Table of Contents
How I have arranged this article is that I have picked most important topics and whitepapers to be focused on every section in the exam blueprint. If you have any questions, please write it in the comments section.
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What are the topics/services to study for SysOps certification?
The AWS SysOps certification is driven towards ensuring an individual having the technical expertise in deployment, management and ensuring smooth delivery of operations on the AWS platform. The topics and distribution for the certification is given below
|
Topic
|
Distribution
|
|---|---|
|
Monitoring and Metrics
|
15%
|
|
High Availability
|
15%
|
|
15%
|
|
|
Development and Provisioning
|
15%
|
|
Data Management
|
12%
|
|
Security
|
15%
|
|
Networking
|
13%
|
The key sub-topics that need focus on each topic are given below
Monitoring and Metrics
In the monitoring and metrics, a key learning topic is Cloudwatch alarms. One needs to understand the details of how to create and manage cloudwatch alarms both through the console and via the CLI. Also one needs to understand all the details of how to add custom metrics to cloudwatch.
Another key aspect of this topic is to understand the monitoring EC2, RDS, Elasticache and Elastic Load balancer for performance and availability based on the available metrics available for each aws service.
One example is given below for the Relational database metrics and dimensions available for cloudtwatch.
● http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/rds-metricscollected.html
Some good links for reading documentation on aws for ensuring that you understand more on metrics and monitoring are shown below
● http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/publishingMetrics.html
● https://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/
● http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-cloudwatch.html
High Availability
There are multiple ways to ensure high availability for services in aws. One needs to understand the various options available such as
● Multi-AZ option for databases – This option allows one to have secondary failover databases available. So in case of a failover one can easily failover to the secondary database.
● Multiple Availability Zones and Regions – Deployment of EC2 instances in multiple Availability zones and ensuring AMI’s are available in other regions for failover.
● Elastic IP – These IP’s can be used to failover EC2 instances to secondary instances.
One needs to ensure that each option on high availability is explored and studied in detail.
Some good links for reading documentation on aws for ensuring that you understand more high availability are shown below
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/Concepts.MultiAZ.html
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cloudhsm/latest/userguide/ha-best-practices.html
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/quickstart/latest/exchange/design-ha.html
Analysis
The Analysis topics focus on working on issues encountered in the aws services. Some of the common subtopics to focus on are
● Understanding bottlenecks in the network
● Troubleshooting EC2 and Elastic Load balancing issue.
● EBS Volumes – Resizing, Initializing volumes
Some good links for reading documentation on aws for ensuring that you understand more Analysis are shown below
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-instance-troubleshoot.html
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/classic/elb-troubleshooting.html
https://aws.amazon.com/ebs/
Deployment and Provisioning
A key aspect of this topic is a deep understanding of the Cloudformation service and an overall understanding on the Opswork service. Look at the aspect of creating stacks in Opswork and also looking at the key elements of a Cloudformation service.
Some good links for reading documentation on aws for ensuring that you understand more Deployment and provisioning are shown below
● http://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/overview-of-deployment-options-on-aws.pdf
● http://docs.aws.amazon.com/gettingstarted/latest/deploy/resources.html
Security
The Shared responsibility model is an important aspect wherein one needs to understand the responsibility of aws and that of the customer. Next, the following aspects need to be understood in greater detail. And how these security aspects can be used across the various services in aws such as EC2, SQS, SNS and RDS.
● S3 IAM policies – http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/using-iam-policies.html
● Security groups – http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/VPC_SecurityGroups.html
● NACL – http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/VPC_ACLs.html
● IAM roles – http://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_roles.html
Data Management
● One should know on key aspects as EBS snapshots which can be used to take care of EBS volumes.
● Next RDS also the aspect of automated backup which can be used to restore databases at any point in time.
● All aspects related to disaster recovery using the above the key aspects need to be understood in great detail.
For greater detail on disaster recovery please find the below link for getting all the related information
● https://aws.amazon.com/disaster-recovery/
Networking
One of the backbones of the aws offering is the entire network feature of AWS. The core service is the VPC or the Virtual private cloud where one can host the various resources using subnets. One needs to understand the following services in great details
● Subnets and Availability Zones – http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/VPC_Subnets.html
● Route53 and DNS Failover – https://aws.amazon.com/route53/
● Different routing techniques in Route53 – http://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/routing-policy.html
Conclusion
● BUY NOW : 420 Practice Questions for SysOps Administrator Exam
I hope this article is very useful for you to prepare for the SysOps Administrator certification exam. I have collected useful resources for the preparation from my experience and reading the experiences from the various exam takers. If there is any update on the exam, I would keep updating it here.
Good luck for your certification preparation. If you have any questions, please write it in the comments section.
