Recently, I took and passed the challenging but engaging AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Certification exam. Honestly, I feel excited saying this out, given the fact that the certification exam is held up with high value. I have put this post all together to carefully outline how I prepared and cleared the exam in my first attempt (without having the SOA or DVA certifications, though I took training for both).
However, I learnt a lot more than I already knew before taking the exam and I am thrilled at how much of my knowledge gap it has filled. My hope is that as I share with you my experience, it can help you navigate your way to acing this very challenging but rewarding exam.
I have broken down this article into smaller units to help ease your reading and comprehension, as well as give you a systematic approach of my experience;
- Background
- Myself
- AWS Certifications
- The AWS DOP-CO2
- Main services covered.
- Reason for taking the certification
- Exam Resources
- Study Experience
- Exam experience
- Recommendations
- Bonus: Some retired services still mentioned in the Guide
a. BACKGROUND:
We all know that DevOps is not a technology but a culture, just as Agile is a mindset. The blessings of DevOps by far outweighs the cost of implementation and difficulty in acquiring value skills to become extremely competent and sought after. Gaining DevOps Certifications (globally recognized certifications) is as good as gain practical DevOps skills. Gaining a certification is more than just passing an exam.
b. ABOUT ME
After passing the AWS Certified Practitioner & Solutions Architect - Associate exams two years ago, I decided to gain practical experience with the AWS cloud space. With a strong background in Project management /Agile Scrum and software development, I picked interest in DevOps as it bridges dev teams and operations team. I spent much of time working in the dev environment either as a developer and/or scrum master. I started practicing devops “unintentionally” using easy CI/CD tools like Github Actions to automate pipelines, as well as AWS suit of developer tools. About 2years down the line, I decided to venture into practicing devops the right way in a structured and systematic manner. So, I decided to do guided studies with a trophy attached to its end (certification).
c. AWS Certifications
As of now, AWS has about 12 role-based certifications spanning from Foundational levels to specialty levels. These certifications have progressive paths which are recommended but not necessarily a strict requirement. The path to DevOps engineer also depends on individuals’ exposure to AWS Cloud.
From a cloud beginner view it is suggested to start with Cloud Practitioner (Foundation) ==> Developer Associate + SysOps Administrator ==> DevOps Engineer.
For an experienced or cloud user, either Developer Associate or SysOps Admin or both certifications are good foundations for DevOps Engineer certification.
d. The AWS DevOps CERFTIFICATION
The AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Pro Certification is a professional level certificate.
Note: When they say “Professional”, they really mean it.
As it is on the official certification page, “it showcases an individuals’ technical expertise in provisioning, operating, and managing distributed application systems on the AWS platform, giving them increased confidence and credibility with peers, stakeholders, and customers”.
This exam tests you on almost everything DevOps, development and system administration in the AWS cloud space. The Exam Guide is guide elaborate and comprehensive, highlighting everything the exam covers, they various domains (6) and their weightings, and 19 Task Statements.
It should be worth noting that this exam costs $300 (with 50% discount only for those who previously passed any certification exam and have a valid voucher). Therefore, you forfeit $300 and more is you unfortunately fail this exam. The exam runs for 3hours with 75question to be answer (about 2.4minutes per question)
e. MAIN SERVICES COVERED.
The main features or aws services covered in no order include:
AWS Commit, CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CodeArtitifact, Amazon S3, Amazon ECR, AWS Lambda, EC2 Image Builder, Amazon ECS, Fargate, AWS CloudFormation, AWS Systems Manager, AWS Config, AWS Organization, API Gateway, CloudWatch, EventBridge, EFS, ECS, VPC, AWS Secrets Manager, Elastic Beanstalk, Elastic Load Balancers, ASG, Service Catalog, Security Hub, Control Tower, SCPs, IAM and Identity Center (SSO), RDS, Route53, DynamoDB, CloudFront, Kinesis, SNS, SQS, etc.
Understanding these services, their specific use-cases, best practices and how they integrate to produce cost effective, scalable, resilient, fault tolerant and secure solutions is the key.
f. MY REASONS FOR THE TAKING THIS EXAM.
Looking at the exam guide and seeing the numerous services one has to learn and master, it is enough to discourage or dare someone. However, I love challenges, so I decided to venture into this journey with a trophy attached to it. Given that AWS dominates the cloud market share, and my previous experience on aws, I choose DevOps Engineering over Solutions Architect pro certifications. I wanted something challenging which has immediate effect on my day-to-day operation. In fact, we were working on a project that needed holistic devops implementation. This was an opportunity for me to venture into this journey.
g. RESOURCES USED
The AWS DevOps Engineering exam is no easy exam. It requires more of Practical Experience than theory and memorizing concepts. It will dare your guts and test your first-hand experience in the AWS cloud space. To this effect, gain very useful study materials is as important as passing the exam.
TIPS: Study to know, practice retain and not just to memorized for the exam.
Here, I will share with you the resources I used to clear this exam in the very first attempt without the recommended proceeding certifications.
To be honest, I start by taking a course of the two recommended certifications (DVA and SOA). Thought I did not take the exams, I took certifications courses to build the solid foundations and gain hands-on.
• 1. Official Exam Guide + Official Sample Exam Questions.
• 2. UDEMY - AWS Certified Developer Associate DVA-C02 (Neal Davis)
• 3. UDEMY - AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate SOA-C02 (Neal Davis)
• 4. UDEMY - AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional D0P-C02 (Stephane Maarek)
• 5. UDEMY - AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional D0P-C02 Practice Exam (Jon Bonso)
• 6. The AWS DevOps & Developer Productivity Blog and Official Documentation (Best Resource)
• 7. The AWS Skill Builder – Exam Readiness course (Very very important)
• 8. Hands-on!
h. MY STUDY EXPERIENCE
With my fulltime job, it took me 2months + to prepare for this exam.
It should be worth noting that I valued the experience more than the certification. I looked at the certification as a support trophy to my structured and systematic guided learning journey. I took two things very seriously.
- Practical experience: My goal was to study and know, and practice and become confident to implement.
- Practice exams: I took plenty of practice exams, question analyses and exam simulations only after understanding concepts and applications. The learning process was a peaceful journey to build competence and confidence, not a marathon to complete a course and a certification. Tips: Take enough time to learn concepts and practice them. Make sure you follow along, know why things work and why they don’t. Also ask questions in case of doubts. Tips: Make good use of AI assistant, but don’t trust them 100%. Tech is evolving and info easily gets obsolete offensively.
i. MY EXAM EXPERIENCE
Honestly, the exam is a challenging one (I don’t why I keep repeating this).
Questions are very lengthy, and you have practically 2.4minutes to read a question, understand it, read the options, analyze them, eliminate distractors, before selected the best option.
The questions are scenario based and they will definitely test your experience and proficiency.
After the first hour, I felt tired already but still had almost 2/3 of the questions. At the end of the send hour, I almost lost my concentration. What helped was the practical hands-on experience I have. Questions seem so boring and irritating, options were all the same, but I could remember how I successful ran cfn init scripts, how the cfn signal halted cloudformation till I got a signal of successful run of the init scripts, how the deployment hooks failed, etc.
Fortunately, I could answer 74 questions out of 75, with one forgotten question flagged.
Tips: Time management is very crucial. Practice reading fast and highlighting keywords in the questions.
Tips: Don’t ever underestimate the power of hands-on practice.
j. RECOMMENDATIONS
I will make the following recommendations based on my experience and best practices highlighted by AWS certificate team.
• · Consider taking either DVA or SysOps exam or both. At least, take the certification courses and one of those certifications. I will highly recommend SysOps exam for people with development background.
• · Study to know and implement correctly, not just to pass the exam.
• · Make practice and hands-on something you seriously enjoy.
• · Make good use of plenty of practice exams as much as possible.
• · Make extremely good use of AWS’s Blogs and documentations. There lies the everything.
• · Set a goal and a timeframe. Also, put something at stake/Trophy as a motivation to not derail from purpose.
k. BONUS
Here is a list of some AWS services retired but are still in the Exam guide and might still appear in the exam;
• a. OpsWorks
• b. CloudWatch Event (now EventBridge)
• c. AWS CodeStar
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/pdfs/whitepapers/latest/introduction-devops-aws/introduction-devops-aws.pdf
• https://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/AWS_Blue_Green_Deployments.pdf
• https://aws.amazon.com/devops/continuous-integration/
https://aws.amazon.com/devops/continuous-delivery/
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/Welcome.html
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codedeploy/latest/userguide/reference-appspec-file-structure-hooks.html#appspec-hooks-server
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/running-containerized-microservices/introduction.html
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/introduction-devops-aws/infrastructure-as-code.html
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/config/latest/developerguide/evaluate-config_use-managed-rules.html
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/health/latest/ug/cloudwatch-events-health.html
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codedeploy/latest/userguide/monitoring-cloudwatch-events.html
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/dns-failover-configuring.html
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide/canary-release.html
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/ec2/userguide/ec2-auto-scaling-scaling-cooldowns.html
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/serverless-application-model/latest/developerguide/what-is-sam.html
FINAL THOUGHTS
The AWS DevOps Engineer Exam is not an exam to underestimate. It is a professional level exam and they mean it. Don’t make the mistake of take that for granted. Instead, challenge yourself and challenge what is challenging you. Take the time to study not just for the exam but to get equipped for a promising career in cloud/devops, building competence and capacity which will help in the real-world.
While certifications are valuable, real-world experience and implementation are very much respected.
Consider it a journey and not a destination. Set priorities, set goals, attach trophic and stakes to keep your focused and motivated. Never ignore the power of practice, for it is what turns dummies to legends.
The feeling you will get after seeing “Congratulations! You have passed the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional certification” is quite reward. I hope my experience sheds some light on your path and guides you towards achieving your certification.
Thank you for reading my experience, and I wish you all the very best of luck.
The cloud is your companion!
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