The AWS DBS-C01 exam preparation guide is designed to provide candidates with necessary information about the Database Specialty exam. It includes exam summary, sample questions, practice test, objectives and ways to interpret the exam objectives to enable candidates to assess the types of questions-answers that may be asked during the AWS Certified Database - Specialty exam.
It is recommended for all the candidates to refer the DBS-C01 objectives and sample questions provided in this preparation guide. The AWS Database Specialty certification is mainly targeted to the candidates who want to build their career in Specialty domain and demonstrate their expertise. We suggest you to use practice exam listed in this cert guide to get used to with exam environment and identify the knowledge areas where you need more work prior to taking the actual AWS Certified Database - Specialty exam.
AWS DBS-C01 Exam Summary:
Exam Name
|
AWS Certified Database - Specialty |
Exam Code | DBS-C01 |
Exam Price | $300 USD |
Duration | 180 minutes |
Number of Questions | 65 |
Passing Score | 750 / 1000 |
Recommended Training / Books |
AWS Database Offerings Planning and Designing Databases on AWS Exam Readiness - AWS Certified Database - Specialty |
Schedule Exam | PEARSON VUE |
Sample Questions | AWS DBS-C01 Sample Questions |
Recommended Practice | AWS Certified Database - Specialty Practice Test |
AWS Database Specialty Syllabus:
Section | Objectives |
---|---|
Workload-Specific Database Design - 26% |
|
Select appropriate database services for specific types of data and workloads. |
- Differentiate between ACID vs. BASE workloads - Explain appropriate uses of types of databases (e.g., relational, key-value, document, in-memory, graph, time series, ledger) - Identify use cases for persisted data vs. ephemeral data |
Determine strategies for disaster recovery and high availability. |
- Select Region and Availability Zone placement to optimize database performance - Determine implications of Regions and Availability Zones on disaster recovery/high availability strategies - Differentiate use cases for read replicas and Multi-AZ deployments |
Design database solutions for performance, compliance, and scalability. |
- Recommend serverless vs. instance-based database architecture - Evaluate requirements for scaling read replicas - Define database caching solutions - Evaluate the implications of partitioning, sharding, and indexing - Determine appropriate instance types and storage options - Determine auto-scaling capabilities for relational and NoSQL databases - Determine the implications of Amazon DynamoDB adaptive capacity - Determine data locality based on compliance requirements |
Compare the costs of database solutions. |
- Determine cost implications of Amazon DynamoDB capacity units, including on-demand vs. provisioned capacity - Determine costs associated with instance types and automatic scaling - Design for costs including high availability, backups, multi-Region, Multi-AZ, and storage type options - Compare data access costs |
Deployment and Migration - 20% |
|
Automate database solution deployments. |
- Evaluate application requirements to determine components to deploy - Choose appropriate deployment tools and services (e.g., AWS CloudFormation, AWS CLI) |
Determine data preparation and migration strategies. |
- Determine the data migration method (e.g., snapshots, replication, restore) - Evaluate database migration tools and services (e.g., AWS DMS, native database tools) - Prepare data sources and targets - Determine schema conversion methods (e.g., AWS Schema Conversion Tool) - Determine heterogeneous vs. homogeneous migration strategies |
Execute and validate data migration. |
- Design and script data migration - Run data extraction and migration scripts - Verify the successful load of data |
Management and Operations - 18% |
|
Determine maintenance tasks and processes. |
- Account for the AWS shared responsibility model for database services - Determine appropriate maintenance window strategies - Differentiate between major and minor engine upgrades |
Determine backup and restore strategies. |
- Identify the need for automatic and manual backups/snapshots - Differentiate backup and restore strategies (e.g., full backup, point-in-time, encrypting backups cross-Region) - Define retention policies - Correlate the backup and restore to recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) requirements |
Manage the operational environment of a database solution. |
- Orchestrate the refresh of lower environments - Implement configuration changes (e.g., in Amazon RDS option/parameter groups or Amazon DynamoDB indexing changes) - Automate operational tasks - Take action based on AWS Trusted Advisor reports |
Monitoring and Troubleshooting - 18% |
|
Determine monitoring and alerting strategies. |
- Evaluate monitoring tools (e.g., Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon RDS Performance Insights, database native) - Determine appropriate parameters and thresholds for alert conditions - Use tools to notify users when thresholds are breached (e.g., Amazon SNS, Amazon SQS, Amazon CloudWatch dashboards) |
Troubleshoot and resolve common database issues. |
- Identify, evaluate, and respond to categories of failures (e.g., troubleshoot connectivity; instance, storage, and partitioning issues) - Automate responses when possible |
Optimize database performance. |
- Troubleshoot database performance issues - Identify appropriate AWS tools and services for database optimization - Evaluate the configuration, schema design, queries, and infrastructure to improve performance |
Database Security - 18% |
|
Encrypt data at rest and in transit. |
- Encrypt data in relational and NoSQL databases - Apply SSL connectivity to databases - Implement key management (e.g., AWS KMS, AWS CloudHSM) |
Evaluate auditing solutions. |
- Determine auditing strategies for structural/schema changes (e.g., DDL) - Determine auditing strategies for data changes (e.g., DML) - Determine auditing strategies for data access (e.g., queries) - Determine auditing strategies for infrastructure changes (e.g., AWS CloudTrail) - Enable the export of database logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs |
Determine access control and authentication mechanisms. |
- Recommend authentication controls for users and roles (e.g., IAM, native credentials, Active Directory) - Recommend authorization controls for users (e.g., policies) |
Recognize potential security vulnerabilities within database solutions. |
- Determine security group rules and NACLs for database access - Identify relevant VPC configurations (e.g., VPC endpoints, public vs. private subnets, demilitarized zone) - Determine appropriate storage methods for sensitive data |