Why This Cheat Sheet Matters for SOA-C03
This cheat sheet covers the most important Amazon VPC concepts tested on the SOA-C03 (AWS CloudOps Engineer Associate) certification exam. It contains 3 sections with 12 key points that you should memorize before exam day. Practice VPC operations, subnet routing, NAT gateways, security groups, NACLs, VPC endpoints, flow logs, peering, and troubleshooting connectivity. Use this as a quick-reference guide during your final review sessions.
3Sections
12Key Points
Traffic Path
- Route tables decide where subnet traffic goes.
- Security groups are stateful and attached to network interfaces.
- NACLs are stateless and apply at subnet boundaries.
- VPC Flow Logs capture accepted or rejected traffic metadata, not payloads.
Connectivity
- NAT gateways allow private subnet instances to initiate outbound internet access.
- Gateway endpoints support S3 and DynamoDB private access from a VPC.
- Interface endpoints use PrivateLink for private access to many AWS services.
- Transit Gateway provides hub-and-spoke connectivity across many VPCs and networks.
Exam Cues
- Need private AWS service access: choose a VPC endpoint.
- Need centralized many-VPC routing: Transit Gateway.
- Need identify rejected traffic: VPC Flow Logs.
- Need outbound-only internet for private instances: NAT gateway.
Practice VPC Questions
Put your knowledge to the test with practice questions.