Study Guide
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional Study Guide
Use the official AWS domain outline to connect SDLC automation, infrastructure as code, resilient cloud solutions, monitoring, incident response, security, and compliance to scenario-based questions and explanations.
How the Exam Is Structured
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional (DOP-C02) validates SDLC automation, infrastructure as code, resilient cloud solutions, monitoring, incident response, security, and compliance. The ExamPal practice bank includes 440 premium questions and 40 free questions mapped across the official blueprint.
| Domain | Weight | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Domain 1: SDLC Automation | 22% | Task 1.1: Implement CI/CD pipelines; Continuous integration patterns and tools (AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodeArtifact) |
| Domain 2: Configuration Management and Infrastructure as Code | 17% | Task 2.1: Define cloud infrastructure and reusable components to provision and manage systems throughout their lifecycle; AWS CloudFormation (templates, stacks, StackSets, change sets, drift detection, custom resources, transforms, nested stacks) |
| Domain 3: Resilient Cloud Solutions | 15% | Task 3.1: Implement highly available solutions to meet resilience and business requirements; Multi-AZ patterns for RDS, Aurora, ElastiCache |
| Domain 4: Monitoring and Logging | 15% | Task 4.1: Configure systems to collect, aggregate, and store telemetry, including logs, metrics, traces, and events; Amazon CloudWatch metrics (standard + custom), CloudWatch Logs (subscription filters, log groups, retention) |
| Domain 5: Incident and Event Response | 14% | Task 5.1: Manage event sources to process, notify, and take action in response to events; Amazon EventBridge rules and event buses (default, custom, partner) |
| Domain 6: Security and Compliance | 17% | Task 6.1: Implement techniques for identity and access management at scale; IAM users, groups, roles, policies, permission boundaries, session policies |
22% of exam
Domain 1: SDLC Automation
Covers automating the software delivery lifecycle, including CI/CD pipeline design, test automation, artifact management, and deployment strategies across instance, container, and serverless environments. The domain emphasizes AWS-native tooling and deployment controls used to build, test, promote, and release software reliably.
17% of exam
Domain 2: Configuration Management and Infrastructure as Code
Covers defining, provisioning, and managing infrastructure using infrastructure-as-code and reusable components. The domain also includes multi-account and multi-region account governance, plus automation for large-scale and hybrid environments.
15% of exam
Domain 3: Resilient Cloud Solutions
Covers designing and implementing highly available, scalable, and recoverable cloud architectures. The domain emphasizes resilience patterns, scaling approaches, and disaster recovery strategies that satisfy business continuity objectives.
15% of exam
Domain 4: Monitoring and Logging
Covers collecting, storing, analyzing, and acting on telemetry across AWS environments. The domain includes logs, metrics, traces, events, observability tooling, and notification mechanisms used to detect issues and optimize performance.
14% of exam
Domain 5: Incident and Event Response
Covers responding to events, automating remediation, and troubleshooting failures in AWS environments. The domain emphasizes event-driven workflows, configuration remediation, and analysis of logs and health signals during incidents.
17% of exam
Domain 6: Security and Compliance
Covers identity and access management at scale, security automation, data protection, monitoring, and compliance auditing. The domain emphasizes AWS-native controls for least privilege, encryption, threat detection, and governance across multi-account environments.
Key Terms to Know
These terms are loaded from the shared terminology pack and appear across the question explanations.
- ACM
- Abbreviation for AWS Certificate Manager.
- ADOT
- AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry, an AWS distribution used for collecting observability data.
- ALB
- Application Load Balancer, a load balancer type used for application traffic distribution and weighted target groups.
- ALB weighted target groups
- An Application Load Balancer traffic-shifting mechanism that distributes traffic across target groups using weights.
- AWS Account Factory
- A Control Tower capability used to create and onboard AWS accounts.
- AWS Amplify
- An AWS service used for deployments, according to the text.
- AWS App Runner
- An AWS service used for deployments, according to the text.
- AWS Audit Manager
- An AWS service used to collect evidence and generate compliance reports.
- AWS Backup
- An AWS service for centralized backup management and recovery.
- AWS CDK for Terraform
- A CDK-based approach for defining Terraform infrastructure as code.
- AWS Certificate Manager
- An AWS service for provisioning and managing TLS certificates.
- AWS Chatbot
- An AWS service that delivers ChatOps notifications and integrates with chat tools.
- AWS Cloud Development Kit
- An infrastructure-as-code framework for defining cloud resources using programming languages.
- AWS CloudFormation
- An infrastructure-as-code service used to define cloud infrastructure and reusable components for provisioning and lifecycle management.
- AWS CloudHSM
- An AWS service that provides dedicated hardware security modules for cryptographic operations.
- AWS CodeArtifact
- An AWS artifact repository service used to store and manage build artifacts.
- AWS CodeBuild
- An AWS service used for build and test automation for source code within CI/CD pipelines.
- AWS CodeCommit
- An AWS service used as a source code repository in CI/CD workflows.
Official Materials and Guidance
This page is built from AWS DOP-C02 official exam guide, the shared syllabus, topic tree, terminology pack, free pack, and premium pack.
- -AWS Dop c02 Exam Guide