What the DVA-C02 Exam Is Actually Testing
The Amazon DVA-C02 exam isn't a trivia test about AWS services. It's a practical assessment of whether you can build, deploy, secure, and troubleshoot cloud-native applications on AWS at an associate level. Every question is framed around a real development scenario — a Lambda function behaving unexpectedly, an SQS queue configuration decision, a DynamoDB access pattern that needs optimizing. Understanding that distinction changes how you should prepare from day one.
Breaking Down the Four Core Domains
The exam is organized into four weighted domains that reflect genuine developer responsibilities:
Development with AWS Services carries the heaviest weight and covers Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3, SQS, and SNS — the services you'll interact with most in real AWS development work.
Security tests your understanding of IAM roles, Cognito, Secrets Manager, and the principle of least privilege applied at the application layer — not just the infrastructure level.
Deployment covers the full AWS CI/CD ecosystem: CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, and CodePipeline, along with deployment strategies like blue/green and canary releases.
Troubleshooting and Optimization focuses on CloudWatch, X-Ray, and your ability to diagnose performance issues in serverless and container-based architectures.
How Long You Should Realistically Prepare
Most candidates with active AWS development experience need six to eight weeks of structured preparation. If you're newer to the platform, push that to ten weeks and prioritize hands-on lab work over passive reading. Working through quality DVA-C02 exam questions in the final two weeks helps you shift from knowledge retention to applied reasoning — which is exactly what the exam rewards.
PrepBolt offers exam-mapped Fortinet DVA-C02 practice test worth using during that final preparation phase.
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