AWS Lambda & Serverless Certification Guide

Primary Certification

AWS Certified Developer Associate (DVA-C02)

Format: 65 questions | 130 minutes | 720/1000 | $150 USD

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; adds cold start latency

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