AWS Database Specialty

Earning an industry-recognized certification from AWS validates the candidate’s expertise in the extent of AWS database services and stimulates the performance of database technology to drive the organization’s business transformation. AWS Database Specialty certification is designed for candidates who show a database-focused role. This exam verifies an examinee’s general understanding of databases, comprising the concepts of design, deployment, migration, access, automation, monitoring, maintenance, security, and troubleshooting. It will measure the candidate’s ability to recommend, design, and maintain the optimal AWS database solution to improve performance, reduce costs, and enable innovation.

Who should take this exam?

• The brand-new addition among AWS Specialty certifications, i.e., Database Specialty, is ideal for IT professionals related to database-focused roles.
• Candidates applying for the exam must understand and differentiate the key features of AWS database services.
• They should know how to analyze needs and requirements to recommend and design appropriate database solutions using AWS services

Learning Objectives 

The candidates should know the objectives for the AWS Certified Database Specialty exam in order to prepare for it. The candidate can download the exam guide from the official website of AWS. This exam guide includes weightings, test domains, and objectives only. The objectives of the AWS Certified Database Specialty exam is:

• Domain 1: Workload-Specific Database Design 26%
• Domain 2: Deployment and Migration 20%
• Domain 3: Management and Operations 18%
• Domain 4: Monitoring and Troubleshooting 18%
• Domain 5: Database Security 18%

AWS Certified Database – Specialty Learning Path

The learning path of AWS is designed for individuals who plan, design, maintain or manage AWS database services to successfully optimize data strategy and for those who can learn about planning and designing databases using AWS services. Then validate their comprehensive understanding of AWS database services, and accelerate the use of database technology to drive the organization’s business transformation, with the AWS Certified Database – Specialty certification. So, take a look at the learning path:

Exam Details 

The AWS Database Specialty new exam will come with the code DBS-C01. The exam is a perfect match for IT professionals who are indulged in database-focused roles. The exam contains 65 questions which will appear in the form of multiple-choice questions. The candidate will be given 180 minutes to complete the AWS Certified Database – Specialty Exam Questions. Also, the exam is available in several languages such as English, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese. The passing score is 750. The examination cost is 300 USD (Practice exam: 40 USD). 

Wish to prepare for the exam interview? Check out the DBS-C01 Interview Questions.

AWS Certified Database – Specialty Prerequisites

• A minimum of 5 years of experience with common database technologies.
• At least 2 years of hands-on experience working on AWS.
• Experience and expertise working with on-premises and AWS Cloud-based relational and NoSQL databases.

AWS Certified Database Specialty FAQs

AWS Certified Database Specialty Course Outline 

AWS has divided the syllabus into various sections. The course outline acts as a AWS Certified Database – Specialty Blue Print. It includes the objectives and sub-topics of the exam. The detailed course outline is mentioned below:

AWS Database Specialty Updated Course Outline 

The AWS Certified Database Specialty exam covers the latest and updated course outline – 

Module 1:  Explain Workload-Specific Database Design (26%)

1.1 Learn to select suitable database services for specific types of data and workloads.

• Understand the differences between ACID vs. BASE workloads
• Understand suitable uses of types of databases including relational, key-value, document, in-memory, graph, time series, ledger (AWS Documentation: Database)
• Understand and identify use cases for persisted data vs. ephemeral data (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 instance store)

1.2 Learn about the strategies for disaster recovery and high availability.

• Understanding and selecting Region and Availability Zone placement to optimize database performance (AWS Documentation: Choose Regions and Availability Zones to minimize latency)
• Understanding and determining implications of Regions and Availability Zones on disaster recovery/high availability strategies (AWS Documentation: Disaster recovery options in the cloud)
• Understanding and differentiating use cases for reading replicas and Multi-AZ deployments (AWS Documentation: Multi-AZ deployments for high availability)

1.3 Learn to design database solutions for performance, compliance, and scalability.

• Understanding and recommending serverless vs. instance-based database architecture (AWS Documentation: Understanding database options for your serverless web applications)
• Understanding and evaluating requirements for scaling read replicas (AWS Documentation: Working with MySQL read replicas, Working with read replicas)
• Understanding and defining database caching solutions (AWS Documentation: Database Caching, Caching strategies)
• Understanding and evaluating the implications of partitioning, sharding, and indexing (AWS Documentation: Sharding with Amazon Relational Database Service, Choosing the Right DynamoDB Partition Key)
• Understanding and determining appropriate instance types and storage options (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 Instance Types)
• Understanding and determining auto-scaling capabilities for relational and NoSQL databases (AWS Documentation: Managing throughput capacity automatically with DynamoDB auto scaling, AWS Management Console with DynamoDB auto scaling)
• Understanding and determining the implications of Amazon DynamoDB adaptive capacity (AWS Documentation: Best practices for designing and using partition keys effectively)
• Understanding and determining data locality based on compliance requirements (AWS Documentation: Addressing Data Residency with AWS)

1.4 Learn to compare the costs of database solutions

• Understanding and determining cost implications of Amazon DynamoDB capacity units, including on-demand vs. provisioned capacity (AWS Documentation: Read/write capacity mode, Pricing for Provisioned Capacity, Pricing for On-Demand Capacity)
• Understanding and determining costs associated with instance types and automatic scaling (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling)
• Understanding and designing for costs including high availability, backups, multi-Region, Multi-AZ, and storage type options (AWS Documentation: Multi-AZ deployments for high availability, Amazon RDS Multi-AZ)
• Understanding and comparing data access costs (AWS Documentation: Analyzing your costs with AWS Cost Explorer)

Module 2: Explain Deployment and Migration (20%)

2.1 Learn to automate database solution deployments.

• Understanding and evaluating application requirements to determine components to deploy (AWS Documentation: Evaluate your applications)
• Understanding and choosing suitable deployment tools and services (e.g., AWS CloudFormation, AWS CLI) (AWS Documentation: Using the AWS Command Line Interface, AWS CloudFormation best practices)

2.2 Learn to determine data preparation and migration strategies.

• Understanding and determining the data migration method (e.g., snapshots, replication, restore) (AWS Documentation: Restoring from a DB snapshot, Restore an Amazon RDS DB instance from a DB snapshot)
• Understanding and evaluating database migration tools and services (e.g., AWS DMS, native database tools) (AWS Documentation: Migration with native database tools and AWS DMS)
• Understanding and preparing data sources and targets (AWS Documentation: Configuring data target nodes, Creating a dataset from a database)
• Understanding and determining schema conversion methods (e.g., AWS Schema Conversion Tool) (AWS Documentation: AWS Schema Conversion Tool)
• Understanding and determining heterogeneous vs. homogeneous migration strategies (AWS Documentation: Heterogeneous database migration, Homogeneous database migration)

2.3 Learn to execute and validate data migration.

• Understanding and designing and script data migration (AWS Documentation: Best practices for AWS Database Migration Service, Database Migration Step-by-Step Walkthroughs)
• Understand and run data extraction and migration scripts (AWS Documentation: Extracting data from on-premises databases, Migrating data from an on-premises data, Database Migration Step-by-Step Walkthroughs)
• Understanding and verifying the successful load of data (AWS Documentation: Verifying that the data loaded correctly)

Module 3: Explain Management and Operations (18%)

3.1 Learn to determine maintenance tasks and processes.

• Understanding and accounting for the AWS shared responsibility model for database services (AWS Documentation: Shared Responsibility)
• Understanding and determining appropriate maintenance window strategies (AWS Documentation: AWS Systems Manager Maintenance Windows, Maintenance window scheduling and active period options)
• Understanding and differentiating between major and minor engine upgrades (AWS Documentation: Upgrading a DB instance engine version)

3.2 Learn to determine backup and restore strategies.

• Understanding and identifying the need for automatic and manual backups/snapshots (AWS Documentation: Comparing Automatic and Manual Snapshots, Amazon EBS snapshots)
• Understanding and differentiating backup and restore strategies (e.g., full backup, point-in-time, encrypting backups cross-Region) (AWS Documentation: Creating backup copies across AWS Regions)
• Understanding and defining retention policies (AWS Documentation: Implement data retention policies for each class, Work with retention rules)
• Understanding and correlating the backup and restore to recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) requirements (AWS Documentation: Plan for Disaster Recovery (DR), Disaster recovery options in the cloud)

3.3 Learn to manage the operational environment of a database solution.

• Orchestrate the refresh of lower environments (AWS Documentation: Updating compute environments, Orchestrating database refreshes for Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora)
• Implement configuration changes (e.g., in Amazon RDS option/parameter groups or Amazon DynamoDB indexing changes) (AWS Documentation: Working with parameter groups, Best practices for configuring parameters for Amazon RDS)
• Automate operational tasks (AWS Documentation: AWS Systems Manager Automation, Working with runbooks)
• Take action based on AWS Trusted Advisor reports (AWS Documentation: Get started with AWS Trusted Advisor)

Module 4: Explain Monitoring and Troubleshooting (18%)

4.1 Learn to monitor and alert strategies.

• Understanding and evaluating monitoring tools including  Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon RDS Performance Insights, database native (AWS Documentation: Overview of monitoring metrics in Amazon RDS, Monitoring DB load with Performance Insights on Amazon RDS)
• Understanding and determining appropriate parameters and thresholds for alert conditions (AWS Documentation: Working with threshold alerts in Amazon QuickSight, Working with alerts)
• Understanding to use tools to notify users when thresholds are breached including, Amazon SNS, Amazon SQS, Amazon CloudWatch dashboards) (AWS Documentation: Using Amazon CloudWatch alarms)

4.2 Learn to troubleshoot and resolve common database issues.

• Understand and identify, evaluate, and respond to categories of failures including troubleshooting connectivity; instance, storage, and partitioning issues) (AWS Documentation: Troubleshoot instances with failed status checks)
• Understanding and automating responses when possible (AWS Documentation: Options for Automating Response)

4.3 Learn to optimize database performance.

• Understanding and troubleshooting database performance issues (AWS Documentation: Troubleshooting for Amazon RDS)
• Understanding and identifying suitable AWS tools and services for database optimization (AWS Documentation: Best practices for Amazon RDS)
• Understanding and evaluating the configuration, schema design, queries, and infrastructure to improve performance

Module 5: Explain Database Security (18%)

5.1 Learn to Encrypt data at rest and in transit.

• Understand to encrypt data in relational and NoSQL databases (AWS Documentation: Encrypting Amazon RDS resources, Using SSL/TLS to encrypt a connection to a DB instance)
• Understand to apply SSL connectivity to databases (AWS Documentation: Using SSL/TLS to encrypt a connection to a DB instance)
• Understand to implement key management (e.g., AWS KMS, AWS CloudHSM) (AWS Documentation: AWS Key Management Service, AWS CloudHSM)

5.2 Learn to evaluate auditing solutions.

• Understand to determine auditing strategies for structural/schema changes (e.g., DDL) (AWS Documentation: Database audit logging, Handling schema updates)
• Understand to determine auditing strategies for data changes (e.g., DML) (AWS Documentation: DML auditing for Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility))
• Understand to determine auditing strategies for data access (e.g., queries) (AWS Documentation: Database audit logging)
• Understand to determine auditing strategies for infrastructure changes (e.g., AWS CloudTrail) (AWS Documentation: AWS CloudTrail)
• Understand and enable the export of database logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs (AWS Documentation: Exporting log data to Amazon S3)

5.3 Learn to determine access control and authentication mechanisms.

• Recommend authentication controls for users and roles including IAM, native credentials, Active Directory (AWS Documentation: Security best practices in IAM, Using the AWS Directory Service identity provider)
• Recommend authorization controls for users including  policies (AWS Documentation: Policies and permissions in IAM)

5.4 Learn to identify potential security vulnerabilities within database solutions.

• Understand to determine security group rules and NACLs for database access (AWS Documentation: Controlling access with security groups, Control traffic to subnets using Network ACLs)
• Understand to identify relevant VPC configurations (e.g., VPC endpoints, public vs. private subnets, demilitarized zone) (AWS Documentation: VPC with public and private subnets (NAT), Amazon VPC)
• Understand to determine appropriate storage methods for sensitive data (AWS Documentation: Best practices for securing sensitive data in AWS data stores)

Exam Pricing Policies 

AWS offers pricing policies which enable the candidate a pay-as-you-go procedure for pricing for over 160 cloud services.  With AWS the candidate pays only for the individual services they need, for as long as they use them, and without wanting long-term contracts or complicated licensing.  AWS pricing is alike to how the candidate pays for services like water and electricity.  The candidate only pays for the services they consume, and once they stop using them, there are no additional costs or termination fees. Also, other options are mentioned below:

AWS Certified Database Specialty Preparation Steps 

Following a AWS Certified Database – Specialty Study Guide is a great way o diversify your study strategy and ace the exam. The preparation steps which are essential in order to successfully pass the AWS Certified Database Specialty exam are:

Step 1: AWS Official Website 

Visiting the AWS official website is an essential step while preparing for the exam like AWS Certified Database Specialty. The official site offers a lot of reliable information and sources which is very helpful in preparing for the exam. The resources such as study guide, sample papers, whitepapers, documentation, faqs, etc. The candidate can find all such important things on the official page. 

Step 2: AWS Certified Database – Specialty Training

The candidate can also opt for the AWS training programs. The AWS offers training programs on every exam. The training programs for a particular exam contain all information of the exam such as description, intended audience, delivery method, duration etc. The candidate should join a training program to gain knowledge and skills for AWS Certified Database Specialty. 

Step 3: Books and Guides

The next step in the preparatory guide should be books and study guides. The candidate needs to find those books which are enriched with information. Finding a good AWS Certified Database – Specialty Book may be a difficult task, but in order to gather the knowledge and skills, the candidate has to find, read and understand. 

Step 4: Practice Test 

AWS Database Specialty 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. 

Step 5: Join a Study Group 

Joining a group study will also be beneficial for the candidate. It will encourage them to do more hard work. Also, studying in the group will help them to stay connected with the other people who are on the same pathway as them. Also, the discussion of such study groups will benefit the students in their exam. 

AWS Certified Database Specialty Free Practice Test