AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional Study Guide

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The AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional exam checks if a person can create, launch, and handle applications on the AWS platform using DevOps methods. It covers various topics such as continuous integration and delivery, using code to set up infrastructure, monitoring, logging, and security. To pass this exam, you need to know about the following areas:

  • As an AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional, you must have a deep understanding of the principles and practices of DevOps, including continuous integration, continuous delivery, infrastructure as code, and automated testing.
  • You should have a solid understanding of various AWS services and tools such as EC2, RDS, Lambda, CloudFormation, CodePipeline, and CodeDeploy. You should be able to architect and deploy complex, scalable, and highly available systems on AWS.
  • You need to be good at using a scripting language like Python, Ruby, or Bash. You should also have experience with automation tools like Ansible, Puppet, or Chef. And it’s important to know how to use Git to keep track of changes.
  • As a DevOps Engineer, your job is to find and fix problems in complex systems. You need to be good at figuring out issues fast and explaining what you find in a clear way to others. Also, you should be great at working with different teams to get things done together.

In this blog, we’ll look at the important ideas you need to understand to pass the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional exam. We’ll also give you useful tips, suggest materials to study, and offer resources to help you prepare for the test. Whether you’re experienced in DevOps or just starting your career, this blog will give you helpful advice to become an AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional. Let’s begin!

Exam Objectives

The AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional exam is designed to test your ability to:

  1. Designing and managing continuous delivery systems and methodologies on AWS.
  2. Understand, implement, and automate security controls, governance processes, and compliance validation on AWS.
  3. Defining and deploying monitoring, metrics, and logging systems on AWS.
  4. Implement and manage AWS resource orchestration and automation using AWS CloudFormation and other tools.
  5. Understand and implement hybrid and multi-region architectures, and apply network design principles to meet workload requirements on AWS.
  6. Implement, manage, and operate scalable, highly available, and fault-tolerant systems on AWS.

Glossary for AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional Terminology

  1. Agile: A methodology that emphasizes flexibility, collaboration, and customer satisfaction in software development.
  2. Automation: Using technology to complete tasks without the need for humans to be involved.
  3. CI/CD: Continuous integration and continuous delivery/deployment are a group of methods to make software delivery faster and more dependable.
  4. Containerization: A way to package and run software in a portable and efficient manner.
  5. Deployment: The process of making software available for use by users or systems.
  6. DevOps: A culture and set of practices that combines software development and IT operations for faster and more reliable software delivery.
  7. Infrastructure as code: A practice of managing infrastructure using code to achieve consistency and reproducibility.
  8. ITIL: A framework for IT service management that emphasizes best practices for service delivery and customer satisfaction.
  9. Jenkins: An open-source automation server for building, testing, and deploying software.
  10. Kubernetes: An open-source container orchestration platform for managing containerized applications.
  11. Microservices: Creating software by breaking it into small, standalone services that can be managed and expanded individually.
  12. Monitoring: The practice of observing and measuring the performance and availability of software systems.
  13. Orchestration: The automation and coordination of complex tasks and processes.
  14. Pipeline: A set of stages that code goes through, from development to deployment.
  15. Puppet: An open-source configuration management tool for managing infrastructure as code.
  16. Quality assurance: The process of ensuring that software meets specified quality criteria.
  17. Release management: The process of planning, scheduling, and controlling the release of software.
  18. Scrum: An agile methodology for managing and completing complex projects.
  19. Service-level agreement (SLA): A contract that specifies the level of service a customer can expect from a service provider.
  20. Source control: The practice of managing changes to software code using version control systems.
  21. Testing: The process of verifying that software meets specified requirements and functions as intended.
  22. Toolchain: A set of software tools used to develop, build, test, and deploy software.
  23. Version control system (VCS): A tool for managing changes to software code over time.
  24. Waterfall: A traditional project management methodology that follows a linear, sequential approach.
  25. Zero downtime deployment: A deployment technique that ensures that users can access a system without interruption during the deployment process.

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer-Professional Study Guide

Make your thoughts free and construct a study schedule that you are most comfortable with when studying for this certification test. To get an edge in this, it is necessary to be stress-free, and focused, and to gain expertise in the AWS environment. Here is a step-by-step study plan to assist you on your way to earning your certification.

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional Preparation Guide

Step 1: Review the Exam Guide

The AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional Exam Guide is a comprehensive document that outlines the structure of the exam, the topics that will be covered, and the objectives of the exam. This guide is important for those getting ready for the exam because it tells you what to anticipate on the day of the test. Start by reading the Exam Guide thoroughly to grasp the test’s structure, which consists of multiple-choice and multiple-answer questions. It also gives you insight into how hard the exam is, how much time you have, and what score you need to pass.

Module 1: Understanding SDLC Automation (22%)

1.1: Implement CI/CD pipelines.

Required Knowledge 

  • Software development lifecycle (SDLC) concepts, phases, and models
  • Pipeline deployment patterns for single- and multi-account environments

Skills 

1.2: Integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines.

Required Knowledge 

  • Different types of tests (for example, unit tests, integration tests, acceptance tests, user interface tests, security scans)
  • Reasonable use of different types of tests at different stages of the CI/CD pipeline

Skills 

1.3 Build and manage artifacts.

Required Knowledge 

  • Artifact use cases and secure management
  • Methods to create and generate artifacts
  • Artifact lifecycle considerations

Skills 

  • Creating and configuring artifact repositories (for example, AWS CodeArtifact, Amazon S3, Amazon Elastic Container Registry [Amazon ECR]) (AWS Documentation: Create a repository)
  • Configuring build tools for generating artifacts (for example, CodeBuild, AWS Lambda) (AWS Documentation: Build specification reference for CodeBuild)
  • Automating Amazon EC2 instance and container image build processes (for example, EC2 Image Builder) (AWS Documentation: What is EC2 Image Builder?)

1. 4: Implement deployment strategies for instance, container, and serverless environments.

Required Knowledge 

  • Deployment methodologies for various platforms (for example, Amazon EC2, Amazon Elastic Container Service [Amazon ECS], Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service [Amazon EKS], Lambda)
  • Application storage patterns (for example, Amazon Elastic File System [Amazon EFS], Amazon S3, Amazon Elastic Block Store [Amazon EBS])
  • Mutable deployment patterns in contrast to immutable deployment patterns
  • Tools and services available for distributing code (for example, CodeDeploy, EC2 Image Builder)

Skills 

Module 2: Understanding Configuration Management and IaC (17%)

2.1 Define cloud infrastructure and reusable components to provision and manage systems throughout their lifecycle.

Required Knowledge 

  • Infrastructure as code (IaC) options and tools for AWS
  • Change management processes for IaC-based platforms
  • Configurations management services and strategies

Skills 

2.2 Deploy automation to create, onboard, and secure AWS accounts in a multiaccount/multi-Region environment.

Required Knowledge 

  • AWS account structures, best practices, and related AWS services

Skills 

2. 3: Design and build automated solutions for complex tasks and large-scale environments.

Required Knowledge 

  • AWS services and solutions to automate tasks and processes
  • Methods and strategies to interact with the AWS software-defined infrastructure

Skills 

  • Automating system inventory, configuration, and patch management (for example, Systems Manager, AWS Config) (AWS Documentation: AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager)
  • Developing Lambda function automations for complex scenarios (for example, AWS SDKs, Lambda, AWS Step Functions) (AWS Documentation: Getting started with Lambda)
  • Automating the configuration of software applications to the desired state (for example, OpsWorks, Systems Manager State Manager) (AWS Documentation: AWS Systems Manager State Manager)
  • Maintaining software compliance (for example, Systems Manager) (AWS Documentation: AWS Systems Manager Compliance)

Module 3: Understanding Resilient Cloud Solutions (15%)

3.1 Implement highly available solutions to meet resilience and business requirements.

Required Knowledge 

  • Multi-AZ and multi-Region deployments (for example, compute layer, data layer)
  • SLAs
  • Replication and failover methods for stateful services
  • Techniques to achieve high availability (for example, Multi-AZ, multi-Region)

Skills 

3.2 Implement solutions that are scalable to meet business requirements.

Required Knowledge 

  • Appropriate metrics for scaling services
  • Loosely coupled and distributed architectures
  • Serverless architectures
  • Container platforms

Skills 

3.3 Implement automated recovery processes to meet RTO/RPO requirements.

Required Knowledge 

  • Disaster recovery concepts (for example, RTO, RPO)
  • Backup and recovery strategies (for example, pilot light, warm standby)
  • Recovery procedures

Skills 

Module 4: Monitoring and Logging (15%)

4.1 Configure the collection, aggregation, and storage of logs and metrics.

Required Knowledge 

  • How to monitor applications and infrastructure
  • Amazon CloudWatch metrics (for example, namespaces, metrics, dimensions, and resolution)
  • Real-time log ingestion
  • Encryption options for at-rest and in-transit logs and metrics (for example, client-side and server-side, AWS Key Management Service [AWS KMS])
  • Security configurations (for example, IAM roles and permissions to allow for log collection)

Skills 

4.2 Audit, monitor, and analyze logs and metrics to detect issues.

Required Knowledge 

  • Anomaly detection alarms (for example, CloudWatch anomaly detection)
  • Common CloudWatch metrics and logs (for example, CPU utilization with Amazon EC2, queue length with Amazon RDS, 5xx errors with an Application Load Balancer)
  • Amazon Inspector and common assessment templates
  • AWS Config rules
  • AWS CloudTrail log events

Skills 

4.3 Automate monitoring and event management of complex environments.

Required Knowledge 

  • Event-driven, asynchronous design patterns (for example, S3 Event Notifications or Amazon EventBridge events to Amazon Simple Notification Service [Amazon SNS] or Lambda)
  • Capabilities of auto scaling a variety of AWS services (for example, EC2 Auto Scaling groups, RDS storage auto scaling, DynamoDB, ECS capacity provider, EKS autoscalers)
  • Alert notification and action capabilities (for example, CloudWatch alarms to Amazon SNS, Lambda, EC2 automatic recovery)
  • Health check capabilities in AWS services (for example, Application Load Balancer target groups, Route 53)

Skills 

Module 5: Incident and Event Response (14%)

5.1 Manage event sources to process, notify, and take action in response to events.

Required Knowledge 

  • AWS services that generate, capture, and process events (for example, AWS Health, EventBridge, CloudTrail, CloudWatch Events)
  • Event-driven architectures (for example, fan out, event streaming, queuing)

Skills 

  • Integrating AWS event sources (for example, AWS Health, EventBridge, CloudTrail, CloudWatch Events) (AWS Documentation: Events from AWS services)
  • Building event processing workflows (for example, Amazon Simple Queue Service [Amazon SQS], Kinesis, Amazon SNS, Lambda, Step Functions) (AWS Documentation: Using Lambda with Amazon SQS)

5.2 Implement configuration changes in response to events.

Required Knowledge 

  • Fleet management services (for example, Systems Manager, AWS Auto Scaling)
  • Configuration management services (for example, AWS Config)

Skills 

5.3 Troubleshoot system and application failures.

Required Knowledge 

  • AWS metrics and logging services (for example, CloudWatch, X-Ray)
  • AWS service health services (for example, AWS Health, CloudWatch, Systems Manager OpsCenter)
  • Root cause analysis

Skills 

  • Analyzing failed deployments (for example, AWS CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CloudFormation, CloudWatch synthetic monitoring) (AWS Documentation: Monitoring deployments with Amazon CloudWatch tools)
  • Analyzing incidents regarding failed processes (for example, auto scaling, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS) (AWS Documentation: Autoscaling)

Module 6: Security and Compliance (17%)

6.1 Implement techniques for identity and access management at scale.

Required Knowledge 

  • Appropriate usage of different IAM entities for human and machine access (for example, users, groups, roles, identity providers, identity-based policies, resource-based policies, session policies)
  • Identity federation techniques (for example, using IAM identity providers and AWS Single Sign-On)
  • Permission management delegation by using IAM permissions boundaries
  • Organizational SCPs

Skills 

6.2 Apply automation for security controls and data protection.

Required Knowledge 

  • Network security components (for example, security groups, network ACLs, routing, AWS Network Firewall, AWS WAF, AWS Shield)
  • Certificates and public key infrastructure (PKI)
  • Data management (for example, data classification, encryption, key management, access controls)

Skills 

6.3 Implement security monitoring and auditing solutions.

Required Knowledge 

  • Security auditing services and features (for example, CloudTrail, AWS Config, VPC Flow Logs, CloudFormation drift detection)
  • AWS services for identifying security vulnerabilities and events (for example, GuardDuty, Amazon Inspector, IAM Access Analyzer, AWS Config)
  • Common cloud security threats (for example, insecure web traffic, exposed AWS access keys, S3 buckets with public access enabled or encryption disabled)

Skills 

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional Online Tutorials

Step 2: Go through the AWS Learning Path

This learning route is for those who wish to learn how to create, deploy, and manage apps in the AWS Cloud using the most prevalent DevOps practices. As you work toward AWS Certification, you’ll develop technical abilities.

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional Learning Path
Source: AWS

Step 3: Take an Instructor-led Training

The official instructor-led training for the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional exam is a three-day course that provides hands-on experience with AWS services and tools commonly used in DevOps workflows. The course is led by an AWS-accredited instructor who has experience working with DevOps teams and understands the challenges involved in developing and deploying applications on AWS.

The course covers a wide range of topics related to DevOps on AWS, including:

  1. Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines: The course covers how to build, test, and deploy applications using CI/CD pipelines on AWS. It covers best practices for creating scalable and reliable pipelines and explores tools like AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeBuild, and AWS CodeDeploy.
  2. Infrastructure as code: The course covers how to use infrastructure as code (IaC) to manage and deploy infrastructure on AWS. It explores tools like AWS CloudFormation and AWS Elastic Beanstalk and covers best practices for creating reusable templates and managing changes to infrastructure over time.
  3. Monitoring and logging: The course covers how to use AWS services like Amazon CloudWatch and AWS X-Ray to monitor and troubleshoot applications running on AWS. It explores how to set up alarms and notifications, and how to use logging to diagnose and resolve issues.
  4. Security and compliance: The course covers best practices for securing applications and infrastructure on AWS, including how to use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to control access to resources, how to implement encryption, and how to comply with industry standards and regulations.
  5. High availability and fault tolerance: The course covers how to design and implement applications on AWS that are highly available and fault tolerant. It explores techniques like AWS Auto-scaling. AWS Fault Tolerance, and AWS Load balancing cover best practices for ensuring that applications can survive and recover from failures.

At the end of the course, participants will be better prepared to take the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional exam. They will have a deeper understanding of how to develop and deploy applications on AWS, and they will be familiar with the tools and services commonly used in DevOps workflows.

Step 4: Refer to AWS DevOps Engineer Professional Whitepapers

AWS offers a wide range of whitepapers that cover various topics related to AWS services and best practices. Reading these whitepapers is crucial as they provide in-depth knowledge about AWS services and their applications in real-world scenarios. The whitepapers cover topics such as cloud security, networking, DevOps, and more. You should focus on the whitepapers that are relevant to the exam objectives and go through them thoroughly to ensure you have a solid understanding of the concepts covered.

Step 5: Take AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional Practice Exam

Taking practice exams is a great way to check how well you know the exam topics and find out where you need to get better. The AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional Practice Exams are made to be like the real exam, so doing them will give you a good idea of what the real test will be like. It’s a good idea to take several practice exams and look at the answers to each question to understand why one choice is right and others are wrong. This will help you see what you don’t know well and work on improving it.

Step 6: Use AWS Services

The best way to learn AWS is to use it. AWS offers a range of services that can help you build, deploy, and manage applications on the cloud. Using these services will give you practical experience and help you understand how they work in real-world scenarios. You can start by creating an AWS account and exploring the services such as EC2, S3, Lambda, CloudFormation, and more. Additionally, you can create a test environment and practice deploying applications, setting up monitoring, and managing the infrastructure.

Step 7: Join the AWS Community

You can join online AWS study groups and forums to ask others who have previously taken the test or are studying for it about their concerns. You may even give each other tests to determine how prepared you are. Clearing your doubts can enhance your self-confidence and allow you to see into your weak areas. The conversation will aid in determining which portions require more preparation and which parts are adequately prepared.

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional Online Course

Step 8: Learn from Books

AWS Certified Devops Engineer Professional Books are a reliable learning resource. For the security speciality test, there are a variety of publications available, which you may obtain online or in libraries. The following are some of the books that might help you arm yourself:

Continuous Delivery and DevOps - A Quickstart Guide - Third Edition
AWS Automation Cookbook: Continuous Integration and DevOps
  • AWS Automation Cookbook by Nikit Swaraj
  • Continuous Delivery and DevOps – Quickstart by Paul Swartout
  • Implementing DevOps on AWS by Veselin kantsev
  • Effective DevOps with AWS by Nathenial Felson

Step 9: Evaluate your preparation with Practice Tests

Practice exams are the fundamental and crucial part of preparing for your exam. So, right now, all you need are the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional practice tests. Solve as many sample papers and test sets as you can to figure out where you stand currently and how much more you need to prepare. There are many practice exams available online, so be sure to pick a reliable and trustworthy one to complete your preparation. These practice tests help you evaluate yourself and build confidence, and they also let you see how well you’re doing. Let’s Start Practising Now!

Expert’s Corner

The AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional certification is a challenging exam that requires a solid understanding of AWS services and their applications in real-world scenarios. To prepare for the exam, you should follow the tips we have provided, use the resources we have listed, and gain practical experience by using AWS services. Passing the exam will demonstrate your expertise in DevOps and open up new career opportunities.

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional practice test
Stand out from the crowd with advanced learning skills and expert tutorials on AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional. Start your preparations Now!
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