In terms of demand, AWS SysOps Administrator – Associate is only matched by the Architect Associate certification. Therefore, in this article, we are going to discuss a career as an AWS SysOps Administrator. Obtaining the AWS SysOps Administrator Associate credential validates the technical expertise in management, deployment, and services on the AWS stage. The end purpose is to prove that the candidate conjectures the thoughts of:
- Deploying, managing and working scalable, extremely available and fault-tolerant systems on the AWS.
- Migrating an on-premises application to the AWS.
- Implementing and managing the flow of data to and from AWS.
- Picking the correct AWS service based on data, compute, or security needs.
- Recognizing proper application of AWS operational best practices.
- Regulating the AWS usage expense and identifying the operational cost control mechanisms.
The AWS SysOps Administrator – Associate credential serves organizations to identify and grow talent with analytical skills for achieving cloud initiatives. Getting AWS SysOps Administrator – Associate shows experience managing, deploying, and administering workloads on AWS.
Target Audience
The AWS SysOps Administrator – Associate certification exam is designed for IT professionals who are responsible for managing and deploying applications and services on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform. The target audience for the exam includes:
- System Administrators: System administrators who manage servers and infrastructure can benefit from the AWS SysOps Administrator certification. This certification helps them develop skills in managing and deploying applications and services on AWS, including virtual servers, storage, and network resources.
- DevOps Engineers: DevOps engineers who work with AWS infrastructure can benefit from the AWS SysOps Administrator certification. This certification helps them develop skills in automating operational tasks and implementing best practices for system management.
- Cloud Engineers: Cloud engineers who design and deploy cloud-based solutions can benefit from the AWS SysOps Administrator certification. This certification helps them develop skills in managing security and compliance of AWS infrastructure and applications.
- Solution Architects: Solution architects who design and implement AWS solutions can benefit from the AWS SysOps Administrator certification. This certification helps them develop skills in configuring and managing AWS services such as EC2, S3, RDS, and Elastic Load Balancing.
Recommended Knowledge and Skills:
- At leats of 1 year of hands-on background with the AWS technology.
- Experience in managing, deploying, and working workloads on the AWS as well as managing the security controls and compliance needs.
- Accommodations with uilizing both the Management Console and the Command Line Interface (CLI).
- Understanding the AWS Well-Architected structure and also, AWS networking and security aasistance.
Responsibilities of a AWS Certified SysOps Administrator:
The core focus of any professional event, including SysOps Administrators, is directly tied to their roles and duties. This is essentially the same as these specialists’ job categorization. An AWS Administrator’s main responsibility is to set up cloud management support on AWS in the sector. Furthermore, as an AWS Administrator, you must accomplish and maintain numerous AWS services. Some of the experts’ key responsibilities include:
- Provisioning, security, and automation are all part of managing the whole life cycle.
- Managing and creating multi-tier systems’ structure
- Thirdly, cloud architectures fine-tuning and configuration.
- Errata patching, kernel patching, and software updates are some of the services we provide.
- Then, making backups and keeping the disaster recovery system up to date
- The platform of the AWS application is responsible for access control and data integrity.
- Lastly, effectively monitoring the level of performance and its availability
It’s time to acknowledge the course framework of the certification!
Course Framework: AWS SysOps Administrator
the preparation is incomplete without the course outline. The domains are the backbone of such an exam, so the candidate must review and understand the structure to develop their knowledge.
1. Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation
1.1 Implementing alarms, metrics, and filters by practicing AWS monitoring and logging services
- Identifying, collecting, analyzing, and exporting logs (for instance, CloudWatch Logs, CloudWatch Logs Insights, AWS CloudTrail logs) (AWS Documentation: Analyzing Log Data with the CloudWatch Logs Insights, Defining the Amazon CloudWatch Logs, CloudWatch Logs Insights Sample Queries)
- Collecting metrics and logs utilizing the CloudWatch agent (AWS Documentation: Collecting the Metrics and Logs from Amazon EC2 Instances and On-Premises Servers)
- Creating the CloudWatch alarms (AWS Documentation: Creating a CloudWatch Alarm Based on a Static Threshold, Using the CloudWatch Alarms)
- Developing metric filters (AWS Documentation: Creating the Metrics From the Log Events Using Filters, Metric Filters)
- Creating CloudWatch dashboards (AWS Documentation: Creating a CloudWatch Dashboard, Using Amazon CloudWatch Dashboards)
- Configuring the notifications (for example, Service Quotas, Simple Notification Service [Amazon SNS], AWS Health events) (AWS Documentation: Setting Up the Amazon SNS Notifications, Configuring the SNS notifications for Amazon SES, Configuring the Notifications for the CloudWatch Logs Alarms, Service Quotas, and the Amazon CloudWatch alarms)
1.2 Remediating issues based on observing and availability metrics
- Troubleshooting or taking corrective actions based on the notifications and alarms
- Configuring the EventBridge rules to the trigger actions (AWS Documentation: Creating a rule for an AWS service, Creating an EventBridge Rule That Triggers on an AWS API Call Using AWS CloudTrail)
- Using the AWS Systems Manager Automation documents to take action based on theAWS Config rules (AWS Documentation: AWS Systems Manager Automation, Systems Manager Automation actions reference, Operating with runbooks)
2. Reliability and Business Continuity
2.1 Implementing the scalability and elasticity
- Maintaining the AWS Auto Scaling plans (AWS Documentation: How scaling plans work)
- Implementing the caching (AWS Documentation: Caching Overview, strategies)
- Applying RDS replicas and Aurora Replicas (AWS Documentation: Using the Aurora Auto Scaling with the Aurora replicas )
- Implementing the loosely coupled structures (AWS Documentation: Loosely Coupled Scenarios)
- Differentiating between horizontal and vertical scaling
2.2 Implementing the high availability and resilient habitats
- Configuring the Elastic Load Balancer and Route 53 health checks (AWS Documentation: Configuring the Amazon Route 53 to route traffic to an ELB load balancer, Creating the Amazon Route 53 health checks, and configuring DNS failover)
- Differentiating between the application of a single Availability Zone and Multi-AZ deployments. For example, Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling groups, FSx, RDS (AWS Documentation: Regions and Zones, High availability (Multi-AZ) for Amazon RDS, Elastic Load Balancing, and Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling)
- Implementing the fault-tolerant workloads. (AWS Documentation: Mounting with IP address, Amazon EFS: How it works)
- Applying the Route 53 routing policies (for instance, weighted, failover, latency based) (AWS Documentation: Picking a routing policy)
2.3 Implementing the backup and restore strategies
- Automating snapshots and backups based on use cases (for example, AWS Backup, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager, RDS snapshots, RTO and RPO, retention policy) (AWS Documentation: Working with the backups, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager)
- Restoring the databases (for example, point-in-time restore, promoting read replica) (AWS Documentation: Working with read replicas)
- Implementing the versioning and lifecycle (AWS Documentation: Lifecycle configuration elements, Managing the storage lifecycle)
- Configuring the Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (AWS Documentation: Amazon S3 Replication, Configuring the replication, Replicating objects)
- Executing the disaster recovery methods (AWS Documentation: Disaster Recovery (DR))
3. Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation
3.1 Provisioning and maintaining cloud resources
- Creating and managing the AMIs (for intance, EC2 Image Builder) (AWS Documentation: EC2 Image Builder, How EC2 Image Builder works)
- Creating, maintaining, and troubleshooting the AWS CloudFormation (AWS Documentation: Troubleshooting the AWS CloudFormation)
- Provisioning resources across various Regions and accounts. For example, Resource Access Manager, CloudFormation StackSets, IAM cross-account roles
- Selecting the deployment situations and services (AWS Documentation: Blue/Green deployment with CodeDeploy, Working with the deployment configurations in the CodeDeploy, Setting up an API Gateway canary release deployment)
- Remediating the deployment issues (for instance, subnet sizing, service quotas, and OpsWorks errors, permissions) (AWS Documentation: AWS service quotas, AWS OpsWorks, AWS::EC2::Subnet)
3.2 Automating manual or repeatable processes
- Using the AWS services (for example, Systems Manager, OpsWorks, CloudFormation) to automate deployment methods (AWS Documentation: Using the AWS CloudFormation to configure a service role for Automation)
- Implementing the automated patch management (AWS Documentation: AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager, Patch management overview)
- Scheduling automated duties by using the AWS services (for example, EventBridge, AWS Config) (AWS Documentation: EventBridge Event Examples from Supported AWS Services )
4. Security and Compliance
4.1 Implementing security and compliance policies
- Implementing the IAM features (for example, MFA, password policies, roles, SAML, resource policies, federated identity, policy conditions) (AWS Documentation: Creating a Role for SAML 2.0 federation (console), Policies and permissions in IAM, Identity providers and federation)
- Troubleshooting and auditing access issues by managing the AWS services (for example, IAM Access Analyzer, CloudTrail, IAM policy simulator) (AWS Documentation: Logging IAM and AWS STS API calls with AWS CloudTrail, Using AWS IAM Access Analyzer, Logging Access Analyzer API calls with AWS CloudTrail)
- Validating the service control policies and permission boundaries (AWS Documentation: Service control policies, Permissions boundaries for the IAM entities)
- Reviewing the AWS Trusted Advisor security (AWS Documentation: AWS Trusted Advisor)
- Validating the AWS Region and service based on compliance needs (AWS Documentation: Compliance validation for Amazon EC2, Regions and Zones)
- Secure multi-account strategies (for example, AWS Organizations, AWS Control Tower ) (AWS Documentation: AWS multi-account strategy for your AWS Control Tower landing zone)
4.2 Implementing data and infrastructure protection strategies
- Enforcing a data scheme (AWS Documentation: Leveraging the Cloud to Support Data Classification, Data Classification)
- Making, managing, and securing the encryption keys
- Implementing the encryption at rest (AWS Documentation: AWS Key Management Service, AWS Key Management Service concepts)
- Implementing the encryption in the transit (for example, VPN, AWS Certificate Manager) (AWS Documentation: AWS Certificate Manager )
- Securely store secrets by utilizing the AWS services (Systems Manager Parameter Store, AWS Secrets Manager) (AWS Documentation: AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store, Referencing AWS Secrets Manager secrets from Parameter Store parameters)
- Reviewing the reports or findings (for example, Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Security Hub, Amazon Inspector, AWS Config) (AWS Documentation: Assessment reports, Amazon GuardDuty)
5. Networking and Content Delivery
5.1 Implementing the networking and connectivity
- Configuring a VPC (for example, route tables, subnets, network ACLs, NAT gateway, security groups, internet gateway ) (AWS Documentation: VPC with public and private subnets (NAT), Internet gateways, Network ACLs)
- Configuring the private connectivity (for example, VPC endpoints, Systems Manager Session Manager, VPC peering, VPN) (AWS Documentation: Creating a Virtual Private Cloud endpoint, AWS Systems Session Manager, AWS PrivateLink and VPC endpoints)
- Checking the network protection services (for example, AWS Shield, AWS WAF) (AWS Documentation: How AWS Shield works, AWS WAF, Shield, and AWS Firewall Manager)
5.2 Configuring domains, DNS services, and content delivery
- Configuring the Route 53 hosted zones and records (AWS Documentation: Making a public hosted zone, Making records by utilizing Amazon Route 53 console)
- Implementing the Route 53 routing policies (AWS Documentation: Picking a routing policy, Managing traffic policies)
- Customizing DNS (AWS Documentation: Getting started with Route 53 Resolver, Configuring Amazon Route 53 as your DNS service)
- Configuring the CloudFront and S3 origin access identity (OAI) (AWS Documentation: Restricting Access to the Amazon S3 Content by Using an Origin Access Identity)
- Configuring the S3 static website hosting (AWS Documentation: Hosting a static website using Amazon S3, Configuring a static website on Amazon S3)
5.3 Troubleshooting the network connectivity issues
- Interpreting VPC configurations (AWS Documentation: Route tables for the VPC, Internetwork traffic privacy in the Amazon VPC)
- Collecting and interpreting the logs (for example, Elastic Load Balancer access logs, VPC Flow Logs, AWS WAF web ACL logs) (AWS Documentation: Logging web ACL traffic information, Access logs for your Network Load Balancer, Configuring and using standard logs (access logs), VPC Flow Logs)
- Identifying and remediating the CloudFront caching issues (AWS Documentation: CloudFront)
- Troubleshooting hybrid and private connectivity issues (AWS Documentation: troubleshooting network performance issues among Amazon EC2 Linux instances in a VPC, Troubleshooting connecting to the instance)
6. Cost and Performance Optimization
6.1 Implementing the cost optimization strategies
- Cost allocation tags (AWS Documentation: Cost Allocation Tags)
- Identifying and remediating underutilized or unused resources by using AWS services (for example, AWS Compute Optimizer, Trusted Advisor, Cost Explorer) (AWS Documentation: AWS Tools for Reporting and Cost Optimization)
- Configuring the AWS Budgets and billing alarms (AWS Documentation: Making a Billing Alarm to Monitor the Estimated AWS Charges, Managing the costs with the AWS Budgets)
- Assessing resource usage patterns to qualify the workloads for the EC2 Spot Instances (AWS Documentation: Spotting the Instances)
- Identifying opportunities to use the managed services (for example, AWS Fargate, Amazon RDS, EFS) (AWS Documentation: Using the Amazon EFS file systems with the Amazon ECS, Amazon ECS on AWS Fargate, Amazon Relational Database Service)
6.2 Implement performance optimization strategies
- Recommending compute resources based on the performance metrics (AWS Documentation: Listing the CloudWatch metrics for your instances, Metrics analyzed by the Compute Optimizer)
- Monitoring AWS EBS metrics and modifying the configuration to enhance the performance efficiency (AWS Documentation:Amazon CloudWatch metrics for Amazon EBS)
- Implementing the S3 performance features (for example, multipart uploads S3 Transfer Acceleration) (AWS Documentation: Configuring fast, secure file transfers using Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration)
- Monitoring RDS metrics and modifying the configuration to enhance the performance efficiency (for example RDS Proxy) (AWS Documentation: Managing connections with RDS Proxy, Using Performance Insights on the Amazon RDS)
- Enabling EC2 capabilities (for example, instance store, placement groups) (AWS Documentation: Enhanced networking on Linux, Enabling enhanced networking with the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) on Windows instances, Placement groups)
Steps to start a career as an AWS SysOps Administrator
One of the pioneers of the cloud computing revolution has been Amazon Web Services. Because AWS is one of the market’s oldest and most successful cloud computing organizations, beginning your career with the AWS certification will be beneficial. However, in order to give clarity, we’ll go through some steps you may do to get a head start as an AWS SysOps Administrator.
1. Gaining hands-on experience
This is a crucial step in obtaining a good job in the market sector. That is to say, if you have the necessary expertise as well as an AWS certification, no company can refuse you! This is a known fact. And the most effective method to do so is to begin working on a project. Start working on your own project using the skills and information you gained while completing the AWS SysOps Administrator exam. Furthermore, this may be used as an assignment to assess your abilities, as well as a benefit during the interview to demonstrate your abilities to the company.
2. Get Certified
AWS offers various certifications for IT professionals, including the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate certification. This certification validates your skills and knowledge in operating, managing, and deploying applications and services on the AWS platform.
3. Develop relevant skills
To become a successful AWS SysOps Administrator, you should have a strong understanding of AWS infrastructure, networking, and security concepts. You should also be proficient in Linux system administration and scripting languages such as Python and Bash.
4. Stay up-to-date with the latest trends
Cloud computing and AWS infrastructure are constantly evolving, and it’s essential to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies. Attend industry conferences, read blogs, and network with other IT professionals to stay informed.
5. Preparing for the job interview
The next stage is to secure a top position in the industry after passing the AWS certification and acquiring hands-on experience. You should also be notified that being an AWS SysOps Administrator will not only help you acquire a good job but also a high-paying compensation. However, preparing for an interview will be a task for you due to the large competition. So, to get advancement in this, you can take reference from Top AWS SysOps Administrator interview questions available for SysOps Administrator which can be easily available online. Further, using this will not only help you in cracking interviews. But will also help you get a revision to make your knowledge solid.
Salary:
Further, talking about the salary, in India, the average salary is Rs 557,857 per year, which includes bonuses and profit-sharing. Furthermore, because SysOps Administrator is in great demand, businesses want candidates to have the necessary expertise and skills.
6. Check for recertification
AWS Certifications have a three-year validity period. We expect you to demonstrate your continuous skill through a procedure called recertification to keep your AWS Certified designation. Further, recertification enhances the total value of your AWS Certification by demonstrating to individuals and employers that your certification covers the most up-to-date AWS knowledge, skills, and best practices.
Is AWS SysOps Admin Worth it?
Yes, becoming an AWS SysOps Administrator can be worth it for several reasons:
- In-demand skillset: AWS is one of the leading cloud computing providers, and the demand for professionals with expertise in AWS services and infrastructure is high. As an AWS SysOps Administrator, you can gain a valuable skill set that is in demand in the job market.
- High earning potential: According to industry reports, AWS SysOps Administrators can earn a competitive salary, with an average annual salary ranging from $80,000 to $120,000 USD, depending on location and experience.
- Career growth opportunities: AWS offers various career growth opportunities, including advanced certifications and career paths in areas such as cloud architecture and DevOps. As an AWS SysOps Administrator, you can leverage your skills and knowledge to explore new opportunities and advance in your career.
- Industry recognition: AWS certifications are recognized globally and can help you stand out in the job market. Achieving an AWS SysOps Administrator certification validates your skills and knowledge in operating, managing, and deploying applications and services on the AWS platform.
Exam Study Resources
- AWS Learning Paths– This learning path is made for software , voice developers, solutions architects, voice designers, UI developers, and others. The candidate can begin their learning from here.
- Testprep Online Tutorials– AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate (SOA-C02) Online Tutorial enhances knowledge and gives an understanding of the exam domains. Additionally, they also cover exam details and policies. Therefore learning with Online Tutorials will result in strengthening your preparation.
- Testprep Online Course- Online courses are one of the most interactive paths of qualifying for the exam. Subject matter experts create them. Further, the course will provide the candidate a solid foundation of the exam concepts. Additionally, this online course guides the candidate along the learning curve.
- Try Practice Test– AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate (SOA-C02) Practice exams are the one who ensures the candidate about their preparation. The practice test will help the candidates to acknowledge their weak areas so that they can work on them. There are many practice tests available on the internet nowadays, so the candidate can choose which they want. We at Testprep training also offer practice tests which are very helpful for the ones who are preparing.
Click the following banner for the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate (SOA-C02) free practice test!