Alibaba SysOps Administrator study guide
Alibaba SysOps Administrator · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Alibaba Cloud Certified Professional (ACP) SysOps Administrator credential is aimed at engineers who run day-to-day operations on Alibaba Cloud rather than design architectures from scratch. It suits cloud operations staff, SREs, and system administrators who already touch ECS, VPC, OSS, and RAM and want independent evidence that they can keep those services healthy. The Alibaba SysOps Administrator study guide has 8 sections and about 2,059 words.
01ECS and Compute Operations
ECS instances are the core compute primitive. A candidate must know the instance lifecycle (Pending, Running, Stopped, Stopping, Starting), the distinction between Stop and Release , and how billing mode interacts with both.
286 words, about 1 min02Networking: VPC, SLB, DNS, Connectivity
VPC is the foundation: a private network with a CIDR block, divided into vSwitches (subnets) bound to a zone. A candidate must understand that a vSwitch is zone-specific, so multi-AZ design means multiple vSwitches.
274 words, about 1 min03Storage and Data Management
Storage spans block (cloud disks), object (OSS), and file (NAS). For ECS disks, know the types (ESSD, SSD, ultra, basic), that you can resize a disk but must also extend the filesystem inside the OS, and that snapshots are incremental and stored independently of the disk.
271 words, about 1 min04Security, Identity and Access Management
RAM (Resource Access Management) governs identity: users, groups, roles, and policies. A candidate must understand that permissions are granted via policies (system or custom), that RAM users are distinct from the Alibaba Cloud account (root), and that STS temporary credentials and roles are the secure way to grant cross-account or service access.
264 words, about 1 min05Monitoring, Alerting and Logging
CloudMonitor collects metrics (CPU, memory via agent, disk, network) and supports alarm rules with thresholds, silence periods, and notification contacts. A candidate must know that some metrics (like memory and process) require the CloudMonitor agent, while host-level metrics are available by default.
237 words, about 1 min06Automation and Infrastructure as Code
Automation centers on ROS (Resource Orchestration Service), Cloud Assistant, and the OpenAPI/CLI. ROS uses templates (JSON/YAML) to define a stack of resources with dependencies, parameters, and outputs.
253 words, about 1 min07High Availability, Scaling and Disaster Recovery
HA design combines multi-AZ deployment, load balancing, and auto scaling. A candidate must understand scaling groups: scaling configuration (instance template), scaling rules (target tracking or step), and the lifecycle (scale out/in, cooldown, health check).
221 words, about 1 min08Troubleshooting and Operational Best Practices
Troubleshooting is systematic: identify the layer (instance, network, storage, identity, application) and use the right tool. For connectivity, check security groups, route tables, NAT/SNAT, and SLB health checks in order.
253 words, about 1 min