AWS Certified DevOps Professional exam topics, tips & practice exams

AWS DevOps exam basics

This exam measures how you design and run automated delivery systems, secure and govern multi account environments, monitor complex workloads, and respond to incidents. Question types include multiple choice and multiple response items. The exam uses a scaled score from 100 to 1000 with a minimum passing score of 750. Scoring is compensatory which means you pass based on overall performance. The exam includes unscored questions that AWS uses to evaluate future content. If this is your first AWS exam, warm up with the Cloud Practitioner to learn the format, then step up to professional level expectations, which are similar in difficulty to Solutions Architect Professional.

• About 65 scored questions plus unscored trial items
• Multiple choice and multiple response formats
• Scaled scoring with a 750 minimum to pass
• Compensatory scoring across domains

DevOps exam content domains and weights

The blueprint is organized into six domains that reflect how DevOps engineers deliver value on AWS. Each domain contributes a percentage to your total score so you should allocate study time accordingly. If your background is primarily development, supplement with Scrum Master and Product Owner resources to sharpen delivery flow and release planning. Builders coming from ML should also glance at AWS ML topics and even AI Practitioner for responsible AI context that increasingly intersects with DevOps.

• Domain 1 SDLC automation – 22 percent
• Domain 2 configuration management and infrastructure as code – 17 percent
• Domain 3 resilient cloud solutions – 15 percent
• Domain 4 monitoring and logging – 15 percent
• Domain 5 incident and event response – 14 percent
• Domain 6 security and compliance – 17 percent

Domain 1 SDLC automation

This domain focuses on building robust delivery pipelines and choosing safe deployment strategies. If you like structured drills, timed sets on platforms such as Udemy practice exams help you internalize AWS exam phrasing even when the course title targets another cert.

Implement CI and CD pipelines

You configure version control integration, build stages, artifact management, and automated deployments that span single and multi account environments. The mindset transfers from associate tracks like Developer Associate and Solutions Architect Associate.

• Connect repositories and trigger builds and tests on pull requests and merges
• Generate and promote artifacts through environments
• Choose deployment patterns that reduce risk and enable rollback

Integrate automated testing

You position unit, integration, acceptance, security, and performance tests at the right stages in the pipeline. Teams that embrace Scrum practices often find test placement and definition of done easier to standardize.

• Gate promotions on test outcomes and health signals
• Exercise applications at scale and interpret exit codes and metrics

Build and manage artifacts

You create secure artifact repositories and control lifecycles and provenance. These patterns complement data movement concerns that appear on Data Engineer and GCP Data Engineer Professional.

• Produce container images, function bundles, and AMIs through repeatable builds
• Sign, scan, and promote artifacts across accounts

Deploy to instances, containers, and serverless

You select deployment approaches that fit each runtime and business need. The blue green and canary release patterns will also appear in GCP DevOps Engineer prep, which makes them worth mastering.

• Use blue green or canary for safe releases
• Automate agent configuration and troubleshoot rollout failures

Domain 2 configuration management and infrastructure as code

This domain covers how you define, standardize, and govern cloud infrastructure at scale. If your long term goal includes architecture leadership, align these skills with the guidance in Solutions Architect Professional.

Define cloud infrastructure with reusable components

You compose templates and modules that encode security controls, guardrails, and best practices.

• Model networks, compute, storage, and policies as code
• Deploy stacks consistently across accounts and Regions

Automate account provisioning and governance

You standardize account creation and baseline configuration for multi account setups. The same governance ideas show up on GCP Workspace Administrator and GCP Security Engineer.

• Apply organization structures and service control policies
• Enable configuration recording, drift detection, and change approval flows

Automate operations at scale

You build runbooks and workflows that keep fleets configured, patched, and compliant. For end to end delivery literacy consider complementing with GCP Developer Professional or GCP Data Practitioner resources.

• Automate inventory, patching, and state management
• Orchestrate complex tasks with event driven functions and workflows

Domain 3 resilient cloud solutions

This domain validates your ability to keep systems highly available, scalable, and recoverable. Many resilience patterns overlap with architect content, so browsing Solutions Architect Associate summaries can help.

Design for high availability and fault tolerance

You translate business objectives into technical resilience and remove single points of failure.

• Use multi Availability Zone and multi Region patterns where needed
• Implement health checks, graceful degradation, and failover routing

Scale elastically

You select the right auto scaling, load balancing, and caching strategies for each layer.

• Scale instances, containers, serverless functions, and data services with appropriate metrics
• Design loosely coupled and distributed architectures for growth

Automate recovery and disaster readiness

You meet recovery time and recovery point targets with tested procedures. If you also study analytics stacks, compare backup choices with those seen in GCP Database Engineer Pro.

• Choose backup and recovery patterns such as pilot light and warm standby
• Practice failovers and document restoration workflows

Domain 4 monitoring and logging

This domain ensures you can observe complex systems and turn signals into action. The mental models carry nicely to GCP Network Engineer troubleshooting and GCP Associate Engineer operations.

Collect, aggregate, and store telemetry

You capture logs and metrics securely with the right retention and encryption.

• Create custom metrics and metric filters from logs
• Stream telemetry to analytics and long term storage

Audit and analyze signals

You build dashboards, anomaly alarms, and queries that reveal health and trends.

• Correlate traces, metrics, and logs to pinpoint issues
• Use managed analytics to search and visualize events

Automate monitoring and event management

You connect events to notifications and remediation without manual effort.

• Trigger alerts, functions, and self healing actions on thresholds and patterns
• Install and manage agents safely across fleets

Domain 5 incident and event response

This domain focuses on how you detect, triage, and resolve operational issues. Many event driven patterns echo what you will use in ML pipelines or AI agents so a scan of AI Practitioner and GCP Generative AI Leader can broaden your perspective.

Process events and notify the right channels

You integrate native event sources and build fan out pipelines for processing.

• Capture platform health, audit trails, and service events
• Drive queues, streams, and workflows to coordinate actions

Apply configuration changes safely

You modify infrastructure and application settings in response to events without creating new risk.

• Roll back misconfigurations quickly
• Automate fleet wide updates through managed services

Troubleshoot and perform root cause analysis

You analyze failed deployments, scaling behaviors, and timeouts with structured methods. For deeper architecture tradeoffs, the pro level architect guide at Solutions Architect Professional is a helpful companion.

• Use traces, metrics, logs, and health data to isolate faults
• Document findings and preventive actions for future resilience

Domain 6 security and compliance

This domain confirms that you can secure identities, data, and networks at scale and prove it with evidence. Security topics frequently overlap with GCP Security Engineer and AI governance elements from AI Practitioner.

Manage identity and access at scale

You design least privilege access for humans and machines across many accounts.

• Apply roles, boundaries, and federation patterns
• Rotate credentials and enforce strong authentication practices

Automate security controls and data protection

You implement layered defenses and privacy controls through automation. If your org builds ML services, align controls with practices referenced in the AWS ML Specialty and GCP ML Engineer Pro tracks.

• Combine network controls, certificates, and encryption for defense in depth
• Discover sensitive data and protect it at rest and in transit

Monitor and audit security continuously

You collect evidence, detect threats, and alert on anomalous behavior. These habits also strengthen success in AWS Security exams.

• Enable audit trails and configuration recording
• Analyze findings and integrate remediation into workflows

Out of scope tasks

The exam does not require expert level routing design, deep database optimization, or full stack application development. You are not expected to provide deep security architecture reviews to developers or write complex application code. Focus on DevOps delivery, operations, and automation on AWS.

How to prepare

A strong plan improves both knowledge and exam judgment. Combine guided study with hands on practice and timed drills.

For technique breakdowns and common exam patterns, Cameron McKenzie YouTube channel has lots to offer.

When you want extra practice with exam style phrasing, timed sets like this Udemy practice series can help build speed.

As you progress, branch to adjacent guides such as Cloud Practitioner, Solutions Architect Associate, and the GCP DevOps Engineer to cross check patterns.

• Start with the official DOP C02 guide and list of in scope services
• Map each task statement to labs for pipelines, IaC, observability, and incident response
• Build small projects that exercise blue green and canary deployments, multi account governance, and automated remediation
• Create dashboards, alarms, and alerts and test them with synthetic traffic
• Take full length practice exams and write out why wrong options are wrong
• Review security and reliability best practices and read service quotas and limits

If you cover every domain with real practice and test yourself under time pressure, you will be ready to pass and to operate production systems with confidence.

Other AWS Certification Books

If you want additional certifications and career momentum, explore this series:

• AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Book of Exam Questions — pair with the roadmap at Cloud Practitioner topics.
• AWS Certified Developer Associate Book of Exam Questions — cross-check with Developer Certification guides.
• AWS Certified AI Practitioner Book of Exam Questions & Answers — align with AI Practitioner exam objectives and ML exam services.
• AWS Certified Machine Learning Associate Book of Exam Questions — a bridge toward ML Specialty Certification.
• AWS Certified DevOps Professional Book of Exam Questions — complements DevOps Certification Exam study.
• AWS Certified Data Engineer Associate Book of Exam Questions — use with Data Engineer content.
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Book of Exam Questions — see the companion AWS Solutions Architect Certification track.

For multi-cloud awareness, compare with GCP paths such as ML Engineer Professional, Developer Professional, Data Engineer Professional, Security Engineer, DevOps Engineer, Network Engineer, Associate Cloud Engineer, and leadership tracks like Generative AI Leader and Solutions Architect Professional.