Are you planning to take an AWS Certified Devops Engineer Professional Exam? Have you made up your mind to step in the fields of Cloud Computing? Well, then you have landed in the right place as the opportunities to learn and accelerate in this field are enormous. You just need a right kick start to begin your career. The AWS Certified Devops Engineer-Professional certification exam is the way to move forward in your professional career and set a benchmark. It will help you explore new opportunities and will provide you with better jobs.
Therefore, in this article, we will help you sail through all the required exam details require to pass the exam. Furthermore, we will be adding a few authentic learning resources to ease your process of preparation.
Introduction to AWS
Amazon Web Services or AWS is a platform provided by Amazon which offers an array of cloud computing services. AWS is a profusion of different cloud computing services and applications with higher ease of use, flexibility, and reliability. The basic agenda is to assess the candidate’s technical skills and operating skills. Moreover, the certification offered by AWS helps to enhance and upgrade skills for equal footing in the world of Cloud Computing.
AWS offers an array of Certifications for all levels of learning as well as certification based on your role profile.
Benefits of AWS Certification
Now you will be thinking that how much is it worth to get AWS certified? Well, there are some benefits that are listed below which will help you become more clear with your thoughts and help you attain the certification.
Some of the key benefits of becoming AWS Certified includes –
- The certification boosts your understanding of AWS tools like Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, and AWS IAM, among others. Moreover, it assists you in improving your skills and abilities.
- AWS certification also helps to explore how multiple AWS services are connected and magnify each other.
- You learn by trying a wide variety of useful AWS services that most practitioners some of which you might not be unaware of.
- The certification provides a better understanding of AWS pricing and billing, enabling you to create solutions that are more cost-effective.
Overview: AWS DevOps Engineer Exam
The AWS Certified Devops Engineer Professional exam assesses your knowledge to use the most common DevOps patterns, i.e. to develop, deploy, and maintain applications in the AWS Cloud. Also, you will be required to enhance your technical skills as you proceed toward AWS Certification.
As an AWS DevOps Engineer, it is essential for you to pass the AWS Developer Associate and AWS SysOps Administrator certification Exam. Moreover, for this certification, you should be proficient in an advance level programming language.
You may also refer to the below DevOps Learning Path for a better understanding.
Exam Details
Now we will highlight the basic exam details considered crucial before you start preparing for the exam. The AWS DevOps engineer exam is 170 minutes long. Though the examination comprises 80 questions as the number of questions keep 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.
Prerequisites
For those interested in taking the exam, they must meet the prerequisites for the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional certification:
- Firstly, you should have a minimum of 2 years’ experience handling, setting up, and overseeing AWS environments.
- Secondly, you need to be skilled in an advanced programming language.
- Lastly, it’s essential to have a solid grasp of operational procedures, modern development practices, and constructing highly automated infrastructure.
Course Outline
AWS certification DevOps certification exam will acknowledge the following 6 domains based on which you will be tested. In other words, each domain will contribute to a total percentage of your overall score.it will help you make a better understanding of how to study and which areas need to be focused especially in terms of the marks. The list of AWS Certified Devops Engineer Professional Course domains are stated below:
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
- Configuring code, image, and artifact repositories
- Using version control to integrate pipelines with application environments
- Setting up build processes (for example, AWS CodeBuild)
- • Managing build and deployment secrets (for example, AWS Secrets Manager, AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store)
- Determining appropriate deployment strategies (for example, AWS CodeDeploy)
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
- Running builds or tests when generating pull requests or code merges (for example, AWS CodeCommit, CodeBuild)
- Running load/stress tests, performance benchmarking, and application testing at scale
- Measuring application health based on application exit codes
- Automating unit tests and code coverage
- Invoking AWS services in a pipeline for testing
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])
- Configuring build tools for generating artifacts (for example, CodeBuild, AWS Lambda)
- Automating Amazon EC2 instance and container image build processes (for example, 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
- Configuring security permissions to allow access to artifact repositories (for example, AWS Identity and Access Management [IAM], CodeArtifact)
- Configuring deployment agents (for example, CodeDeploy agent)
- Troubleshooting deployment issues
- Using different deployment methods (for example, blue/green, canary)
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
- Composing and deploying IaC templates (for example, AWS Serverless Application Model [AWS SAM], AWS CloudFormation, AWS Cloud Development Kit [AWS CDK])
- Applying AWS CloudFormation StackSets across multiple accounts and AWS Regions
- Determining optimal configuration management services (for example, AWS OpsWorks, AWS Systems Manager, AWS Config, AWS AppConfig)
- Implementing infrastructure patterns, governance controls, and security standards into reusable IaC templates (for example, AWS Service Catalog, CloudFormation modules, AWS CDK)
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
- Standardizing and automating account provisioning and configuration
- Creating, consolidating, and centrally managing accounts (for example, AWS Organizations, AWS Control Tower)
- Applying IAM solutions for multi-account and complex organization structures (for example, SCPs, assuming roles)
- Implementing and developing governance and security controls at scale (AWS Config, AWS Control Tower, AWS Security Hub, Amazon Detective, Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Service Catalog, SCPs)
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)
- • Developing Lambda function automations for complex scenarios (for example, AWS SDKs, Lambda, AWS Step Functions)
- Automating the configuration of software applications to the desired state (for example, OpsWorks, Systems Manager State Manager)
- Maintaining software compliance (for example, Systems Manager)
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
- Translating business requirements into technical resiliency needs
- Identifying and remediating single points of failure in existing workloads
- Enabling cross-Region solutions where available (for example, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon RDS, Amazon Route 53, Amazon S3, Amazon CloudFront)
- Configuring load balancing to support cross-AZ services
- Configuring applications and related services to support multiple Availability Zones and Regions while minimizing downtime
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
- Identifying and remediating scaling issues
- Identifying and implementing appropriate auto scaling, load balancing, and caching solutions
- Deploying container-based applications (for example, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS)
- Deploying workloads in multiple AWS Regions for global scalability
- Configuring serverless applications (for example, Amazon API Gateway, Lambda, AWS Fargate)
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
- Testing failover of Multi-AZ/multi-Region workloads (for example, Amazon RDS, Amazon Aurora, Route 53, CloudFront)
- Identifying and implementing appropriate cross-Region backup and recovery strategies (for example, AWS Backup, Amazon S3, Systems Manager)
- Configuring a load balancer to recover from backend failure
Module 4: Monitoring and Logging
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
- Securely storing and managing logs
- Creating CloudWatch metrics from log events by using metric filters
- Creating CloudWatch metric streams (for example, Amazon S3 or Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose options)
- Collecting custom metrics (for example, using the CloudWatch agent)
- Managing log storage lifecycles (for example, S3 lifecycles, CloudWatch log group retention)
- Processing log data by using CloudWatch log subscriptions (for example, Kinesis, Lambda, Amazon OpenSearch Service)
- Searching log data by using filter and pattern syntax or CloudWatch Logs Insights
- Configuring encryption of log data (for example, AWS KMS)
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
- Building CloudWatch dashboards and Amazon QuickSight visualizations
- Associating CloudWatch alarms with CloudWatch metrics (standard and custom)
- Configuring AWS X-Ray for different services (for example, containers, API Gateway, Lambda)
- Analyzing real-time log streams (for example, using Kinesis Data Streams)
- Analyzing logs with AWS services (for example, Amazon Athena, CloudWatch Logs Insights)
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
- Configuring solutions for auto scaling (for example, DynamoDB, EC2 Auto Scaling groups, RDS storage auto scaling, ECS capacity provider)
- Creating CloudWatch custom metrics and metric filters, alarms, and notifications (for example, Amazon SNS, Lambda)
- Configuring S3 events to process log files (for example, by using Lambda), and deliver log files to another destination (for example, OpenSearch Service, CloudWatch Logs) Configuring EventBridge to send notifications based on a particular event pattern
- Installing and configuring agents on EC2 instances (for example, AWS Systems Manager Agen [SSM Agent], CloudWatch agent)
- Configuring AWS Config rules to remediate issues
- Configuring health checks (for example, Route 53, Application Load Balancer)
Module 5: Incident and Event Response
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)
- Building event processing workflows (for example, Amazon Simple Queue Service [Amazon SQS], Kinesis, Amazon SNS, Lambda, Step Functions)
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
- Applying configuration changes to systems
- Modifying infrastructure configurations in response to events
- Remediating a non-desired system state
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)
- Analyzing incidents regarding failed processes (for example, auto scaling, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS)
Module 6: Security and Compliance
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
- Designing policies to enforce least privilege access
- Implementing role-based and attribute-based access control patterns
- Automating credential rotation for machine identities (for example, Secrets Manager)
- Managing permissions to control access to human and machine identities (for example, enabling multi-factor authentication [MFA], AWS Security Token Service [AWS STS], IAM profiles)
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
- Automating the application of security controls in multi-account and multi-Region environments (for example, Security Hub, Organizations, AWS Control Tower, Systems Manager)
- Combining security controls to apply defense in depth (for example, AWS Certificate Manager [ACM], AWS WAF, AWS Config, AWS Config rules, Security Hub, GuardDuty, security groups, network ACLs, Amazon Detective, Network Firewall)
- Automating the discovery of sensitive data at scale (for example, Amazon Macie)
- Encrypting data in transit and data at rest (for example, AWS KMS, AWS CloudHSM, ACM)
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
- Implementing robust security auditing
- Configuring alerting based on unexpected or anomalous security events
- Configuring service and application logging (for example, CloudTrail, CloudWatch Logs)
- Analyzing logs, metrics, and security findings
For a more clear understanding of these domains, refer to the table given below along with their respective weightage.
Preparatory Guide for AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional Exam
While preparing for this certification exam just make your mind free and create a study plan in which you are most comfortable. It is important to be stress-free, focused and also get experience in the AWS environment to get some advantage in this. Here is the AWS Certified Devops Engineer Professional Study Guide that highlights resources you should follow for the exam preparation:
Learning Resource1: Review the exam objectives
First things first, you don’t have the entire time in the universe to prepare for the exam. That being said, basically what’s important for an individual before taking this exam is to have complete research about the exam pattern and concepts. Therefore, it becomes important on an individual’s part to do a smart study where you need to focus on the topics that carry more weightage. Doing so will help you prepare better for the exam.
Learning Resource 2: Online AWS training programs
After that, you need to start your hunt for the most reliable as well as the authentic website to study from. There are various websites that provide certification and training to pass the AWS certificate exam with practice sample papers. They even provide a trial for free before you decide to buy the complete training material. Just look for the suitable AWS Certified DevOps Engineer-Professional training course and sign up for it.
Learning Resource 3: Tutorials
Subsequently, there are various tutorials available on the internet which can help you increase your learning pace for the exam. Adding tutorials to your learning resources adds nothing, but an advantage in your preparation process. No matter if you follow the order or not, these AWS tutorials are a great page for bookmarking and going back to if you get stuck.
Learning Resource 4: Books
Furthermore, you can refer to various books available in the market place. There are reference books that are available for AWS DevOps Engineer Professional exam. To name a few,
- 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
Learning Resource 5: Practice Tests
Finally, and definitely importantly, to grasp the concepts well, allocate time for frequent AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional practice exams. These practice tests help you assess your capabilities and work on your weaker points. So, ensure you complete a substantial number of practice tests to excel in the exam. Give your preparation a satisfying revision
Expert’s Corner
In conclusion, obtaining an AWS certification is a smart decision for anyone in the IT field. But remember, becoming certified requires dedication, so you should pick the right time for training. In the end, the AWS certification will undoubtedly be advantageous, and all the time and effort you invest will be truly worthwhile!
We hope that we have provided all the required and relevant information to clear your doubts. Furthermore, the article will surely help you clear your thoughts and will help you make a good decision for your career growth.
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