why AWS SysOps get more salary:

Cloud computing is very hot, and now most of the applications moved to cloud. So, every company needs cloud engineers. AWS is the leader in cloud computing.
Recently Amazon has announced that every AWS technology partner has to prove their capability by adding certified engineers to their companies. It explicitly shows that just holding the certification itself may interest employers to hire you.
There is a lot of demand for the AWS developers, but only a few are skilled in the technology. That is a large gap that has to be filled. So, AWS SysOps would be paid awesome by the companies.

Here is the snapshot I have captured in the Google Trends and Indeed job portal for the AWS certification. This shows a clear uptrend for AWS SysOps.

In the short time since the Amazon Web Services certification program launched in 2013, AWS certified pros now rank with the highest paid IT, certification holders. According to a new salary survey from, the average salary for AWS certified individuals is $113,932.

• AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate: $111,966

• What Are Roles and Responsibility of AWS SysOps Administrator?

• All You Need to Know About AWS SysOps Administrator Associate (SOA-C01) Certification

• AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate Certification: Study Tips

I hope this article is very communicative to understand the essential details that are required to prepare for the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate certification exam.