AWS Lambda & Serverless Certification Guide

Primary Certification

AWS Certified Developer Associate (DVA-C02)

Format: 65 questions | 130 minutes | 720/1000 | $150 USD (needs verification — exam format/pricing changes over time, check the current AWS Certification page before relying on these numbers)

Related Certifications

•AWS Solutions Architect Associate

•AWS DevOps Engineer Professional

Key Exam Topics

•Lambda execution model: invocation types (sync/async/event source mapping)

•Cold starts: JVM/Python worse than Node.js; provisioned concurrency prevents them

•Concurrency: reserved concurrency (limits) + provisioned concurrency (pre-warm)

•Lambda layers: shared dependencies, runtimes, custom extensions

•Lambda@Edge and CloudFront Functions: run code at CDN edge

•Event sources: API Gateway, ALB, S3, DynamoDB Streams, SQS, SNS, Kinesis

•Lambda VPC: private subnet + NAT Gateway for internet access; historically added cold-start latency via ENI creation, largely mitigated since AWS's 2019 Hyperplane ENI networking change — know both the mechanism and that it's no longer the dominant cold-start factor, since exam material predating that change may still frame it as a downside

Must-Know CLI Commands

bash

aws lambda create-function --function-name my-fn --runtime python3.12 --handler lambda_function.lambda_handler --role arn:... --zip-file fileb://function.zip
aws lambda invoke --function-name my-fn --payload '{"key":"value"}' response.json
aws lambda update-function-configuration --function-name my-fn --memory-size 1024
aws lambda put-function-concurrency --function-name my-fn --reserved-concurrent-executions 100
aws logs tail /aws/lambda/my-fn --follow

Exam Tips

•Execution environment reuse: initialize outside handler for connection pooling

•/tmp is 512MB-10GB — use for temporary files during execution

•Lambda Powertools (Python/Java/TypeScript): structured logging, tracing, metrics

•Avoid long-running tasks: max 15 min — use Step Functions for orchestration

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 Certified Developer Associate (DVA-C02)

TOP TOPICS:
  Lambda execution model: invocation types (sync/async/event source mapping)
  Cold starts: JVM/Python worse than Node.js; provisioned concurrency prevents the
  Concurrency: reserved concurrency (limits) + provisioned concurrency (pre-warm)
  Lambda layers: shared dependencies, runtimes, custom extensions

Lambda — Certification