How to pass the AWS DevOps Engineer Professional exam

With Amazon Web Services being a cloud platform of choice for global enterprises, AWS DevOps certification has become a lucrative prospect. The scalability, reliability and inexpensiveness of AWS mean that 33% of the industry prefers it to build and deliver business products.

Naturally, there is a great demand for DevOps engineers, solutions architects and systems administrators with proficiency in AWS. That is exactly what an official AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional validates them for. Similar to other credentials, like Microsoft Azure certification, one must clear a specific exam to obtain AWS DevOps Engineer accreditation. In this case, it is the DOP-C01 exam.

Here’s everything you need to know to pass the AWS DevOps Engineer Professional exam.

AWS DevOps Engineer Certification – What is it? 

Before we go into the exam details, it is important to understand the nature of the AWS DevOps certification for engineers. It is the benchmark that organisations use today to identify and hire talented professionals with exceptional skills in deploying AWS cloud initiatives.

AWS DevOps Engineer certification earns you recognition for your expertise in testing automation and implementation of AWS infrastructure and applications. It is a highly sought-after certification in the in-demand cloud computing industry that will enable you to level up in your career.

Who all can give the AWS DevOps Engineer Professional exam?

Professionals with 2+ years of experience in provisioning, operating, and managing AWS environments are best suited for this certification. Additionally, they will require hands-on knowledge of:

• Coding in a high-level programming language
• Building highly automated infrastructures
• Operating systems administration
• New-age development and operations processes and methodologies
• Implementing and managing continuous delivery systems and methodologies on AWS
• Deploying and automating compliance validation, security controls, and governance
• Deploying and defining monitoring, metrics, and logging systems on AWS

Additionally, to take this exam, candidates must have either of the two AWS Associate-level certifications:

• AWS Certified Developer – Associate
• AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate

Passing the DOP-C01 exam – An overview

DOP-C01 is the code for the AWS DevOps Engineer Professional exam. It is usually 170-minutes long and comprises multiple choice and multiple response questions. The exam also has 10 unscored questions that do not affect the score.

DOP-C01 exam can be taken in English, Japanese, Korean, or Simplified Chinese. The minimum passing score is 750 out of 1000.

The AWS DevOps Engineer Professional exam is made up of six domains with different weightage. These are:

• Domain 1: SDLC Automation – 22%
• Domain 2: Configuration Management and Infrastructure as Code – 19%
• Domain 3: Monitoring and Logging – 15%
• Domain 4: Policies and Standards Automation – 10%
• Domain 5: Incident and Event Response – 18%
• Domain 6: High Availability, Fault Tolerance, and Disaster Recover – 16%

Enrolling in a certified training program

To pass the exam, candidates are recommended to strengthen their concepts and training with a certified AWS DevOps certification course. RPS Consulting’s certified DevOps Engineering on AWS course is a comprehensive training that will enable you to prepare for the DOP-C01 exam. Taught by AWS-certified instructors, this course consists of interactive modules and hands-on lab training. By distilling complex concepts into practical knowledge, the course enables candidates to develop objective clarity and expertise in all content domains.

Throughout this training, candidates will develop professional expertise in the following modules:

• DevOps fundamentals
• AWS Command Line Interface
• DevSecOps fundamentals
• Deployment Strategies and Developer Tools
• Infrastructure as Code
• Developer Tools
• Automated Testing on AWS
• Configuration Management
• AMI Building and Amazon EC2 System Manager
• Containers: Docker and ECS
• DevOps Customer Case Studies

By the end of the course, candidates will be confident in primary concepts and practices that power the DevOps methodology. This will give them cutting edge skills to design and implement AWS infrastructure for multiple DevOps development projects. Candidates will also learn:

• Using AWS CloudFormation and AWS OpsWorks
• Setting up Git on AWS
• Using core principles of Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment
• Optimising implementation of application deployment technologies available on AWS
• Troubleshooting delivered applications on AWS for high performance
• Application and environment monitoring

Conclusion

As long as you have expertise in automating, configuring and deploying AWS workloads, you should not find the exam difficult. Preparation does not take more than 4 days, especially with training. Here are some additional tips for the same:

• Build up your skills by checking out free exam guides, sample questions, practice exams and other tutorials on the AWS website
• Brush up your general cloud computing skills and look up any similar training courses you might have prepared for previously, such as Azure certification
• Practice makes one perfect, so keep practicing your concepts and putting them to mock tests
• Brush up AWS services you barely use, such as Beanstalk and OpsWorks