Domain 2 of 6 | 19% of Exam | CV0-004
| Domain | Weight |
|---|---|
| 1. Cloud Architecture | 23% |
| 2. Deployment | 19% — THIS PAGE |
| 3. Security | 19% |
| 4. Operations | 17% |
| 5. Troubleshooting | 12% |
| 6. DevOps Fundamentals | 10% |
Core Concepts — 8 Topics
Memory Hooks — 6 Cards
"Real Retooling, Really Requires Raising Revenue: Rehost, Replatform, Refactor, Repurchase, Retire, Retain"
"IPAD: Init → Plan → Apply → Destroy" — always plan before apply
"Declarative=Destination (Terraform says WHERE), Imperative=Directions (Ansible says HOW)"
"In-place=Instant regret, Rolling=Risky mix, Blue/Green=Best safety, Canary=Careful rollout"
"Never local state in a team — S3+DynamoDB for AWS, Blob+lease for Azure"
"Blue/Green: all-or-nothing switch. Canary: trickle then flood."
Quiz — 10 Questions
Flashcards — 12 Cards
Study Advisor — Personalized Plans
Start with migration concepts — you already know on-prem systems. Focus on the 6 Rs and how Rehost and Replatform map to what you do today. Cutover planning is familiar territory.
Install Terraform locally and deploy a simple AWS EC2 instance or Azure VM. Walk through init → plan → apply → destroy with real cloud resources. See state file creation.
You likely manage servers manually today. Learn Ansible as "scripting at scale" — write a playbook to configure an nginx server. Practice idempotency by running it twice.
Draw Blue/Green and Canary diagrams with traffic flow. Compare to how you currently handle server updates. Map the risk vs rollback complexity tradeoffs.
Walk through ASG min/max/desired logic with example scenarios. Practice subnetting decisions: when to use public vs private subnets for different workloads.
Understand why local state fails in teams. Set up S3+DynamoDB for Terraform state. Practice pulling secrets from AWS Secrets Manager rather than hard-coding them.
Use the quiz to test knowledge under exam conditions. Focus on scenario-based questions — the exam presents situations, not just definitions.
You likely already use Terraform, Ansible, or CloudFormation. Audit your knowledge against the 6 Rs and deployment strategies — identify gaps vs comfortable territory.
Review remote state backends (S3+DynamoDB, Azure Blob+lease). Understand workspace isolation, state locking race conditions, and how import handles existing resources.
The exam tests when to use Terraform vs CloudFormation vs Ansible vs Bicep. Practice articulating: "Terraform for multi-cloud provisioning, Ansible for config management, CloudFormation for AWS-native teams."
When does Rolling beat Blue/Green? When does Canary introduce too much complexity? Practice choosing strategies based on: budget constraints, rollback requirements, traffic volume.
AWS SMS vs DMS vs DataSync — know which handles VMs vs databases vs files. AWS Snowball thresholds — when does physical transfer beat network? Practice these decision trees.
Do timed quiz runs. DevOps engineers often over-complicate answers — the exam often favors the simplest working solution. Rehost beats Refactor when time is the constraint.
Developers adapt quickly to Terraform HCL and CloudFormation YAML — treat them as config files with logic. Focus on the workflow (init/plan/apply) and how modules provide reusability like functions.
Think of migration strategies as architectural decisions. Refactor/Re-architect is the most developer-friendly but costliest. Understand when the business context forces Rehost instead.
You likely know feature flags and canary from CI/CD pipelines. Map these to cloud deployment: Blue/Green = environment swap, Canary = weighted routing in load balancer or API gateway.
Developers often conflate these. Terraform = provision the infrastructure (create the server). Ansible = configure what runs on the server (install packages, deploy app). They complement each other.
ASG scaling logic, launch templates, storage type selection (EBS vs S3 vs EFS), and secrets management are frequently tested. Build mental models with scenarios.
You may not know AWS Snowball or DataSync from dev work. Study the use cases — the exam gives scenarios with data sizes and bandwidth constraints, asking you to choose the right tool.
Use spaced repetition with the flashcards. Revisit any quiz questions you missed — the explanations contain the exact logic the exam expects.
