AWS EKS Certification Guide

Primary Certification

AWS DevOps Engineer Professional (DOP-C02)

Format: 75 questions | 180 minutes | 750/1000 | $300 USD (needs verification — exam format/pricing changes over time, check the current AWS Certification page before relying on these numbers)

Related Certifications

•CKA/CKAD (Kubernetes fundamentals)

•AWS Solutions Architect Professional

Key Exam Topics

•EKS control plane: managed by AWS, charged separately from worker nodes

•Node groups: Managed (AWS lifecycle) vs Self-managed vs Fargate (serverless pods)

•Karpenter: next-gen node provisioner (right-sizes nodes per pod needs)

•IRSA (IAM Roles for Service Accounts): pod-level AWS permissions

•EKS Add-ons: VPC CNI, CoreDNS, kube-proxy, EBS CSI, AWS LB Controller

•EKS networking: VPC CNI assigns real VPC IPs to pods

•EKS security: OIDC provider, aws-auth ConfigMap, EKS Pod Identity

Must-Know CLI Commands

bash

eksctl create cluster --name prod --region us-east-1 --managed
eksctl create nodegroup --cluster prod --name workers --node-type m5.large
aws eks update-kubeconfig --name prod --region us-east-1
eksctl utils associate-iam-oidc-provider --cluster prod --approve
aws eks list-addons --cluster-name prod

Exam Tips

•IRSA: annotate K8s ServiceAccount with role ARN → no static credentials in pods

•EKS Pod Identity (newer): simpler IRSA alternative, no OIDC config needed

•Fargate profile: select pods by namespace/labels → serverless (no node management)

•aws-auth ConfigMap: maps IAM → K8s RBAC (or use EKS access entries)

Study Plan

Week 1-2: Read official docs + overview/fundamentals sections in this platform

Week 3-4: Hands-on labs (AWS free tier / Azure sandbox / GCP free tier)

Week 5: Practice exams (TutorialsDojo, ExamTopics, Whizlabs)

Final days: Review weak areas + cheatsheet

Free Study Resources

•AWS: aws.amazon.com/training — free digital courses

•Azure: learn.microsoft.com — Microsoft Learn (free + sandbox labs)

•GCP: cloud.google.com/training — free courses + Qwiklabs credits

•TutorialsDojo: cheat sheets for all exams (best value paid resource)

Revision Notes

PRIMARY EXAM: AWS DevOps Engineer Professional (DOP-C02)

TOP TOPICS:
  EKS control plane: managed by AWS, charged separately from worker nodes
  Node groups: Managed (AWS lifecycle) vs Self-managed vs Fargate (serverless pods
  Karpenter: next-gen node provisioner (right-sizes nodes per pod needs)
  IRSA (IAM Roles for Service Accounts): pod-level AWS permissions

EKS — Certification