AWS RDS & Databases Certification Guide

Primary Certification

AWS Certified Database Specialty (DBS-C01)

Format: 65 questions | 180 minutes | 750/1000 | $300 USD (DB Specialty)

(needs verification — question count, duration, passing score, and price are set by AWS and have changed for other specialty exams before; confirm current figures on the official AWS Certified Database - Specialty exam guide before treating these as fixed.)

Related Certifications

•AWS Solutions Architect (databases are 10-15% of SAA)

•AWS DevOps Engineer Professional

Key Exam Topics

•Multi-AZ vs Read Replicas: HA vs performance (Multi-AZ = sync standby, no reads)

•Aurora: 6-copy replication across 3 AZs, up to 15 read replicas, 5x faster than MySQL

•Aurora Global Database: cross-region replication < 1 second RPO

•Aurora Serverless v2: auto-scales capacity in fine-grained increments

•RDS Proxy: connection pooling for Lambda/containers, reduce DB connection overhead

•Backup: automated (1-35 days retention) + manual snapshots (kept until deleted)

•Encryption: enable at creation (cannot add later); use KMS CMK for cross-account

Must-Know CLI Commands

bash

aws rds describe-db-instances
aws rds create-db-instance --db-instance-identifier mydb --engine mysql --db-instance-class db.t3.medium --master-username admin --master-user-password secret --allocated-storage 20
aws rds create-db-snapshot --db-instance-identifier mydb --db-snapshot-identifier mydb-snap-20240115
aws rds restore-db-instance-from-db-snapshot --db-instance-identifier mydb-restored --db-snapshot-identifier mydb-snap-20240115
aws rds create-db-instance-read-replica --db-instance-identifier mydb-replica --source-db-instance-identifier mydb

Exam Tips

•Multi-AZ failover: automatic, ~60-120 seconds; DNS updates to standby

•Read Replica: manual promotion (takes time); useful for disaster recovery too

•Aurora failover: ~30 seconds (faster than RDS) — promotes existing replica

•RDS Proxy: group Lambda concurrency connections → prevents "too many connections"

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 Database Specialty (DBS-C01)

TOP TOPICS:
  Multi-AZ vs Read Replicas: HA vs performance (Multi-AZ = sync standby, no reads)
  Aurora: 6-copy replication across 3 AZs, up to 15 read replicas, 5x faster than MySQL
  Aurora Global Database: cross-region replication < 1 second RPO
  Aurora Serverless v2: auto-scales capacity in fine-grained increments

RDS & Aurora — Certification