DevOps has emerged as one of the core cultures to adopt in the current software development life cycle. Within just a few years, it has proved to be a game-changer in the software industry. Nowadays, every product or service that is seriously concerned about its technical scalability has proper DevOps and automation systems in place, which helps them save time by reducing the operational complexities and a lot of redundant effort.

DevOps is a growing field and a highly demanded one as well. As more and more industries enter into the space of automation with DevOps principles, the demand for DevOps engineers is increasing. Companies immediately hire well-qualified and skilled DevOps engineers who are motivated towards process improvement and scalability. 

A well-recognized and renowned certification on your portfolio is always a huge plus in learning the technology and securing professional job roles. This article will discuss how you can get AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional certification which is the most prominent certification to adopt DevOps with AWS. 

Benefits of a DevOps Certification

DevOps, being one of the fastest emerging fields in the software industry, has tremendous growth opportunities. Most of the new products and services introduced to the market follow a proper DevOps culture with automated CI/CD pipelines to make the integration, testing, delivery, and deployment procedures fast and easy. 

Due to DevOps culture’s large-scale integration into more and more digital products, the demand for DevOps engineers and professionals is ever increasing. Apart from the knowledge that one gets, a certified DevOps engineer has an added advantage due to the professional backing of a recognized industry leader. 

Besides market recognition and locking your next big move in the DevOps career, a certified DevOps professional can also actively participate in the discussions and research conducted in the software industry. Due to the knowledge and recognition as a certified DevOps professional, your view about the industry and its future trends gets an extra bit of validation among the field researchers. 

AWS and DevOps

AWS, one of the most popular and widely used on-demand cloud computing platforms, has indeed nailed the DevOps and CI/CD integrations by providing automated pipelines and ready-to-use infrastructure. DevOps is at the core of AWS, enabling developers to process cloud computing and participate in cloud-native development. 

AWS believes in creating an equal opportunity ecosystem for professionals who are constantly on the lookout for increasing their knowledge and skillset about DevOps. AWS offers some certifications related to cloud computing and automation, and the DevOps certification is one of them. According to AWS, the DevOps certification allows you to validate your technical skills and expertise with an industry-recognized credential and grow your career. 

How to Become an AWS DevOps Certified Professional

The AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional certification is the official credential for DevOps professionals by Amazon Web Services. Following is a detailed guide of how you can ace the exam, get this certification, and give a boost to your professional career. 

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Prerequisites

The AWS DevOps certification is a professional level certification that is most suitable for developers and system operators. Besides DevOps, AWS also offers developer and SysOps administrator certifications that are foundational level credentials. You must have both AWS Certified Developer - Associate, and AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate certifications before you can attempt to gain the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer certification as it is a professional-level credential that has these prerequisites. 

Apart from the associate level certifications, you must also have a solid grip and practical experience in the following key areas:

• The ability to work with professional tools that enable development teams to automate the processes. A few examples of such tools are Jenkins, CircleCI, Ansible, TeamCity, Octopus Deploy, and SonarQube.
• A deep understanding of managing and implementing CI/CD driven systems on AWS.
• Know how to set up continuous testing, continuous deployment, and continuous monitoring workflows on AWS. 
• Have a working proficiency in at least one high-level programming language. 
• Be familiar with setting up security protocols and governance procedures in AWS. 
• Know how to build and deploy highly automated infrastructures in AWS. 
  

These are some of the concepts and practical scenarios that you must be familiar with before stepping into the actual AWS DevOps certification. Besides these, you must be familiar with the core AWS services such as Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Simple Storage Service (S3), multiple database services, network services, deployment and management services, and monitoring and logging services. 

Exam Structure

The AWS DevOps certification has an exam-based model of evaluation. You can end up messing up on the certification test even with the little things if you don't know the exact format and appear on the test without knowing the exam format. For any exam, you must know the format and structure of what the exam will look like in reality. Similar reasoning goes for the AWS certification exam as well. 

The AWS DevOps certification exam has two types of questions; multiple-choice questions and multiple response questions. 

The multiple-choice questions are scenario-based. The applicant will be given a real-world problem that, ideally, a DevOps practitioner should know. Based on the scenario, the answers to multiple-choice questions will be assessed.

In the multiple response questions section, there can be one or more correct answers. The candidate must have the right knowledge to correctly pick all the possible answers. 

Roughly, the DevOps certification exam is divided into the following key areas: 

• SDLC Automation
• Configuration Management and Infrastructure as Code
• Monitoring and Logging
• Policies and Standards of Automation
• Incident and Event Response
• High Availability, Fault Tolerance, and Disaster Recovery

Exam Preparation and Reference Guides

Preparing for the AWS DevOps certification exam can be a bit overwhelming at times. Engineers often find difficulties in gathering the resources and relevant reference materials to prepare for the exam. Following is the comprehensive list of guides, resources, and mock preparation materials that you can follow and ace the certification exam. 

AWS Exam Readiness Course

The Exam Readiness: AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional is a free course focused on seven-hour of essential training on the overall domains that are covered in the certification exam. The training also includes a review of a sample exam that helps you in understanding how to interpret the concepts being tested. 

AWS User Guide

The AWS User Guide contains basic sets of information such as how to invoke a lambda function in a code pipeline, how to use AWS Logs driver for ECS, and how the pipelines for ECS deployments work. This basic information about AWS often comes in handy while attempting the certification exam. 

AWS DevOps Blog

The AWS DevOps Blog is a great experiential resource of learning for the certification exam. Professionals often write blog posts and articles on new DevOps concepts or modifications to existing concepts that are helpful to know in general, as well as from an exam standpoint. 

Apart from the official learning resources listed above, the AWS free sample questions, the AWS practice exam, and the practice exams of other e-learning forums help a lot in understanding the concepts and apply them in the certification exam. 

A Cloud Guru AWS DevOps Certification training is one of the most popular, professional, and renowned training that significantly helps in acing the certification exam. 

Next Steps

Once you have prepared for and attempted the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional certification, you will receive an AWS certified e-certificate within 72 hours of passing the exam. In case you were unable to pass the exam this time, you can always come back and give the second attempt after 14 days of the first attempt. 

Go ahead and schedule your AWS DevOps certification exam.