Database specialists use the most up-to-date information security tools to organize massive volumes of data and assist corporate processes. They are in charge of ensuring that data is correctly kept and backed up, as well as implementing the required security procedures to ensure data security. They collaborate closely with organization management to ensure that the database is up to date and running well. However, you can prepare for this field by earning a bachelor’s degree in computer science or information technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Further, some of the tasks of a database specialist include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Firstly, they work with businesses and organizations to create databases. <\/li>
- Secondy, they can be in charge of ensuring that data is secure and accessible. <\/li>
- Thirdly, they have to work on industry-standard database systems, such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Filemaker Pro, or Sybase.<\/li>
- Then, they are responsible for database design, implementation, and maintenance. <\/li>
- Lastly, they frequently handles the system testing and database backups.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Market Value:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Based on the salaries report, an early career Database Administrator (DBA) with 1-4 years of experience gets an average total compensation of \u20b9504,000 <\/strong>(including tips, bonus, and overtime pay). However, a mid-career Database Administrator (DBA) with 5-9 years of experience makes an average total salary of \u20b91,200,000.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moving on, in the next section, we will cover the exam area as well as the study guide to passing the exam.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prepare for the AWS Database Specialist Exam<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The first and most crucial step on the path to becoming an AWS Database Specialist is to understand the exam requirements. This phase is necessary so that you are thoroughly educated about the abilities and information required for the test before you begin studying for it. So, let’s get started!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"database](\"https:\/\/www.testpreptraining.ai\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/database-exam-path.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nStep 1. Passing the AWS Database Specialty Exam<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
If you work in a database-focused role then you should take the AWS Certified Database Specialty (DBS-C01)<\/a> exam. This exam verifies a candidate’s knowledge of databases, covering design, migration, deployment, access, maintenance, automation, monitoring, security, and troubleshooting principles. However, this exam demands knowledge and experience with relational and non-relational databases on-premises and in the AWS Cloud. Further, it is recommended that you should have the following things before taking this exam:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Firstly, experience with standard database technologies for five years<\/li>
- Secondly, two years of hands-on experience and skill with relational and NoSQL databases on-premises and in the AWS Cloud.<\/li>
- Thirdly, understanding and distinguishing the essential aspects of AWS database services<\/li>
- Lastly, the ability to use AWS services to assess needs and requirements in order for creating and suggesting suitable database solutions.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Step 2. Working on understanding the exam topics<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Exam objectives play an important role in the preparation. That is to say, if you have an understanding of the exam topics and concepts then, passing this exam is not a difficult task. Because this covers all the major areas of the exam divided into sections and subsections. However, the topics covered for the AWS Database Specialty exam<\/a> are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AWS Database Specialty Updated Course Outline<\/strong> <\/h4>\n\n\n\n
The AWS Certified Database Specialty exam covers the latest and updated course outline – <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Module 1: Explain Workload-Specific Database Design (26%)<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
1.1 Learn to select suitable database services for specific types of data and workloads.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Understand the differences between ACID vs. BASE workloads<\/li>
- Understand suitable uses of types of databases including relational, key-value, document, in-memory, graph, time series, ledger (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Database<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understand and identify use cases for persisted data vs. ephemeral data (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Amazon EC2 instance store<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
1.2 Learn about the strategies for disaster recovery and high availability.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Understanding and selecting Region and Availability Zone placement to optimize database performance (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Choose Regions and Availability Zones to minimize latency<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and determining implications of Regions and Availability Zones on disaster recovery\/high availability strategies (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Disaster recovery options in the cloud<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and differentiating use cases for reading replicas and Multi-AZ deployments (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Multi-AZ deployments for high availability<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
1.3 Learn to design database solutions for performance, compliance, and scalability.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Understanding and recommending serverless vs. instance-based database architecture (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Understanding database options for your serverless web applications<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and evaluating requirements for scaling read replicas (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Working with MySQL read replicas<\/a>, Working with read replicas<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and defining database caching solutions (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Database Caching<\/a>, Caching strategies<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and evaluating the implications of partitioning, sharding, and indexing (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Sharding with Amazon Relational Database Service<\/a>, Choosing the Right DynamoDB Partition Key<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and determining appropriate instance types and storage options (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Amazon EC2 Instance Types<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and determining auto-scaling capabilities for relational and NoSQL databases (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Managing throughput capacity automatically with DynamoDB auto scaling<\/a>, AWS Management Console with DynamoDB auto scaling<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and determining the implications of Amazon DynamoDB adaptive capacity (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Best practices for designing and using partition keys effectively<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and determining data locality based on compliance requirements (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Addressing Data Residency with AWS<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
1.4 Learn to compare the costs of database solutions<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Understanding and determining cost implications of Amazon DynamoDB capacity units, including on-demand vs. provisioned capacity (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Read\/write capacity mode<\/a>, Pricing for Provisioned Capacity<\/a>, Pricing for On-Demand Capacity<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and determining costs associated with instance types and automatic scaling (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and designing for costs including high availability, backups, multi-Region, Multi-AZ, and storage type options (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Multi-AZ deployments for high availability<\/a>, Amazon RDS Multi-AZ<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and comparing data access costs (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Analyzing your costs with AWS Cost Explorer<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Module 2: Explain Deployment and Migration (20%)<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
2.1 Learn to automate database solution deployments.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Understanding and evaluating application requirements to determine components to deploy (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Evaluate your applications<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and choosing suitable deployment tools and services (e.g., AWS CloudFormation, AWS CLI) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Using the AWS Command Line Interface<\/a>, AWS CloudFormation best practices<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
2.2 Learn to determine data preparation and migration strategies.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Understanding and determining the data migration method (e.g., snapshots, replication, restore) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Restoring from a DB snapshot<\/a>, Restore an Amazon RDS DB instance from a DB snapshot<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and evaluating database migration tools and services (e.g., AWS DMS, native database tools) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Migration with native database tools and AWS DMS<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and preparing data sources and targets (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Configuring data target nodes<\/a>, Creating a dataset from a database<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and determining schema conversion methods (e.g., AWS Schema Conversion Tool) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> AWS Schema Conversion Tool<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and determining heterogeneous vs. homogeneous migration strategies (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Heterogeneous database migration<\/a>, Homogeneous database migration<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
2.3 Learn to execute and validate data migration.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Understanding and designing and script data migration (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Best practices for AWS Database Migration Service<\/a>, Database Migration Step-by-Step Walkthroughs<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understand and run data extraction and migration scripts (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Extracting data from on-premises databases<\/a>, Migrating data from an on-premises data<\/a>, Database Migration Step-by-Step Walkthroughs<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and verifying the successful load of data (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Verifying that the data loaded correctly<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Module 3: Explain Management and Operations (18%)<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
3.1 Learn to determine maintenance tasks and processes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Understanding and accounting for the AWS shared responsibility model for database services (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Shared Responsibility<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and determining appropriate maintenance window strategies (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> AWS Systems Manager Maintenance Windows<\/a>, Maintenance window scheduling and active period options<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and differentiating between major and minor engine upgrades (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Upgrading a DB instance engine version<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
3.2 Learn to determine backup and restore strategies.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Understanding and identifying the need for automatic and manual backups\/snapshots (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Comparing Automatic and Manual Snapshots<\/a>, Amazon EBS snapshots<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and differentiating backup and restore strategies (e.g., full backup, point-in-time, encrypting backups cross-Region) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Creating backup copies across AWS Regions<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and defining retention policies (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Implement data retention policies for each class<\/a>, Work with retention rules<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and correlating the backup and restore to recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) requirements (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Plan for Disaster Recovery (DR)<\/a>, Disaster recovery options in the cloud<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
3.3 Learn to manage the operational environment of a database solution.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Orchestrate the refresh of lower environments (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Updating compute environments<\/a>, Orchestrating database refreshes for Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora<\/a>)<\/li>
- Implement configuration changes (e.g., in Amazon RDS option\/parameter groups or Amazon DynamoDB indexing changes) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Working with parameter groups<\/a>, Best practices for configuring parameters for Amazon RDS<\/a>)<\/li>
- Automate operational tasks (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> AWS Systems Manager\u00a0Automation<\/a>, Working with runbooks<\/a>)<\/li>
- Take action based on AWS Trusted Advisor reports (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Get started with AWS Trusted Advisor<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
![\"aws](\"https:\/\/www.testpreptraining.ai\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/database-speclty.png\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nModule 4: Explain Monitoring and Troubleshooting (18%)<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
4.1 Learn to monitor and alert strategies.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Understanding and evaluating monitoring tools including Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon RDS Performance Insights, database native (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Overview of monitoring metrics in Amazon RDS<\/a>, Monitoring DB load with Performance Insights on Amazon RDS<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and determining appropriate parameters and thresholds for alert conditions (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Working with threshold alerts in Amazon QuickSight<\/a>, Working with alerts<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding to use tools to notify users when thresholds are breached including, Amazon SNS, Amazon SQS, Amazon CloudWatch dashboards) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Using Amazon CloudWatch alarms<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
4.2 Learn to troubleshoot and resolve common database issues.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Understand and identify, evaluate, and respond to categories of failures including troubleshooting connectivity; instance, storage, and partitioning issues) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Troubleshoot instances with failed status checks<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and automating responses when possible (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Options for Automating Response<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
4.3 Learn to optimize database performance.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Understanding and troubleshooting database performance issues (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Troubleshooting for Amazon RDS<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and identifying suitable AWS tools and services for database optimization (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Best practices for Amazon RDS<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and evaluating the configuration, schema design, queries, and infrastructure to improve performance<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Module 5: Explain Database Security (18%)<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
5.1 Learn to Encrypt data at rest and in transit.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Understand to encrypt data in relational and NoSQL databases (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Encrypting Amazon RDS resources<\/a>, Using SSL\/TLS to encrypt a connection to a DB instance<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understand to apply SSL connectivity to databases (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Using SSL\/TLS to encrypt a connection to a DB instance<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understand to implement key management (e.g., AWS KMS, AWS CloudHSM) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> AWS Key Management Service<\/a>, AWS CloudHSM<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
5.2 Learn to evaluate auditing solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Understand to determine auditing strategies for structural\/schema changes (e.g., DDL) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Database audit logging<\/a>, Handling schema updates<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understand to determine auditing strategies for data changes (e.g., DML) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> DML auditing for Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility)<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understand to determine auditing strategies for data access (e.g., queries) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Database audit logging<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understand to determine auditing strategies for infrastructure changes (e.g., AWS CloudTrail) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> AWS CloudTrail<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understand and enable the export of database logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Exporting log data to Amazon S3<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
5.3 Learn to determine access control and authentication mechanisms.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Recommend authentication controls for users and roles including IAM, native credentials, Active Directory (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Security best practices in IAM<\/a>, Using the AWS Directory Service identity provider<\/a>)<\/li>
- Recommend authorization controls for users including policies (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Policies and permissions in IAM<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
- Understand to determine auditing strategies for data changes (e.g., DML) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> DML auditing for Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility)<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understand to apply SSL connectivity to databases (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Using SSL\/TLS to encrypt a connection to a DB instance<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and identifying suitable AWS tools and services for database optimization (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Best practices for Amazon RDS<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and automating responses when possible (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Options for Automating Response<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
- Understanding and determining appropriate parameters and thresholds for alert conditions (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Working with threshold alerts in Amazon QuickSight<\/a>, Working with alerts<\/a>)<\/li>
- Implement configuration changes (e.g., in Amazon RDS option\/parameter groups or Amazon DynamoDB indexing changes) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Working with parameter groups<\/a>, Best practices for configuring parameters for Amazon RDS<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and differentiating backup and restore strategies (e.g., full backup, point-in-time, encrypting backups cross-Region) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Creating backup copies across AWS Regions<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and determining appropriate maintenance window strategies (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> AWS Systems Manager Maintenance Windows<\/a>, Maintenance window scheduling and active period options<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understand and run data extraction and migration scripts (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Extracting data from on-premises databases<\/a>, Migrating data from an on-premises data<\/a>, Database Migration Step-by-Step Walkthroughs<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and evaluating database migration tools and services (e.g., AWS DMS, native database tools) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Migration with native database tools and AWS DMS<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and choosing suitable deployment tools and services (e.g., AWS CloudFormation, AWS CLI) (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Using the AWS Command Line Interface<\/a>, AWS CloudFormation best practices<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
- Understanding and determining costs associated with instance types and automatic scaling (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and evaluating requirements for scaling read replicas (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Working with MySQL read replicas<\/a>, Working with read replicas<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understanding and determining implications of Regions and Availability Zones on disaster recovery\/high availability strategies (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Disaster recovery options in the cloud<\/a>)<\/li>
- Understand and identify use cases for persisted data vs. ephemeral data (AWS Documentation:<\/strong> Amazon EC2 instance store<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n