AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C01) Exam Learning Path

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AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C01) Exam Learning Path
NOTE – Refer to DOP-C02 Learning Path
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C01) Exam Resources

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C01) Exam Learning Path

NOTE – Refer to DOP-C02 Learning Path

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C01) exam is the upgraded pattern of the DevOps Engineer – Professional exam which was released last year (2018). I recently attempted the latest pattern and AWS has done quite good in improving it further, as compared to the old one, to include more DevOps related questions and services.

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C01) exam basically validates

  • Implement and manage continuous delivery systems and methodologies on AWS
  • Implement and automate security controls, governance processes, and compliance validation
  • Define and deploy monitoring, metrics, and logging systems on AWS
  • Implement systems that are highly available, scalable, and self-healing on the AWS platform
  • Design, manage, and maintain tools to automate operational processes

Refer to AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Exam Guide

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C01) Exam Summary

  • AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional exam was for a total of 170 minutes but it had 75 questions (I was always assuming it to be 65) and I just managed to complete the exam with 20 mins remaining. So be sure you are prepared and manage your time well. As always, mark the questions for review and move on and come back to them after you are done with all.
  • One of the key tactic I followed when solving the DevOps Engineer questions was to read the question and use paper and pencil to draw a rough architecture and focus on the areas that you need to improve. Trust me, you will be able eliminate 2 answers for sure and then need to focus on only the other two. Read the other 2 answers to check the difference area and that would help you reach to the right answer or atleast have a 50% chance of getting it right.
  • AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional exam covers a lot of concepts and services related to Automation, Deployments, Disaster Recovery, HA, Monitoring, Logging and Troubleshooting. It also covers security and compliance related topics.
  • Be sure to cover the following topics
    • Whitepapers are the key to understand Deployments and DR
    • Management Tools
      • DevOps professional exam cannot be cleared without the knowledge of this topics
      • Deep dive into CloudFormation, Elastic Beanstalk and OpsWorks
      • Very important to understand CloudFormation vs Elastic Beanstalk vs OpsWorks
      • CloudFormation
        • Have in-depth understand of CloudFormation concepts
        • Know how to indicate completion of events using CloudFormation helper scripts.
        • Understand CloudFormation deployment strategies esp. rolling and replacing update with AutoScaling and update of launch configuration
        • Understand CloudFormation policies esp. Update and Deletion policies (hint : retain resources on stack deletion)
        • Understand CloudFormation Best Practices esp. Nested Stacks and logical grouping
        • Understand CloudFormation template anatomy – parameters, outputs, mappings
        • Understand CloudFormation Custom resource and its use cases (hint : you can use Custom resource to retrieve AMI IDs or interact with external services)
      • Elastic Beanstalk
      • OpsWorks
        • Understand OpsWorks overall – stacks, layers, recipes
        • Understand OpsWorks Lifecycle events esp. the Configure event and how it can be used.
        • Understand OpsWorks Deployment Strategies
        • Know OpsWorks auto-healing and how to be notified for it.
      • Development Tools
        • Unlike the previous DevOps Engineer – Professional exam, the latest pattern has a heavy focus on the Developer tools and be sure to deep dive into them
        • Understand CodePipepline, CodeCommit, CodeDeploy, CodeBuild and their uses cases
        • CodePipeline
          • Understand how to build Pipelines and integration with other Code* services
          • Understand CodePipeline pipeline structure (Hint : run builds parallelly using runorder)
          • Understand how to configure notifications on events and failures
          • Know CodePipeline supports Manual Approval
        • CodeCommit
          • How to handle deployments for code. (Hint : Same repository and branches for projects and environments)
          • Know CodeCommit IAM policies
        • CodeDeploy
    • Monitoring & Governance tools
      • Very important to understand AWS CloudWatch vs AWS CloudTrail vs AWS Config
      • Very important to understand Trust Advisor vs Systems manager vs AWS Inspector
      • Know Personal Health Dashboard & Service Health Dashboard
      • CloudWatch
      • CloudTrail
        • Understand how to maintain CloudTrail logs integrity
      • Understand AWS Config and its use cases (hint : Config maintains history and can be used to revert the config)
      • Know Personal Health Dashboard (hint : it tracks events on your AWS resources)
      • Understand AWS Trusted Advisor and what it provides (hint : low utilization resources)
      • Systems Manager
        • Systems Manager is also covered heavily in the exams so be sure you know
        • Understand AWS Systems Manager and its various services like parameter store, patch manager
    • Networking & Content Delivery
      • Networking is covered very lightly. Usually the questions are targetted towards Troubleshooting of access or permissions.
      • Know VPC
      • Route 53
    • Security, Identity & Compliance
    • Storage
      • Exam does not cover Storage services in deep
      • Focus on Simple Secure Service (S3)
        • Understand S3 Permissions (Hint – acl authenticated users provides access to all authenticated users. How to control access)
        • Know S3 disaster recovery across region. (hint : cross region replication)
        • Know CloudFront for caching to improve performance
      • Elastic Block Store
        • Focus mainly on EBS Backup using snapshots for HA and Disaster recovery
    • Database
    • Compute
      • Know EC2
        • Understand ENI for HA, user data, pre-baked AMIs for faster instance start times
        • Amazon Linux 2 Image (hint : it allows for replication of Amazon Linux behavior in on-premises)
        • Snapshot and sharing
      • Auto Scaling
        • Auto Scaling Lifecycle events
        • Blue/green deployments with Auto Scaling – With new launch configurations, new auto scaling groups or CloudFormation update policies.
      • Understand Lambda
      • ECS
        • Know Monitoring and deployments with image update
    • Integration Tools
      • Know how CloudWatch integration with SNS and Lambda can help in notification (Topics are not required to be in detail)

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C01) Exam Resources

48 thoughts on “AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C01) Exam Learning Path”

  1. Hi Jayendra,

    For DevOps Certification, I’m studying from LinuxAcademy. But since you mentioned that it doesn’t cover everything. Actually they added many new topics..At first the course was of 19 hours but today it is 32 hours long and many sections are added..So can you please tell whether these sections are complete syllabus or do I have to study even further after completing this course..Thank You!

    1. Hi Ahtesham, I felt it covered around 80%. I have tried to put in some topics and hints as well be sure to cover those as well.

  2. Hi Jayendra,

    Is this exam slightly similar to SysOps (and a bit of the Developer)?

    Also, about the Braincert AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Practice Exams you recommended, how well do they simulate the exam?

    1. DevOps professional is much more deep dive than the associates one and its surely more tough and extensive.
      They actually simulate the exams quite well, although dont treat them as dumps and use them more for your preparation.

  3. Hi Jayendra, Thanks for your excellent and valuable portal!
    You mentioned that braincert’s mock exam papers were good. I am also going thru them now. Just wanted to know as to what % of real exam questions (when you appeared for DevOps Professional) were similar (not necessarily same) to the ones in braincert’s exams? say 30-40%? or 60-70%? or more? This would help me gauge how much more (and what else) i should study before i take the actual exam.. Do you recommend any other mock exams b4 we take the real exam?

    1. I feel if you prepare well with the practice exams, understanding the concepts, the exam can be cleared easily.

  4. Hi Jayendra,

    Is is possible to take/pass DevOps exam after clearing Solutions Architecture Associate, or will we need to take SysOps exam before attempting this.

    1. Associate exams are not mandatory for taking Professional exams. So you can take the Professional and Speciality exams directly.

  6. Hi again Jayendra and thanks for your insights.

    I would like to ask you if you have come across and considered this course for your preparations:
    https://www.udemy.com/master-aws-certified-devops-engineer-professional/

    I’m trying to look for alternatives to the course available on Linux Academy and so far there isn’t much resource out there for this exam (like the resources available for the Developer, Solutions Architect, and SysOps), and I honestly think that Linux Academy falls short on cloud certs like AWS. It’s only useful for the cloud sandbox for when I’m following the tutorials on aws documentation.

    Thanks

  7. Hi Jaynedra,

    Is there any course on Udemy that we could go for the DevOps Professional, for example, Stephane MAraack or Dolphin ED?
    Please suggest

    Regards,
    Akash Gupta

  9. Are you still recommending Braincert for the DevOps pro exam? Are the Braincert exams more similar to the real thing?

    1. They were good enough to get a flavour of the actual exams and cover lot of topics. But then, you need to make sure you understand the concepts.

  10. Hi Jayendra, Stephen M recommends to do Developer associate course/certification as mandatory. Do you think so ? I mainly come from infra background (ops) and not much from development but have professional (SA) certifications from AWS/Azure/GCP – is that enough to take plunge ? Thanks in advance
    Ram

    1. Associate exams are not mandatory but a good start if you starting on AWS. If you already have AWS SA – professional, don’t need Associate exam, go ahead with DevOps. Also, Developer doesn’t add much value for DevOps, SysOps adds a little value.

  11. Hi Jayendra,

    I am from both Development and Technology Operations(Applications) background and have fair bit of concept on DevOps.
    Please can you suggest what are the dumps that need to be covered and overall how much prep time is required to crack the exam(if I study 2hrs a day)?
    I have already gone through – AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials.
    Do I need access to any cloud platform for practice purpose?

    Thanks in advance.
    – Surajit

    1. DevOps professional is quite vast, so you to dig deep into the concepts as each of the question will cover multiple services. Actual practical experience will help.

  12. Hi Jayendra,

    Thanks for your excellent guidance!

    I have started studying the AWS DevOps professional course with the Linux academy videos, In the above, for the DevOps preparation you have mentioned both Braincert & Whizzlabs are good enough to practice and some of my friends are suggested for the Jon Bonso practice exams in Udemy. so I would like to know your opinion here before I make a purchase and thanks in advance.

    1. I have seen Braincert and they have been good enough. You can purchase any one which should be good enough as long as you use them to strength your concepts and focus on your weakness.

  13. Hi Jayendra,

    I am from App Support Unix background and have fair bit of concept on DevOps.

    Looking to upgrade for AWS, Can you suggest something.

    Do I need access to any cloud platform for practice purpose?

    1. Hi Vishal, you can start with associate certs to get an understanding of AWS before going for devops.
      You can also sign up for AWS Free tier to practice. Also check Qwiklabs as they offer free labs for some.
      Some of the sites like Linux Academy also provide labs that you can practice on.

  14. I did my solution architect associate recently and looking for devops professional certification . Do you think i need associate developer before moving to devops professional certification ?

  15. Hi Jayendra,
    Thank you for your excellent post on Dev-Ops. I cleared my certification in my first attempt with the score 881/1000

    Thanks
    Sangeetha

    2. Congratulations!!! Sangeetha. Really Big achievement. BTW how long you took to prepare the DevOps cert?

      Thanks.
      Safiqur Rhaman

  16. Hi Jayendra,

    I would like confirm on below things:

    My AWS Solutions Architect Associate got expired recently and now I am planning for AWS DevOps professional certification , so could you please suggest whether I can go directly for “AWS DevOps Professional certification” directly or need to complete Developer Associate/ sysops which is prerequisite?

    Kindly suggest me.

    Regards,
    Sathish Kumar

    1. Hi Satish, there are no per-requisties for professional and specialty certs now. you can take them directly.

  18. Recently I passed DevOps Professional certification. Your tips greatly helped to pass the exam with decent score..Thanks for passing Mantra 》》

    Trust me, you will be able to eliminate 2 answers for sure and then need to focus on only the other two. Read the other 2 answers to check the difference area and that would help you reach to the right answer or atleast have a 50% chance of getting it right.

  19. Hi Jayendra,

    Is the braincert practice exams still recommended in May 2021? If not, can you recommended any other practice exams? I have the exam scheduled this weekend.

    1. yup, they were still relevant from the feedback received from other users.

  20. Hi Jayendra ,

    I’m aiming to crack devops professional certification , but before that I also want to get an associate level cert to improve my basics , which associate cert will be helpful in the perspective of devops .
    please show some light here .

    Regards,
    Jadi Bhargav

    1. Hi Bhargav, The closest is the SysOps, although the overlap is not huge with it as well.

  21. Hi Jayendra

    In multiple blogs I read they say question & answers options will spill over screen .And lengthy question and answer options you will have to remember which will take time.

    Is this correct – are all or most of 75 Qs that way.If yes how did you manage to complete exam before time.Please clarify

    1. yup Arun, questions would have long prose with multiple services involved. There will be very few easy pickings and time would not be sufficient unless well prepared.

  22. Hi Jayendra

    What is non native english user option for exam registration.
    Will that change # questions and pass criteria

    Is that available for asia exam candidates

  23. Hi Jayendra
    There is an option to select non-native english users for exam registration.
    If we choose that will it change the exam pass criteria or question count.

    Can we opt for that.

    Regards

    1. you would get additional time, it does not change question count of exam pass criteria.

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