Top 7 DevOps Certifications in 2019

The world of IT is brutal and one needs to be more than ordinary to thrive it. IT world is ruled by the latest skills and expertise. Those who have up-to-the-minute skills they can only rule over it. The need for the latest skill knowledge is pretending in the IT industry since the beginning. That is why many certifications keep on coming to help IT professionals brush up their skills. 

 What is DevOps? 

DevOps is a mainstream software configuration system that let IT and software development component work together. Laid upon a collaboration work approach, DevOps helps a company to leverage software development process at every point. It offers detailed, comprehensive, and continuous solutions to improve the software delivery system. 

The software developed by using DevOps is at par in almost every area. They are highly secure, easy-to-use, feature-rich, and take the final shape in comparatively less time. That is what the IT industry swears by DevOps. 

What benefits a DevOps certification gives you? 

Any IT professional can wear the badge of a skilled DevOps Engineer by doing a DevOps certification course. As DevOps is a combination of various skills and methodologies, there are many certifications that one can get to enhance the knowledge. 

Now the legit question raises here is:

Why one should go for a certification? 

Well, the answer is it’s ample of benefits. 

The very immediate benefit of any certification is the professional accreditation. You may have the knowledge of DevOps ecosystem but a certification validates it. Apart from it, as DevOps is not about a single method, different certification helps you learn the other components as well. 

When you have an added certification, you can easily aim high in your career. An average IT professional will make nearly $ 66, 940 per year. Whereas a DevOps certification can easily leverage it up at $115,666 per year. Isn’t the jump high enough to motivate you? 

Apart from this, another reason to go for certification is the fickle nature of the IT industry. Today one skill is making waves tomorrow the other one. But, once you have a certified mastery in more than one skill, chances of your survival is more than anyone else. 

Top 7 certifications that can aid to the career of a DevOps professional 

As we have already mentioned that certification can help you to increase the worth of resume and let the world know that you own something extra, here are our top pick that a DevOps professional can go. 

1. Kubernetes Certification

If you are a DevOps professional that Kubernetes is not an unknown tool for you. In fact, this is one tool that you must be using almost every day. Thus, a Kubernetes certification can help you polish your skills. This certification is available as a joint venture of The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and the Linux Foundation. Both are the IT industry giants. 

Kubernetes certification is available in two options. 

• The Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) 

This certification tests the essential and hands-on Kubernetes command-line of DevOps engineers in the real-time situation. It can be considered as an entry-level certification that helps a DevOps engineer to learn the basics and lay the foundation of bright foundation ahead

Exam Details – It is an online and performance-based exam that covers questions on networking, scheduling, core concepts, cluster patience, security storage, and other related topics. The exam duration is of 3 hours and you need to answer 24 problems. You can avail one free retake if you didn’t clear the exam in one go. 

Fee – The certification will cost you $300 USD. 

• Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) programs

Designed for the experts DevOps developers, this certification will help a candidate to gain an edge over others in developing practical, user-friendly cloud-native applications. After the certification, a candidate will be able to deal with OCI-compliant Container Runtime, Python, Go, and some of the key cloud-native application concepts.

Exam details – The exam will be of 2 hours and only demands 19 questions to be answered during that time. The questions will be based on core concepts, services & networking, Pod Design, multi-container pods, configuration, and multi-container pods. 

Fee – The certification cost is $300 USD. 

Validity – Both the certificates are valid for two years. 

How to come up with flying colors in the certification? 

To clear this exam, your approach should be more practical than theoretical. Make sure that you gain hands-on experience of Kubernetes fundamentals and their architecture. Use the Notepad feature while making notes. It saves time and efforts. 

2. AWS Certified DevOps Engineer 

There is nothing which is not provided by Amazon. AWS Certified Developer is one such excelled service offered by Amazon that aid the knowledge of a DevOps engineer in the area of AWS. The certification will help a DevOps professional in the areas such as managing the continuous delivery system on AWS, easy deployment of metrics and logging system on AWS designs AWS systems that are highly scalable and readily available. The course demands a minimum of two years of work experiences in comprehensive designing, maintenance, and troubleshooting on AWS cloud beforehand from the candidate’s side. 

Exam details – It is an MCQ-based professional exam of 170 minutes. The exam would be covering questions based on AWS methodologies, system configuration, and code building and so on. One can appear in English, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese languages. 

Fee – The certification cost is $300 USD. 

Validity – The AWS Certified DevOps Engineer certification is valid for 3 -years. 

How to come up with flying colors in the certification? 

As this is a professional level certification offered by AWS, it is lengthy in nature. We would recommend you to take the help of some DevOps professional’s labs for hands-on experience. Wiz Lab’s lab is really helpful. 

3. Docker Certified Associate

This certification is for those DevOps professionals who are using Docker as a tool while generating software. By doing this single certification, DevOps professionals can easily polish their erudition in the Docker ecosystems such as storage, networking, volumes, orchestration, image creation, registry, and volumes. The biggest perk of this certification apart from Docker accreditation is the access to the global community of professional Docker DevOps engineer. This will help you to collaborate with like minds and enhance your intellect. It is suggested that you should have at least 6 months of prior experience before going for this certification. 

Exam details – You need to answer 55 MCQ questions in 90 minutes to get this certification. Questions will be based on basic to advanced Docker ecosystem’s components. 

Fee – The cost of certification is $ 195 USD and you can appear to the exam from your home as well. 

Validity – This certification will be valid for two years. 

How to come up with flying colors in the certification? 

To clear the certification the right approach says that one should refer the documentation for enterprise features such as DTR, DCT, security, and Volume and do a lot of practice for the core concepts. Teaching Docker to others is the ideal way to gain a deeper insight into its related concepts. 

4. DevOps Continuous Delivery Architecture

DevOps Continuous Delivery Architecture (CDA) is one of the most famed certifications that DevOps can take up to upscale their career and expand their skill curve. If you are already dealing with DevOps deployment and toolchains, Continuous testing & delivery and Continuous development then this certification will increase your potential. The chief aim of this certification is to impart best Continuous Testing, security Assurance, Continuous Monitoring, and so on. 

Exam Details – The exam will be of 90-minute duration covering 40 questions on Continuous delivery, CD Architect, Microservices and containers, DevOps toolchain and so on. One needs to score at least 65% to clear the exam. 

Fee – The course may cost you anywhere between $1,600 and $1,900. 

Validity – its validity is of a lifetime. 

How to come up with flying colors in the examination? 

There is a 16-hours instructor-led training that you should attend to learn the key concepts. You can also take part in the practical exercise session and test your learning in the real-time environment. 

5. DevSecOps Engineering

The very chief purpose of these certifications is to let the candidate gain erudition on DevOps security practices, security sciences, and data collection procedures. The certification explains “security as a code” concept. During this certification, the candidate will learn how DevOps security practices differ from other security practices and will be able to implement them in real-time scenarios. 

Exam details – The exam will be 90-minutes wherein a candidate has to answer 40 MCQs based upon DevSecOps, Erickson, Westrum, and LaLoux, Threat Modeling, Architectural Considerations, IAM Basic Concepts, Application Security Testing (AST) and so on. The exam can do done online as well. 

Fee – You can get this course from different institutes at different pricing. Usually, the cost varies from $1,200 – $1,900. It is available as a virtual and in-person classroom manner. 

Validity – This certification doesn’t come with the recertification requirement. 

How to come up with flying colors in the exam? 

The right methodology to clear the exam is to have DevOps Foundation certification first and then regressive participation in real-time DevOps excursuses. 

6. DevOps Test Engineering

Learn to optimize testing in DevOps and get stable results by doing DevOps Test Engineering course. The course is a must-have for almost every single DevOps tester as it helps to polish the existing learning and expand it by two folds. 

Exam Detail – At the end of the course, you are supposed to take-up the exam which is of 90-minutes duration. The exam will consist of 40 MCQs based upon DevOps Testing Terminology, Pre-flight strategies, Topology orchestration, automated metrics, Troubleshooting, and many other related topics. 

Fee – The fee entirely depends upon the institute via which you are doing this course. In general, the course will cost you in the range of $1,100 to $1,600. 

Validity – It comes with lifetime validity. 

How to come up with flying color in the exam? 

Though the questions are MSQ based, one needs to have great deeper knowledge to get the right answer. Digital learner’s manual is available online. Kindly refer to it. You can also enroll yourself for an instructor-led classroom. 

7. AZ -400: Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions Certification Exam

If you are a DevOps working with Azure then this certification will help you take your expertise at a whole new level. Designed by Microsoft, this certification lays stress on code designing and implementation, optimizing practices, and infrastructure as code, using Azure technologies. It is suggested that you should be familiar with Agile methodologies beforehand. 

Exam details – The exam is available in English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), and Korean languages and contains 40-60 questions. The exam duration is of 210 minutes. 

Fee – This certification will cost you $165.00 USD on an average. However, the cost is subjected to the country where you are living and appearing in the exam. 

Validity – This certification is valid for a lifetime. 

How to come up with the flying colors in the exam? 

To clear the exam, one can take the help of microlearning, instructor-led classroom and in-browser access to the case studies and documentation. You can also join the ‘Born to Learn’ community to learn with other Microsoft professionals. This will help you to gain real-time input directly from the professionals. 

The ideal audiences for these certifications 

All these certifications mend IT professionals that already have some or other knowledge about DevOps. IT professionals such as DevOps Engineers, Project & Product Managers, IT Security Professionals, Practitioners, and Managers, Release Managers, Build Engineers, Operational and Infrastructure Teams and Software Developers are the ideal candidates for these certifications. 

Final words 

Having expertise in more than one skill is always ace your position at the work front. As DevOps professionals are making use of more than one skill at a time, these certifications are more than necessary for them. This simple step can accelerate your career. However, the key here is to gain hands-on experience of your conjectural knowledge and learn to implement them in the real world. If you manage to do so then nothing can stop you being the DevOps leader.