The AWS Certified Database – Specialty Exam (DBS-C01) is a certification exam that validates your expertise in designing, deploying, and managing AWS databases. This exam is designed for individuals who have a strong understanding of core AWS database services, as well as a deep knowledge of designing and implementing AWS database solutions.
The DBS-C01 exam consists of 65 multiple-choice and multiple-response questions and has a time limit of 170 minutes. The exam fee is $300 USD.
AWS Database Specialty Exam (DBS-C01) Glossary
Here are some key terms and concepts related to the AWS Database Specialty Exam (DBS-C01) that you may find useful:
- Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) – A managed database service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud.
- Amazon DynamoDB – A fully managed NoSQL database service that provides fast and predictable performance with seamless scalability.
- Amazon Redshift – A fast, fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse that makes it simple and cost-effective to analyze all your data.
- Amazon DocumentDB – A fully managed document database service that is designed to be compatible with existing MongoDB applications and tools.
- Amazon Neptune – A fully managed graph database service that makes it easy to build and run applications that work with highly connected datasets.
- Multi-AZ deployment – A deployment option for Amazon RDS that provides high availability and automatic failover by replicating your database instance to a standby instance in a different Availability Zone.
- Read replica – A feature of Amazon RDS that allows you to create one or more copies of your database instance in the same or different regions, which can be used for read-heavy workloads.
- Data encryption at rest and in transit – A security feature of AWS database services that provides encryption for data at rest in storage and in transit between services.
- Database migration – The process of moving a database from one platform to another, such as from an on-premises database to an AWS database service.
- Backup and recovery – A feature of AWS database services that provides automated backups, point-in-time recovery, and disaster recovery options to protect your data.
AWS Database Specialty Exam (DBS-C01) Exam Guide
Here are some AWS Database Specialty Exam (DBS-C01) exam resources with links that you may find useful:
- AWS Certified Database – Specialty Exam Guide: This guide provides a detailed overview of the exam, including the exam objectives, sample questions, and study resources. You can download it here: https://d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-database-specialty/AWS_Certified_Database_Specialty_Exam_Guide.pdf
- AWS Certified Database – Specialty Exam Readiness Workshop: This is a free, half-day virtual workshop that provides an overview of the exam, tips for exam preparation, and practice questions. You can register for the workshop here: https://aws.amazon.com/training/course-descriptions/database-specialty-exam-readiness/
- AWS Certified Database – Specialty Exam Preparation: This page provides a list of recommended AWS training courses, whitepapers, and documentation to help you prepare for the exam. You can access it here: https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-database-specialty/
AWS Database Specialty Exam (DBS-C01) Exam Tips and Tricks
Here are some tips and tricks that may help you prepare for and pass the AWS Database Specialty Exam (DBS-C01):
- Understand the exam format and objectives: Make sure you understand the format of the exam and the objectives that it covers. The AWS Certified Database – Specialty Exam Guide provides a detailed overview of the exam objectives, which you should review carefully.
- Study the AWS database services: To pass the exam, you need to have a solid understanding of the AWS database services, including Amazon RDS, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Redshift, Amazon DocumentDB, and Amazon Neptune. Review the documentation, take online courses, and practice using these services to build and manage databases.
- Know the best practices: AWS follows certain best practices when it comes to database design and management. Review these best practices and apply them when working with AWS database services. Examples include using Multi-AZ deployments for high availability and backups for disaster recovery.
- Learn about database migration: Understanding how to migrate databases from on-premises or other cloud platforms to AWS is an important skill for this exam. Review the AWS Database Migration Service documentation and practice using the service to migrate databases.
- Use study groups and practice exams: Join an AWS Certified Database – Specialty Exam Study Group or practice exams to test your knowledge and get feedback on your progress. These resources can help you identify areas where you need to focus your study efforts.
- Manage your time: The DBS-C01 exam has a time limit of 170 minutes for 65 questions. Make sure you manage your time effectively and pace yourself during the exam to ensure you have time to answer all questions.
Course Outline
As mentioned above, the AWS database specialty exam will test you on 5 major areas. These arenas are discussed in detail below:
AWS Database Specialty Updated Course Outline
The AWS Certified Database Specialty exam covers the latest and updated course outline –
Module 1: Explain Workload-Specific Database Design (26%)
1.1 Learn to select suitable database services for specific types of data and workloads.
- Understand the differences between ACID vs. BASE workloads
- Understand suitable uses of types of databases including relational, key-value, document, in-memory, graph, time series, ledger (AWS Documentation: Database)
- Understand and identify use cases for persisted data vs. ephemeral data (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 instance store)
1.2 Learn about the strategies for disaster recovery and high availability.
- Understanding and selecting Region and Availability Zone placement to optimize database performance (AWS Documentation: Choose Regions and Availability Zones to minimize latency)
- Understanding and determining implications of Regions and Availability Zones on disaster recovery/high availability strategies (AWS Documentation: Disaster recovery options in the cloud)
- Understanding and differentiating use cases for reading replicas and Multi-AZ deployments (AWS Documentation: Multi-AZ deployments for high availability)
1.3 Learn to design database solutions for performance, compliance, and scalability.
- Understanding and recommending serverless vs. instance-based database architecture (AWS Documentation: Understanding database options for your serverless web applications)
- Understanding and evaluating requirements for scaling read replicas (AWS Documentation: Working with MySQL read replicas, Working with read replicas)
- Understanding and defining database caching solutions (AWS Documentation: Database Caching, Caching strategies)
- Understanding and evaluating the implications of partitioning, sharding, and indexing (AWS Documentation: Sharding with Amazon Relational Database Service, Choosing the Right DynamoDB Partition Key)
- Understanding and determining appropriate instance types and storage options (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 Instance Types)
- Understanding and determining auto-scaling capabilities for relational and NoSQL databases (AWS Documentation: Managing throughput capacity automatically with DynamoDB auto scaling, AWS Management Console with DynamoDB auto scaling)
- Understanding and determining the implications of Amazon DynamoDB adaptive capacity (AWS Documentation: Best practices for designing and using partition keys effectively)
- Understanding and determining data locality based on compliance requirements (AWS Documentation: Addressing Data Residency with AWS)
1.4 Learn to compare the costs of database solutions
- Understanding and determining cost implications of Amazon DynamoDB capacity units, including on-demand vs. provisioned capacity (AWS Documentation: Read/write capacity mode, Pricing for Provisioned Capacity, Pricing for On-Demand Capacity)
- Understanding and determining costs associated with instance types and automatic scaling (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling)
- Understanding and designing for costs including high availability, backups, multi-Region, Multi-AZ, and storage type options (AWS Documentation: Multi-AZ deployments for high availability, Amazon RDS Multi-AZ)
- Understanding and comparing data access costs (AWS Documentation: Analyzing your costs with AWS Cost Explorer)
Module 2: Explain Deployment and Migration (20%)
2.1 Learn to automate database solution deployments.
- Understanding and evaluating application requirements to determine components to deploy (AWS Documentation: Evaluate your applications)
- Understanding and choosing suitable deployment tools and services (e.g., AWS CloudFormation, AWS CLI) (AWS Documentation: Using the AWS Command Line Interface, AWS CloudFormation best practices)
2.2 Learn to determine data preparation and migration strategies.
- Understanding and determining the data migration method (e.g., snapshots, replication, restore) (AWS Documentation: Restoring from a DB snapshot, Restore an Amazon RDS DB instance from a DB snapshot)
- Understanding and evaluating database migration tools and services (e.g., AWS DMS, native database tools) (AWS Documentation: Migration with native database tools and AWS DMS)
- Understanding and preparing data sources and targets (AWS Documentation: Configuring data target nodes, Creating a dataset from a database)
- Understanding and determining schema conversion methods (e.g., AWS Schema Conversion Tool) (AWS Documentation: AWS Schema Conversion Tool)
- Understanding and determining heterogeneous vs. homogeneous migration strategies (AWS Documentation: Heterogeneous database migration, Homogeneous database migration)
2.3 Learn to execute and validate data migration.
- Understanding and designing and script data migration (AWS Documentation: Best practices for AWS Database Migration Service, Database Migration Step-by-Step Walkthroughs)
- Understand and run data extraction and migration scripts (AWS Documentation: Extracting data from on-premises databases, Migrating data from an on-premises data, Database Migration Step-by-Step Walkthroughs)
- Understanding and verifying the successful load of data (AWS Documentation: Verifying that the data loaded correctly)
Module 3: Explain Management and Operations (18%)
3.1 Learn to determine maintenance tasks and processes.
- Understanding and accounting for the AWS shared responsibility model for database services (AWS Documentation: Shared Responsibility)
- Understanding and determining appropriate maintenance window strategies (AWS Documentation: AWS Systems Manager Maintenance Windows, Maintenance window scheduling and active period options)
- Understanding and differentiating between major and minor engine upgrades (AWS Documentation: Upgrading a DB instance engine version)
3.2 Learn to determine backup and restore strategies.
- Understanding and identifying the need for automatic and manual backups/snapshots (AWS Documentation: Comparing Automatic and Manual Snapshots, Amazon EBS snapshots)
- Understanding and differentiating backup and restore strategies (e.g., full backup, point-in-time, encrypting backups cross-Region) (AWS Documentation: Creating backup copies across AWS Regions)
- Understanding and defining retention policies (AWS Documentation: Implement data retention policies for each class, Work with retention rules)
- Understanding and correlating the backup and restore to recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) requirements (AWS Documentation: Plan for Disaster Recovery (DR), Disaster recovery options in the cloud)
3.3 Learn to manage the operational environment of a database solution.
- Orchestrate the refresh of lower environments (AWS Documentation: Updating compute environments, Orchestrating database refreshes for Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora)
- Implement configuration changes (e.g., in Amazon RDS option/parameter groups or Amazon DynamoDB indexing changes) (AWS Documentation: Working with parameter groups, Best practices for configuring parameters for Amazon RDS)
- Automate operational tasks (AWS Documentation: AWS Systems Manager Automation, Working with runbooks)
- Take action based on AWS Trusted Advisor reports (AWS Documentation: Get started with AWS Trusted Advisor)
Module 4: Explain Monitoring and Troubleshooting (18%)
4.1 Learn to monitor and alert strategies.
- Understanding and evaluating monitoring tools including Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon RDS Performance Insights, database native (AWS Documentation: Overview of monitoring metrics in Amazon RDS, Monitoring DB load with Performance Insights on Amazon RDS)
- Understanding and determining appropriate parameters and thresholds for alert conditions (AWS Documentation: Working with threshold alerts in Amazon QuickSight, Working with alerts)
- Understanding to use tools to notify users when thresholds are breached including, Amazon SNS, Amazon SQS, Amazon CloudWatch dashboards) (AWS Documentation: Using Amazon CloudWatch alarms)
4.2 Learn to troubleshoot and resolve common database issues.
- Understand and identify, evaluate, and respond to categories of failures including troubleshooting connectivity; instance, storage, and partitioning issues) (AWS Documentation: Troubleshoot instances with failed status checks)
- Understanding and automating responses when possible (AWS Documentation: Options for Automating Response)
4.3 Learn to optimize database performance.
- Understanding and troubleshooting database performance issues (AWS Documentation: Troubleshooting for Amazon RDS)
- Understanding and identifying suitable AWS tools and services for database optimization (AWS Documentation: Best practices for Amazon RDS)
- Understanding and evaluating the configuration, schema design, queries, and infrastructure to improve performance
Module 5: Explain Database Security (18%)
5.1 Learn to Encrypt data at rest and in transit.
- Understand to encrypt data in relational and NoSQL databases (AWS Documentation: Encrypting Amazon RDS resources, Using SSL/TLS to encrypt a connection to a DB instance)
- Understand to apply SSL connectivity to databases (AWS Documentation: Using SSL/TLS to encrypt a connection to a DB instance)
- Understand to implement key management (e.g., AWS KMS, AWS CloudHSM) (AWS Documentation: AWS Key Management Service, AWS CloudHSM)
5.2 Learn to evaluate auditing solutions.
- Understand to determine auditing strategies for structural/schema changes (e.g., DDL) (AWS Documentation: Database audit logging, Handling schema updates)
- Understand to determine auditing strategies for data changes (e.g., DML) (AWS Documentation: DML auditing for Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility))
- Understand to determine auditing strategies for data access (e.g., queries) (AWS Documentation: Database audit logging)
- Understand to determine auditing strategies for infrastructure changes (e.g., AWS CloudTrail) (AWS Documentation: AWS CloudTrail)
- Understand and enable the export of database logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs (AWS Documentation: Exporting log data to Amazon S3)
5.3 Learn to determine access control and authentication mechanisms.
- Recommend authentication controls for users and roles including IAM, native credentials, Active Directory (AWS Documentation: Security best practices in IAM, Using the AWS Directory Service identity provider)
- Recommend authorization controls for users including policies (AWS Documentation: Policies and permissions in IAM)
5.4 Learn to identify potential security vulnerabilities within database solutions.
- Understand to determine security group rules and NACLs for database access (AWS Documentation: Controlling access with security groups, Control traffic to subnets using Network ACLs)
- Understand to identify relevant VPC configurations (e.g., VPC endpoints, public vs. private subnets, demilitarized zone) (AWS Documentation: VPC with public and private subnets (NAT), Amazon VPC)
- Understand to determine appropriate storage methods for sensitive data (AWS Documentation: Best practices for securing sensitive data in AWS data stores)
Preparatory Guide for AWS Database Specialty Exam
There are many resources available for the preparation of the exam. However, you have to be very precise in choosing the right set of resources. The resources that can help you cover the most of the syllabus in less time will be the best suited and you should prefer that one. Just make sure that the resources you have chosen are as per your understanding level and the data is accurate. Let us have a look at some of the resources available.
Resource 1: Books our Best Option
Books are the very first option that comes to our mind when we think of preparing for an exam. You can pick any book that you find easy to understand and that you think can help you prepare well for the exam. Also, you can go to the libraries or the book stores and pick the books of your choice. You can even pick multiple books to cover the syllabus or to practice the exercises. Reading multiple books will help you in dealing with the tricky part of the exam.
Resource 2: Amazon Whitepapers
You can also take the help of amazon whitepapers for preparation. These are the pdf formats of the topics and you can find them on the official page of amazon for certifications. Some of the documentations you can refer to are:
Firstly, Configuring Amazon RDS as an Oracle PeopleSoft Database
Secondly, Determining the IOPS Needs for Oracle Database on AWS
Subsequently, Comparing the Use of Amazon DynamoDB and Apache HBase for NoSQL
Furthermore, Best Practices for Deploying Microsoft SQL Server on AWS
In addition, Migrating Oracle Database Workloads to Oracle Linux on AWS
Last but not least, Migrating Applications Running Relational Databases to AWS
Resource 3: Online Trainings
The online training courses and instructor led courses are one of the golden resources for preparation. These kinds of resources are interactive enough and helps you clear your doubts. There are many reliable educational sites that provide with the fully interactive training courses. You can also opt for the courses made available by amazon for cracking the exam. These are- AWS Database Offerings | Digital, Planning and Designing Databases on AWS | Classroom, Exam Readiness: AWS Certified Database – Specialty | Digital. The classes also provide quality notes that can be used for preparing paired with the test series.
Resource 4: Practice Exams and Test Series
Practice exams and test series are a very important step for preparation to crack the AWS Database Specialty exam. The practice papers help in identifying weak areas in your preparation. They make you feel more confident and you feel less strange when you face the exam in reality. You should keep taking test series quite frequently so that you can work on the weak parts and improve them. The help you measure your performance and give direction to your preparation. There are so many reliable sites that provide you with good test series and practice papers. Start Preparing for AWS Database Specialty Exam Now!
Resource 6: Join Cloud Community and Refer Online Blogs
You can read blogs provided by amazon for the AWS Database Specialty exam. You can also ask your doubts on the cloud communities without any hesitation. Cloud communities are the group of people who have cleared the exam of similar interest. You can even form the groups with the people who have the same interest and wants to crack the AWS Database Specialty exam to pool resources and other advantages.
These were the all relevant details that you needed to know to crack the AWS Database Specialty exam. Let us now jump to conclusion.
Expert Corner
To sum up, certifications are indirectly a way to achieve your dreams. They can help you get an advantage over others and make you feel more confident. After achieving the certification like AWS Database Specialty exam, you will definitely become the preferred candidate for the IT job roles. So, go choose your resources and achieve your aim.
All the best!
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