Prepare for AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional by practicing the delivery, infrastructure, monitoring, and response tasks in the DOP-C02 guide. Use the domain map below to identify gaps, then work through an original CloudFormation example that separates a completed check from a configuration that matches its template.
Is DevOps Engineer Professional right for you?
DOP-C02 assesses provisioning, operating, and managing distributed systems on AWS, including automation, security controls, monitoring, and recovery.
AWS recommends two or more years of experience provisioning, operating, and managing AWS environments, plus software development lifecycle and programming or scripting experience. These are preparation recommendations; AWS does not require a prerequisite certification or training course.
The guide excludes specified tasks such as advanced networking, database design or optimization, and full-stack application development. Those role boundaries do not remove the networking, security, and application knowledge needed for the tasks that remain in scope.
Facts come from the AWS certification page for this exam, the official DOP-C02 exam guide, AWS CloudFormation drift detection documentation, and AWS Certification FAQs.: AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (certification page) — aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-devops-engineer-professional/; AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Exam Guide (DOP-C02) — docs.aws.amazon.com PDF, copyright 2026; AWS Certification FAQs
Check the exam version and language
The current version is DOP-C02, offered in English, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese. AWS will retire the Korean-language version of the exam after December 31, 2026; the other language versions continue.
The announcement applies to the Korean exam version. It does not announce retirement of the English, Japanese, or Simplified Chinese versions. Confirm the code, language, and testing date on your booking.
The exam’s Help feature provides a mapping for specified service short names and full names. Review AWS’s published service-name list before the exam.
Facts come from the AWS certification page for this exam, the official DOP-C02 exam guide, AWS CloudFormation drift detection documentation, and AWS Certification FAQs.: AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (certification page) — aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-devops-engineer-professional/; AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Exam Guide (DOP-C02) — docs.aws.amazon.com PDF, copyright 2026
What to expect on the exam
You have 180 minutes for 75 questions. Sixty-five are scored, and 10 unscored questions are not identified.
The passing score is 750 on a scale of 100–1,000. It is a scaled score, not a raw requirement to answer 75% correctly. You pass on your overall result, with no separate passing requirement for each domain. Unanswered questions count as incorrect, and there is no penalty for guessing.
Follow each question’s selection instructions. Most AWS exams do not show a pass or fail result immediately on screen; check your AWS Certification Account for detailed results within five business days.
- Multiple choice: one correct response out of four options.
- Multiple response: two or more correct responses out of five or more options.
Facts come from the AWS certification page for this exam, the official DOP-C02 exam guide, AWS CloudFormation drift detection documentation, and AWS Certification FAQs.: AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (certification page) — aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-devops-engineer-professional/; AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Exam Guide (DOP-C02) — docs.aws.amazon.com PDF, copyright 2026; AWS Certification FAQs
What to study in each domain
Cover all six domains. Use the weights and your knowledge gaps together to plan your study time.
The weights describe scored content, not exact question counts. The official guide gives the detailed tasks and supporting skills and says its content list is not exhaustive. The practice activities below are suggestions for working on those tasks.
| Domain | Weight | Topics and suggested practice |
|---|---|---|
| SDLC Automation | 22% | CI/CD pipelines, testing, artifacts, and deployment strategies. Read a deployment plan and explain its tests, traffic changes, and rollback assumptions. |
| Configuration Management and IaC | 17% | Infrastructure as code, reusable templates, multi-account provisioning, and automation. Interpret a template and compare a sample drift report with its intended configuration. |
| Resilient Cloud Solutions | 15% | Availability, scaling, and recovery. Review a recovery exercise and explain how you would assess it against the stated objectives. |
| Monitoring and Logging | 15% | Metrics, logs, aggregation, auditing, and event management. Inspect sample records and explain what they establish and what remains unknown. |
| Incident and Event Response | 14% | Event sources, response-driven configuration changes, and troubleshooting. Trace a sample event through the proposed response and identify the evidence needed to confirm the outcome. |
| Security and Compliance | 17% | IAM at scale, automated controls, data protection, and auditing. Review a sample policy or control result and identify the relevant scope and exceptions. |
Facts come from the AWS certification page for this exam, the official DOP-C02 exam guide, AWS CloudFormation drift detection documentation, and AWS Certification FAQs.: AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Exam Guide (DOP-C02) — docs.aws.amazon.com PDF, copyright 2026
Practice explaining a deployment decision
Use a complete set of requirements to compare deployment approaches.
The SDLC Automation domain covers deployment strategies, automated testing, and delivery across compute, container, and serverless environments. For study, examine a proposed deployment and write down what you need to know before choosing or approving its approach.
- Identify the required availability, test coverage, traffic behavior, and recovery outcome.
- Explain how the proposed process detects a problem and what its rollback depends on.
- Check the documentation for the actual service and deployment configuration you are studying.
- State missing information rather than treating one phrase in the question as enough to select a service.
Facts come from the AWS certification page for this exam, the official DOP-C02 exam guide, AWS CloudFormation drift detection documentation, and AWS Certification FAQs.: AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Exam Guide (DOP-C02) — docs.aws.amazon.com PDF, copyright 2026
Practice: interpret CloudFormation drift results
Drift detection reports differences between supported resource configurations and their expected template values. A completed detection operation is not proof that the stack matches its template.
CloudFormation checks property values explicitly set in the template or through parameters; it does not automatically track every default value. Resources that do not support drift detection receive NOT_CHECKED. Nested stacks need their own drift check.
A stack is DRIFTED when one or more resources have drifted. IN_SYNC means the supported resource configurations match the expected configuration; a stack with no supported resources can also report IN_SYNC. Interpret the result together with what was actually checked.
The drift exercise is original; every assumption needed for a unique answer is stated in the prompt.
A fictional stack has just completed drift detection with operation status DETECTION_COMPLETE. Resource Q supports detection: its explicitly configured VisibilityTimeout is 30 in the template and 60 on the actual resource. Resource T supports detection and all its checked properties match. Resource U does not support drift detection. All other checked configuration and stack tags match, and no other process changes these resources during the exercise. What are the resource statuses and the stack status? Does completing the check prove the stack is in sync? Would running detection again, without making a corrective change, restore Q to 30?
Work through all four parts before reading the answer.
Q is MODIFIED, T is IN_SYNC, and U is NOT_CHECKED. The stack is DRIFTED. DETECTION_COMPLETE describes completion of the check, not an absence of drift. Repeating detection alone does not restore Q to 30.
Q’s explicitly configured property differs from its template, so it is MODIFIED and makes the stack DRIFTED. T’s checked configuration matches. U was not checked, so its status is not evidence that it is unchanged. Detection reports the differences; it is not a corrective operation. With no intervening changes, Q remains at 60. Before planning a correction, inspect the differing property and determine the intended configuration rather than assuming that a generic stack update will fix every type of drift.
Facts come from the AWS certification page for this exam, the official DOP-C02 exam guide, AWS CloudFormation drift detection documentation, and AWS Certification FAQs.: Detect unmanaged configuration changes to stacks and resources with drift detection – AWS CloudFormation User Guide; Detect drift on an entire CloudFormation stack – AWS CloudFormation User Guide
Your DOP-C02 preparation checklist
Use this suggested sequence to address the tasks you have not yet practiced or cannot explain clearly.
AWS’s preparation path combines exam-style questions, targeted learning, practice, and a readiness assessment. Adapt the activities to your experience and use mistakes to identify what to study next.
- Confirm DOP-C02 and your exam language, then review all six domains in the official guide.
- Mark each task as practiced, understood but unpracticed, or a gap to address.
- Use official practice questions to learn the format and review the reasons for incorrect or guessed answers.
- Choose relevant labs or paper scenarios for your weak areas; record the assumptions, expected result, and explanation.
- Revisit the drift exercise and explain the difference between operation status, stack status, and resource status.
- Use a practice exam to find remaining gaps. Check the appointment instructions, available testing mode, and schedule-change deadline.
Facts come from the AWS certification page for this exam, the official DOP-C02 exam guide, AWS CloudFormation drift detection documentation, and AWS Certification FAQs.: AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (certification page) — aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-devops-engineer-professional/; AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Exam Guide (DOP-C02) — docs.aws.amazon.com PDF, copyright 2026; Detect unmanaged configuration changes to stacks and resources with drift detection – AWS CloudFormation User Guide; Detect drift on an entire CloudFormation stack – AWS CloudFormation User Guide; AWS Certification FAQs
Booking, fees, and renewal
The listed exam fee is USD 300, with applicable taxes and local-currency pricing. Book with Pearson VUE through your AWS Certification Account.
Check test-center or online-proctoring availability and the current price for your location when booking. Review the full appointment policy for exceptions relevant to your circumstances.
- Schedule changes: the standard policy permits cancellation or rescheduling up to 24 hours before the appointment.
- Failed attempt: wait 14 calendar days before retaking. AWS states that each attempt requires the full registration fee and that there is no limit on attempts.
- Renewal: the certification is valid for three years. AWS lists recertification by passing the latest version of the exam before your credential expires.
Facts come from the AWS certification page for this exam, the official DOP-C02 exam guide, AWS CloudFormation drift detection documentation, and AWS Certification FAQs.: AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (certification page) — aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-devops-engineer-professional/; AWS Certification FAQs
Facts come from the AWS certification page for this exam, the official DOP-C02 exam guide, AWS CloudFormation drift detection documentation, and AWS Certification FAQs.
Logistics and domain facts verified against AWS sources retrieved September 14, 2026.:
- AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (certification page)
- AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional Exam Guide (DOP-C02)
- Detect unmanaged configuration changes to stacks and resources with drift detection – AWS CloudFormation User Guide
- Detect drift on an entire CloudFormation stack – AWS CloudFormation User Guide
- AWS Certification FAQs