└── README.md /README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # aws-devops-professional-study-guide 2 | Study guide for AWS DevOps - Professional Exam. Recommended for 2020 version. 3 | 4 | # Overview 5 | 6 | This guide contains all the resources used, recommendations and tips for how to study for the AWS - DevOps Engineer Professional Exam. 7 | 8 | # 1. ACloudGuru Course 9 | 10 | Start by taking the following acloudguru course. This is a good overview of all the material covered in the exam. Remember, This is just an overview. It is, in no way, a comprehensive platform of all material needed to pass this exam. Starting your exam prep with this course will give you a good sense of the exam. 11 | 12 | [A Cloud Guru - DevOps Engineer Professional Course](https://acloud.guru/learn/aws-certified-devops-engineer-professional) 13 | 14 | 15 | # 2. Re:Invent Videos 16 | 17 | The following Re:Invent videos cover a large chunk of the material that is in the exam. 18 | We recommend watching them at 1.5x the speed. 1.5x is fast enough to help get through the videos quickly yet slow enough to be able to comprehend the material. 19 | 20 | [Moving to DevOps the Amazon Way](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvb74TlV8SA&t=3080s) 21 | 22 | [Serverless Architecture and Best Practices](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IYpGTS7Jy0) 23 | 24 | [I didn't know Amazon API Gateway did that](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfJZc3sJZ8E) 25 | 26 | [Using DevOps, Microservices, & Serverless to Accelerate Innovation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXl6Bumksnk) 27 | 28 | [Become a Serverless Black Belt: Optimizing Your Serverless Appli](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQFORsso2go) 29 | 30 | [Monitor All Your Things: Amazon CloudWatch in Action with BBC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuBuc6OAcVY) 31 | 32 | # 3. Whitepapers 33 | 34 | These are to all the whitepapers I read, took notes of and reviewed closer to the exam. 35 | It is tough to actually read all of these as it is a lot of material. You may skim through them but you must be really attentive/focused as you do so. There is a lot of little details in these whitepapers; details that are crucial to passing the exam. 36 | 37 | 38 | [AWS DevOps](https://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/AWS_DevOps.pdf) 39 | 40 | [Running containerized microservices on AWS](https://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/DevOps/running-containerized-microservices-on-aws.pdf) 41 | 42 | [Microservices on AWS](https://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/microservices-on-aws.pdf) 43 | 44 | [Infrastructure as Code](https://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/DevOps/infrastructure-as-code.pdf) 45 | 46 | [Practicing CI/CD on AWS](https://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/DevOps/practicing-continuous-integration-continuous-delivery-on-AWS.pdf) 47 | 48 | [Jenkins on AWS](https://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/DevOps/Jenkins_on_AWS.pdf) 49 | 50 | [Import Windows Server to Amazon EC2](https://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/DevOps/import-windows-server-to-amazon-ec2.pdf) 51 | 52 | [AWS Blue Green Deployments](https://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/AWS_Blue_Green_Deployments.pdf) 53 | 54 | [AWS Development and Test on AWS](https://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/aws-development-test-environments.pdf) 55 | 56 | # 4. AWS Free course 57 | 58 | We highly recommend going through this amazing, short, FREE course created by AWS: 59 | 60 | [Exam Readiness: AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional](https://www.aws.training/Details/eLearning?id=34146) 61 | 62 | This course assumes that you have strong knowledge of the exam material. This course does not cover all the exam material. Instead, this course is about how to approach the different questions in the exam. It breaks down the thought process of those who answer these very challenging questions correctly. We recommend going through this course after you have gone through the above mentioned videos and whitepapers. 63 | 64 | # 5. Other supporting material 65 | 66 | [Exam Guide](https://d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-devops-pro/AWS%20Certified%20DevOps%20Engineer%20Professional_Exam%20Guide_v1.5_FINAL%20(2).pdf) 67 | 68 | 69 | [Sample Question](https://d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-devops-pro/AWS%20Certified%20DevOps%20Engineer%20-%20Professional_Sample%20Questions.pdf) 70 | 71 | * Practice Exam: If you have previously taken an AWS exam, you have the benefit of taking a free practice exam. Go to your AWS Certification account > Benefits > Practice Exam and follow the prompts to set it up. This practice exam is vital. It contains a lot of material that is close to the material in the actual exam. 72 | 73 | # 6. Terminology 74 | 75 | As you are studying for the exam, you will come across a lot of different AWS terminology and supporting information. Make a point of noting and researching the ones that you don't necessarily know and looking them up. 76 | 77 | Here is a list of the ones that we have come across. 78 | 79 | * Serverless Application Model (SAM) 80 | * Caching on API Gateway 81 | * Canary deployments on API Gateway 82 | * Cloudformation Custom Resources 83 | * ebextensions configuration files 84 | * Customizing server for ElasticBeanstalk 85 | * DynamoDB TTL 86 | * S3 lifecycle policies with Tags 87 | * CodeDeploy on on-premise instances 88 | * Using SSH Keys in codecommit 89 | * Trusted Advisor - Service limits 90 | * Config - All the rules 91 | * Codebuild Artifacts 92 | * Different cloudformation functions 93 | * cfn-init, cfn-signal, cfn-metadata and cfn-hup files for cloudformation 94 | * Cloudformation stack policies 95 | * Autoscaling lifecycle with hooks 96 | * EC2 instance user data 97 | 98 | 99 | # 7. Services seen in the exam 100 | 101 | * Codecommit 102 | * COdebuild 103 | * Codedeploy 104 | * Codepipeline 105 | * Cloudformation 106 | * Opsworks 107 | * Lambda 108 | * API Gateway 109 | * X-Ray 110 | * Config 111 | * Trusted Advisor 112 | * Cloudwatch Events 113 | * Cloudwatch Logs 114 | * Elasticache 115 | * ElasticBeanstalk 116 | * ECR 117 | * ECS 118 | * DynamoDB with DAX 119 | * RDS 120 | * EC2 121 | * Route53 122 | * Cloudfront 123 | * Auto Scaling and Load balancers (Heavy emphasis on this) 124 | * Certificate Manager 125 | * Systems Manager 126 | * Service Catalog 127 | * Kinesis Datastreams vs Firehose 128 | * GuardDuty 129 | * AWS Server Migration 130 | * AWS SSO 131 | * Cost Optimization over all 132 | 133 | 134 | # 8: Exam Strategy 135 | 136 | * Keep track of time 137 | * Read both the question and answer in full 138 | * Identify the key words in the question and make sure to satisfy ALL requirements of the question. Two answeres may be very similar but a detail in the question will set them apart. 139 | * Spot the distractor/silly answers. Move on quickly from these. 140 | * Watch out for mental exhaustion. If you feel this, close your eyes and take 5 deep breaths. 141 | * The questions will not be super clear. It's ok to make some assumptions. 142 | * An answer that says "Don't do anything", is not the right answer. 143 | * Avoid answers that have you doing manual commands/process. 144 | * Some answers would not be the best way to do things but could still be right. 145 | * Focus on simplest, most technically correct answers 146 | 147 | 148 | # 9: Final Note 149 | 150 | Request: If you study for this exam and pass, please add your experience to this repo to help your colleagues. 151 | Good luck in your exam!! 152 | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------