AWS DevOps Certification

With the emerging technology and continuous growth of IT professionals, you would now be aware of how important it is to get certified and be updated with the latest technologies. And, what’s a better platform than the biggest player in the booming cloud industry, AWS!

AWS certifications are one of the most trending and valuable certifications in today’s world.

Following is the list of all topics that are discussed in this blog:

• Who should go for AWS DevOps Certification?
• Why DevOps?
• What is DevOps?
• Role of a DevOps Engineer
• What is AWS DevOps Certification?
• Exam Expectations
• Scope of An AWS Certified DevOps Engineer

Watch this AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Tutorial for Beginners:

Now, you might be thinking why one should opt for AWS DevOps Certification, right? Let me walk you through the importance of being an AWS Certified DevOps Engineer and how it can help you stand out of the crowd.

Becoming an AWS Certified DevOps Engineer would open all the doors of job opportunities for you, because according to a survey conducted in 2018, due to the need of implementing DevOps and cloud, plus AWS being a major cloud service provider, AWS DevOps Engineers are the most demanding professionals in the current IT industry.

Since AWS was established in 2006, it stepped into providing cloud services before anyone could even think of it. Undoubtedly, AWS provides the most reliable services with a huge infrastructure and the majority of its clients spread across the globe, leading to its major occupation and has grabbed around 42 percent (1^st position) of the market share in the public cloud market, leaving Azure (2^nd position) and GCP (3^rd position) behind with 30 and 10 percent of the market share respectively.

You can check out this Google Trends graph to be more convinced:

And the average salary of an AWS Certified DevOps Engineer is up to US$117,000.

Yes, you read that right!

At the end of this professional-level certification, you will not only expertize your technical skill set and acquire advanced knowledge in AWS core services but also get an in-depth understanding of automation technology.

In this blog, you will be understanding the importance of an AWS Certified DevOps Engineer and how DevOps has become a standard way of working for businesses.

So, if you are looking for a platform to rampant your career, then you are on the right page.

Let us start off by looking at who should go for this AWS DevOps Certification.

Since this certification validates your technical skills in DevOps and AWS, it requires you to have a minimum two years of experience in DevOps and skills in AWS that include provisioning, operating and managing AWS environments.

Now, let us have a look at the eligibility to attempt this professional-level certification exam:

• If you have passed any of the certification exams from the associate level, then you can easily opt for this certification.
• Associate-level exams are AWS Certified Solutions Architect, AWS Certified Developer, and AWS Certified SysOps Administrator.

Check out the below diagram to understand it more clearly:

Also, if you are from any of the below-mentioned backgrounds, then going for AWS DevOps Certification is an added advantage to you:

• AWS Developer
• AWS Solutions Architect
• AWS SysOps Administrator
• System Architect
• Software Tester
• DevOps Engineer
• System Administrator
• Application Developers
• Integration Specialist

Before moving forward, we should be aware of the core technologies/methodologies behind DevOps. We shall discuss them as we move forward.

But, before understanding what DevOps means, we should know why DevOps came into the picture. Let us make it clear quickly.

Let’s first talk about what used to happen in an organization before DevOps came into existence.

There were two divisions, which were:

• Development team
• Operations team

The development team worked on developing the software and making sure that the code worked perfectly.

After that, the code got released and executed by the operations team.

The operations team then checked the application and its performance.

As the development team worked on programming, debugging, analysis, and so on, the operations team worked on the release and execution of code.

Now, you might have figured out that it wasn’t a very smooth process, where both teams faced many issues in the execution and deployment of the software, for which they of course blamed each other, thereby, making it a long and tedious process, along with endless clashes between the Dev and Ops teams.

So, in order to overcome this gap, DevOps was introduced.

Let us understand briefly what exactly DevOps is?

DevOps basically emphasises on bringing all the Development and Operations, plus IT infrastructure, guys together, which includes Developers, System Admins, QAs, Testers, etc. They are also called DevOps Engineers, having the end-to-end responsibility from gathering information for development to testing, to deployment of infrastructure and to application deployment, along with monitoring and getting feedback from the end users for making any improvements. This process of developing, testing, deployment, and monitoring keeps on going forward for better results.

We can actually figure out this process flow from the DevOps diagram given below.

Being a DevOps Engineer is not easy. It is full of challenges and learning.

So, let us understand the role of a DevOps Engineer quickly.

DevOps ensures that the communication and exchange of artefacts between the Development and Operations teams happen automatically using various DevOps tools. It bridges the gap between both teams by making the process automatic and extremely fast.

A DevOps Engineer takes care of creating/managing the DevOps life cycle/process, which ensures smooth interactions between the Developers and the Operations teams.

Now, we know what DevOps is and the role of a DevOps Engineer. When both of the terms, i.e., AWS and DevOps are combined, it makes DevOps Engineering on AWS. So guys, now let us jump into the certification that AWS has to offer, which is AWS DevOps Certification.

AWS DevOps certification is a certification program which validates your elite technical skills in developing, provisioning, operating, and managing distributed applications on AWS platform, i.e., how to create the DevOps life cycle on AWS.

This certification comprises a DevOps professional exam which requires advanced technical skills to bag it. This certification exam validates candidates in designing and managing tools in automation processes, and implementing a secure, robust, and reliable system on AWS.

Upon the completion of this certification, you will be able to code effortlessly and select the right services for a specific application, along with gaining in-depth knowledge in automation, which is one of the emerging technologies.
In order to be well prepared for the AWS DevOps certification exam, you must know what the expectations are for the exam. So, let’s have a brief on its curriculum.

Watch this AWS DevOps Training Tutorial:

This exam basically expects a candidate to be thorough with almost every major AWS DevOps tool and its services.

It demands you to gain expertise in the topics as shown below.

Introduction to DevOps on Cloud

• Understanding DevOps and Its Life Cycle
• Understanding DevOps Using AWS
• Security Management
• Enabling Governance Using AWS Configuration

SDLC Automation

• CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodePipeline, CodeDeploy, and AWS CodeStar

Automating Infrastructure with Cloud Formation

• CloudFormation and CloudFormation Template, Stack Creation, Advanced CloudFormation Concepts, CloudFormation Stack Updates and CloudFormation Best Practices
• Creating an S3 Bucket Using CloudFormation by Hardcoding the Name
• Creating a Custom Resource with the Help of the Lambda Function

Application Deployment Using Elastic Beanstalk

• Introduction to Elastic Beanstalk, Deployment Option, Docker in Elastic Beanstalk, Alarms and Notifications, Deploying an Application on Beanstalk Using Docker

Configuration Management Using OpsWorks

• Introduction to OpsWorks
• Cookbooks, Recipes, and Databags
• Life Cycle Events, Deployment, and Auto-healing in OpsWorks
• Deploying an Application in OpsWorks

Automating the Monitoring and Event Management in AWS

• Introduction to CloudWatch and CloudTrail
• Tagging
• Lambda, SNS, and Autoscaling

Fault Tolerance and Disaster Recovery

• Amazon EBS, Elastic IP, Multi-AZs, and SQS
• Dynamo DB, Amazon S3, Autoscaling Life Cycle, and Horizontal and Vertical Scaling
• Recovery Time and Recovery Point Objective
• Disaster Recovery Options
• Overcoming Single Point of Failure
• Working of Load Balancer and Auto-scaling to Support Highly Available and Fault-tolerant Systems

Container Management Tools

• Orchestration
• ECS, Amazon ECR, and ECS with EC2
• ECS with AWS Fargate
• Pushing an Image into ECR
• Hosting a Website Inside ECS Using Fargate Launch Type

Now that you’re aware of the expectations for this exam, let us move forward.

You must be probably wondering what to do after you get AWS DevOps Certified.

Well, do not worry because once you complete this certification, you see doors opened for you toward substantial job offers and interview calls.

Not to ignore, the average salary of an experienced AWS Certified DevOps Engineer is up to US$117,000, as mentioned earlier.

Conclusion

Now, if you really want to pursue DevOps, this is the best time, as AWS DevOps is the new trending buzzword.