Module 19, Exam Preparation: AWS DevOps Engineer Professional
About This Exam
The AWS DevOps Pro exam does not test Terraform syntax directly. It tests whether you can architect and reason about IaC at a systems level.
| Domain | Weight | Key Topics |
|---|---|---|
| 1. SDLC Automation | 22% | CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, deployment strategies |
| 2. Configuration Management & IaC | 17% | Terraform vs CloudFormation, drift detection, module design |
| 3. Monitoring and Logging | 15% | CloudWatch, X-Ray, centralized logging |
| 4. Policies and Standards | 10% | Sentinel, SCPs, IAM, compliance |
| 5. Incident and Event Response | 18% | Auto-remediation, Lambda, EventBridge |
| 6. High Availability and Fault Tolerance | 18% | Multi-AZ, Auto Scaling, blue/green |
Terraform Scenarios to Master
Scenario 1, New engineer sets up the pipeline
1. git clone finpay-infrastructure
2. cp terraform.tfvars.example terraform.tfvars
3. Fill in secrets (db_password, jwt_secret, github_connection_arn)
4. terraform init
5. terraform plan
6. terraform apply
7. Run DB migrations against new RDS endpoint
8. Trigger pipeline: aws codepipeline start-pipeline-execution
This is reproducible. This is what "where does a new employee start?" looks like.
Scenario 2, Move infrastructure to a new region
1. Change aws_region in terraform.tfvars
2. terraform plan (see new region in provider output)
3. terraform apply
Two steps. Zero clicking. This is the exam answer.
Scenario 3, Production environment corrupted
1. terraform destroy (clean slate)
2. terraform apply (recreate from code)
3. Restore RDS from automated backup snapshot
4. Verify health checks pass
Recovery time in minutes instead of days.
Deployment Strategy Questions
The exam heavily tests deployment strategies. Know these cold:
| Strategy | Downtime | Rollback | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| All at once | Yes | Re-deploy | None |
| Rolling | No | Re-deploy | None |
| Immutable | No | Terminate new | 2x briefly |
| Blue/Green | No | Swap CNAME/ALB | 2x during deploy |
| Canary | No | Re-route traffic | Variable |
When the exam says "zero downtime + instant rollback" → Blue/Green.
When it says "safest, no config drift" → Immutable.
IaC Comparison Questions
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Multi-cloud IaC | Terraform |
| AWS-only, JSON/YAML | CloudFormation |
| AWS-only, TypeScript/Python | CDK |
| Server configuration, no state | Ansible |
| Terraform + state management | Terraform + S3 backend |
Study Resources
- AWS DevOps Pro Exam Guide
- AWS Skill Builder
- This course's full FinPay project (complete it before the exam)