AWS DevOps Engineer Professional study plan

Diagram a full CI/CD pipeline that separates build, test, and deploy stages and identify which AWS service owns each stage

Write a CodePipeline definition (or equivalent pipeline-as-code) that deploys to two environments with a manual approval gate

Explain how CodeBuild buildspec phases, artifacts, and environment variables interact by tracing a failing build to its root cause

Compare deployment strategies (in-place, blue/green, canary) and state which CodeDeploy configuration matches each

Implement a blue/green deployment with CodeDeploy and a load balancer, then trigger and observe a rollback

Convert one manually created resource into a CloudFormation template and deploy it via change set

Differentiate CloudFormation drift, stack policies, and deletion policies by predicting the outcome of each in a scenario

Write a buildspec that runs unit tests and publishes test reports as artifacts

Author a nested-stack or cross-stack reference pattern and explain when each is preferred

Use CloudFormation StackSets to deploy a baseline resource to two accounts or regions

Deploy equivalent infrastructure with a second tool (CDK or Terraform) and list three behavioral differences from CloudFormation

Identify and fix a circular dependency and a hardcoded-value anti-pattern in a template

Design a multi-AZ architecture and justify each component's failure-domain placement

Configure an Auto Scaling group with health checks and a lifecycle hook and verify replacement behavior

Choose between SQS, SNS, and Step Functions for three given decoupling scenarios and defend each choice

Implement retry with exponential backoff and a dead-letter queue for a failing consumer

Instrument an application to emit custom CloudWatch metrics and a structured log stream

Build a CloudWatch dashboard and a metric-filter-based alarm that routes to SNS

Query logs with CloudWatch Logs Insights to answer a specific latency question

Explain how X-Ray traces and segments map to a request path across two services

Wire an EventBridge rule to trigger an automated remediation (e.g., Lambda or SSM Automation) on a defined event

Design an incident runbook that maps alarm to triage to remediation to post-incident review

Configure CloudWatch alarm actions and Systems Manager OpsCenter or Incident Manager for one workflow

Distinguish reactive auto-remediation from detective-only controls in a given event

Implement least-privilege IAM roles for a pipeline and prove over-permission with IAM Access Analyzer or policy simulation

Store and rotate a secret in Secrets Manager and reference it from application code without hardcoding

Encrypt data at rest and in transit across one service and document the key policy decisions

Run a compliance check with AWS Config rules or Security Hub and interpret the findings

Take two full-length timed practice exams and log every missed question by domain

Re-study the two weakest domains using targeted labs rather than rereading

Re-derive the decision criteria for the top ten service-selection tradeoffs from memory

Review all prior deliverables and close any gaps found