Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the cloud computing industry arm of Amazon. Some notable products under AWS include AWS AppSync, Amazon Cloud Search, and AWS Data Pipeline & their certifications. In ancient days it is a dream of every professional to be certified with AWS certifications. The growth of AWS technology around the time increases the importance of the AWS certification exams especially AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Certification.
AWS is manned by lots of IT experts who have in-depth knowledge and experience in operating cloud-based development environments. And the AWS-Certified DevOps Professional is among these many engineers. This person undertakes a professional certification exam before he is allowed to be a part of the AWS team.
Why is passing a professional certification exam for AWS-Certified DevOps engineers important to Amazon Web Services? We’ll find out in this article.
All About AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Exam
Before we delve into the importance of getting the AWS DevOps Engineer – Professional exam, let’s have an overview of the exam itself first.
The AWS-Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Certification exam is a challenging task aimed at validating a person’s DevOps technical expertise and skills. It aims to test the following key abilities:
- Automating operational processes through designing, managing, and maintaining specialized tools
- Implementing scalable, self-healing, and available systems within the AWS platform
- Carrying-out methodologies and managing continuous delivery systems on AWS
- Executing automatic governance processes, security controls, and validation of compliance
- Specifying and deploying logging systems, tracking, and metrics on AWS
A new version of the test was released last February 18, 2019. It included six domains covered in the test. Here’s a list of these domains together with their corresponding percentage of questions in the exam:
- SDLC Automation – 22 %
- Configuration Management and Infrastructure as Code – 19%
- Monitoring and Logging – 15%
- Policies and Standards Automation – 10%
- Incident and Event Response – 18%
- High Availability, Fault Tolerance, and Disaster Recovery – 16%
The AWS-Certified-DevOps-Engineer-Professional real exam format is multiple choice with multiple answers possible for some of the items. You are to answer 80 questions that are all based on real-life scenarios.
The exam will present you with a case or situation, then ask you 4-5 questions about it. A good example of this is an eCommerce site that is facing a lot of technical issues, and then you are suddenly called in to help. The exam will then squeeze in the questions based on the issues experienced by the eCommerce site, and you’ll choose the best answers from the multiple choices.
The questions are hard in a way because you’d have to go through one or two pages of the scenario before you actually reach the questions. Sometimes, it can be hard to comprehend a long situation, so you might find yourself a bit confused when you get to the questions part.
The AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Certification Exam is available in the following languages:
- English
- Korean
- Japanese
- Simplified Chinese
You may request exam accommodations if your language doesn’t include those four. AWS typically grants an additional 30 minutes to the exam time for those who do not know these languages.
You must finish taking the test within 170 minutes. One exam sitting costs $300.
The passing score for the test is quite unclear, but some claim it’s around 65% or even higher. AWS most likely relies on the average performance of everyone who took the test, then builds the passing score over that. Hence, the score is unpredictable and flexible.
Exam results will be delivered to you via email. If you pass, a certificate will be visible in your AWS account after a few business days.
Related: Why are Practice Questions Important for Medical Exam Preparation?
Why Take the Test?
There are quite a number of reasons why you should consider taking up the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Certification Exam. Let’s enumerate them one by one here.
- If you are aspiring to grab a top engineering spot in Amazon Web Services, you need to get yourself certified. Passing the DevOps exam cements your technical expertise and adds up to your professional credentials. It is a crucial requirement to working as a Professional DevOps Engineer under Amazon Web Services.
- DevOps Engineer – Professional is the highest credential you can receive if you wish to work in the AWS. This means that you really need to prove your skills and expertise in the various aspects of DevOps under AWS to be deemed worthy of the title.
- Your long experience in IT and software development won’t be enough if you do not have a solid certification. Length of experience in the field of development isn’t an excuse not to get certified, as many companies will surely look for your Professional Certification even if you’ve had so many years of experience. So taking the AWS DevOps Engineer Professionals Certification is the right path for you.
- No matter how long you’ve been exposed to AWS tools, you can still get a refresher by being credentialed. Studying for this challenging DevOps exam is by means not an easy feat. So, as you study, you’ll get better re-acquainted with the most commonly used tools such as Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). AWS EC2 instance types are some of the most beneficial things to take a refresher course on considering many companies are actively using them every day.
- You’ll get your hands on some useful but lesser-known AWS services that other engineers might not know of. Being DevOps certified means that these tools will be available at your disposal. You are free to experiment with them to see if they’d be useful for your projects.
- A wide variety of AWS services are actually connected. As a professionally-certified AWS and DevOps Engineer, you have the ability and know-how to explore its various underlying connections and how they benefit your project and each other.
- Cost-efficiency is a main issue among end-clients. Being a professionally-certified engineer for AWS DevOps, you’ll see how AWS is priced and billed and you can then work around creating solutions to improve the cost-efficiency of your cloud-based business solutions.
- As a senior engineer under Amazon Web Services, you will become one of the primary resource persons for your colleagues. For example, they face difficulties in automating a CI/CD pipeline. Knowing that you are certified, they can quickly and confidently turn to you for advice and help.
- Certifications have varying degrees, and the one that’s one level lower than the Professional is the Associate. Training your Associate-level DevOps colleagues so that they’ll also become certified as Professionals is a healthy idea for an organization. You, as the certified engineer, can help your colleagues step up by providing them with proper guidance and training.
- The number of Professional AWS Certified DevOps Engineers is currently small. That means if you pass the exam and get certified as a professional, you’re actually considered among the cream of the crop.
- In connection to the previous statement, your Professional certification is key to opening the doors to plentiful employment opportunities in various companies. Engineers with the Professional DevOps certification are in high demand today. You’re at a great advantage if you’ve got the credential under your belt.
- Amazon Web Services continues to innovate and evolve over the years. They’ll constantly need the services of a Professionally-accredited AWS Certified DevOps Engineer to make that happen. Your ideas can actually make a huge change in Amazon’s cloud computing industry subsidiary.
- You’ll be given an opportunity to work with big and unique projects that require extensive knowledge and skills about DevOps. Exciting project opportunities await you if you are professionally-certified. Imagine working to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in one project, how cool can that be?
- If you’re working for Amazon Web Services and you get this highest certification for DevOps engineers, you’ll become a strong asset for the company. Actually, wherever you decide to work, your certification cements your expertise on DevOps and AWS, which in turn makes you a valuable team leader in your workplace.
Tips to Pass the Certification Test
Let’s end this article with some helpful study advice so that you can pass the AWS-Certified DevOps Engineer Professional Certification Exam with flying colors.
- Amazon Web Services recommends two years of practical experience in the AWS environment before attempting to take the exam. Though you have the practical skills, it is still crucial to brush up your knowledge about the following:
- Coding in at least one type of high-level programming language (FORTRAN, Pascal, C++, Java)
- Administration of operating systems
- Creation of highly automated infrastructure
- Modern methods and processes of operations and development
- Amazon Web Services has useful learning materials on their website. They are designed to give you a feel of the topics that will be covered in the exam proper. For the DevOps Engineer Professional Certification exam, AWS offers the following exam study tools:
- 3-day Classroom Training about DevOps Engineering on AWS
- Exam sample questions and guides
- Whitepapers on AWS
- Digital exam readiness training
- Mock exam
You may also opt to study with other review providers, either in person in a classroom setting or online at your own pace.
- As we have discussed earlier in this article that the real questions of the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professionals are based on the real life problem. So if you are willing to ace them then you should practice as much as you can from the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Exam Cram.
- Time yourself often as you take AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Exam Cram. This will help you gauge how much time you’ll need to spend answering a particular set of questions from a single story or situation.
- Prepare several months in advance. Studying in a rush will make it harder for you to absorb all the vital information regarding AWS and DevOps. Remember that the Professional version of accreditation is really tough, so prepare as early as you can.
Wrapping it All Up
To conclude, the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Certification Exam is a crucial way to get that much-coveted certification showing your expertise in DevOps and AWS. There are several reasons why taking it is important to you and to Amazon Web Services. Passing the exam is important because it means that:
- Your expertise and technical skills are above-par among the rest
- You will be able to further hone your knowledge of AWS tools in the long run
- You will become an even greater asset to Amazon Web Services and to your company
- You will be able to engage in better projects that have the capability to change lives at the most
So, start your journey to becoming a professionally certified AWS DevOps Engineer now and prove to yourself that you have what it takes to become an expert in this field.
