How hard is AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional Exam?

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AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional is a highly respected certification that demonstrates your proficiency in designing, deploying, and managing applications on AWS. It is a challenging exam that tests your knowledge and skills in various areas of DevOps, including continuous integration and delivery, infrastructure as code, monitoring, and logging, and security and compliance.

In this blog, we will take a closer look at the structure and content of the exam, as well as the preparation required to pass it. We will also provide tips and strategies to help you prepare for the exam, including study resources and practice exams. Whether you are a seasoned DevOps professional looking to enhance your skills or a newcomer to the field, this blog will help you determine the level of difficulty of the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional exam and provide you with the information you need to prepare for it effectively. So, let’s dive in!

Abilities Validated by AWS DevOps Engineer Exam
  • Firstly, implementing and managing continuous delivery systems and methodologies on AWS.
  • Secondly, implementing and automating security controls, governance processes, and compliance validation.
  • Also, defining and deploying monitoring, metrics, and logging systems on AWS.
  • Further, implementing systems that are very available, scalable, and self-healing on the AWS platform.
  • Additionally, designing, managing and maintaining tools to automate operational processes.

Glossary of AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional Terminology

  1. AWS: Amazon Web Services, a cloud computing platform provided by Amazon.
  2. DevOps: The practice of merging development and operations teams to improve the efficiency of software delivery and operation.
  3. CI/CD: Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment, a software development practice that automates the building, testing, and deployment of applications.
  4. Infrastructure as Code (IaC): The practice of managing infrastructure through code, rather than manual processes.
  5. CloudFormation: An AWS service that allows users to create and manage AWS resources using templates in JSON or YAML format.
  6. Terraform: A tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure, using declarative language.
  7. Docker: A platform for building, shipping, and running applications in containers.
  8. Kubernetes: An open-source platform for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.
  9. Serverless: A cloud computing model where the cloud provider manages the infrastructure and users only pay for the resources used.
  10. Lambda: An AWS service that allows users to run code without provisioning or managing servers.
  11. CodeDeploy: An AWS service that automates code deployments to any instance, including on-premises instances.
  12. CodePipeline: An AWS service that enables continuous delivery of software by automating the release process.
  13. CodeCommit: An AWS service for hosting and managing private Git repositories.
  14. CloudWatch: An AWS service for monitoring and managing AWS resources and applications.
  15. Elastic Beanstalk: An AWS service that makes it easy to deploy and manage applications in a scalable and fault-tolerant environment.

Exam preparation resources for the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional exam

Here are some official exam preparation resources for the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional exam:

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional (DOP-C01) Exam Format

Let us now get to the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional exam is 180 minutes long. Though the examination comprises 80 questions as the number of questions keeps on changing over time. Speaking of which, the candidate may encounter Multiple Choice and Multi-Response Questions. However, there are no prerequisites. And, as far as the language of the exam is concerned. The exam is only available in only 4 languages. Further, these include English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), Korean.

Exam Name AWS DevOps Engineer Professional CertificationCode DOP-C01
Exam Duration 170 MinutesFormat Multiple Choice and Multi-Response Questions
Prerequisites NILNumber of Questions 80 Questions
Passing Score 75%Exam Fee $300
Exam Language English, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified ChineseValidity 3 years

AWS DevOps Engineer Exam Outline

The AWS Certified Devops Engineer Professional course outline covers the following topics –

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 

How difficult is AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional Exam?

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional Exam is one of the difficult AWS certifications one can take to elevate one career. The exam covers various scenario-based questions with long descriptions that make it difficult to comprehend the question. The candidate has to prove their technical expertise in provisioning, operating, and managing distributed application systems on the AWS platform. But the key to successfully passing an exam is by preparing right.

As the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional exam validates the candidate’s technical expertise so they must understand the technologies and how they integrate with each other. Some questions are really tricky, so make sure you understand the difference among the terms and choose the best solution in the real environment. Moreover, there is no straightforward rule to ace the exam. Therefore, the candidate needs to have access to the right resources to enrich their learning and broaden their knowledge horizon. Refer to the following learning resources!

Learning Resources to Refer!

  • Exploring AWS Learning Paths– This learning path is designed for software developers, voice developers, solutions architects, UI developers, voice designers, and others. Majorly for those who perform a role involving Alexa skill-building. Also, anyone with beginner-level coding experience who wants to learn to build, test, and publish Amazon Alexa skills can refer to this.
  • Testprep Online Tutorials– AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional Online Tutorial enhances your knowledge and provides a depth understanding of the exam concepts. 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 Devops Engineer Professional 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. 
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