AZ-400 Exam Prep – Part 1 Summary
Introduction
I will be updating this page continuously and adding new sections for deep diving
In this post, we will cover exam AZ-400 objectives and resources that can help you prep. For those of you who viewed our post on 70-533 prep, this should be a familiar format.
Here is the exam information on the official Microsoft website
At the time of this posting, there is an exam replay promotion to give you (1) free retake if you didn’t pass the first time!
Is this exam for me?
Take a moment to review the skills outline and also a certiciation roadmap provided by Microsoft
As stated on the Microsoft exam page:
“Candidates for this exam are DevOps professionals who combine people, processes, and technologies to continuously deliver valuable products and services that meet end user needs and business objectives. DevOps professionals streamline delivery by optimizing practices, improving communications and collaboration, and creating automation. They design and implement strategies for application code and infrastructure that allow for continuous integration, testing, delivery, monitoring, and feedback.
Candidates must be proficient with Agile practices. They must be familiar with both Azure administration and Azure development and experts in at least one of these areas. Azure DevOps professionals must be able to design and implement DevOps practices for version control, compliance, infrastructure as code, configuration management, build, release, and testing by using Azure technologies.”
What study material should I use?
- Your own Azure Subscription (Very Important)
- Microsoft Docs
- MeasureUP/Pearson Official Practice Test
- Linux Academy AZ-400 Video Training
How much experience should I have before taking this exam?
A minimum of an Azure Administrator or Azure Developer certification is required to take AZ-400.
With that being said, if you haven’t been in Azure at all, I would say take 6-12 months to use the product and study. Depending on how aggressive you are, 6 months may be possible!
Which areas of the exam do you think I should pay more attention to?
- Azure DevOps – This is the majority of the exam, including services that interact with Azure DevOps.
a. Design a DevOps strategy (20-25%) found in the skills outline above.
b. Implement DevOps development processes (20-25%)
c. Implement continuous integration (10-15%)
d. Implement continuous delivery (10-15%)
e. Implement dependency management (5-10%)
f. Implement application infrastructure (15-20%)
- Interfacing with Azure services and understand IT Workflow for the Continuous Feedback section of the exam
a. Implement continuous feedback (10-15%)
Conclusion
I believe these tips will help you maximize your skills on exam day. Just like any good test taking advice, take your time and read each question. There have been many times I’ve gotten questions wrong on Microsoft exams by not reading through the question well enough. After a while, words seem to look the same or my mind wants to fill in the blank which choices that may not actually be the right answer. Either that or I believe I knew it all and rushed!
Thank you and good luck on the exam!