My mantra to clear AZ-300 Azure Architect Technologies certification

Background

Recently I cleared the AZ-300: Microsoft Azure Architect Technologies certification. Many people have asked me how did I go about preparing for the certification exam and what all resources I used to clear the exam. This post is about the approach I took to prepare for this exam. I’ll share my experience with the following topics

• Skills measured
• Online courses
• Hands-on labs
• Sample test
• Notes

Skills measured

The first thing to do while preparing for the exam is to understand what skills are measured as part of this test. Head over to the test details at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/exam-AZ-300.aspx and scroll down to the section which takes us through the skills measured section. It tells us about the % of questions that are likely to appear in the test from different sections. Here is the quick summary of the main topics

• Deploy and configure infrastructure (25-30%)
• Implement workloads and security (20-25%)
• Create and deploy apps (5-10%)
• Implement authentication and secure data (5-10%)
• Develop for the cloud and for Azure Storage (20-25%)

In summary 80% of this exam is around the topics related to infrastructure, networking, security and storage.

Online courses

There are multiple options when it comes to online courses. Everybody has their pros and cons. Even before taking the certifications, I have personally used multiple online learning platforms including Pluralsight, Udemy, Edx, Linkedin learning etc. Particularly for this exam, I referred to 3 main online resources

1. Pluralsight learning path for AZ-300
2. Udemy course by Scott Duffy
3. Microsoft Learning with Hands-on Labs

Pluralsight learning path for AZ-300

Pluralsight is one of my favourites when it comes to technical learning. When I started looking  for online resources, I was happy to see Pluralsight had already put together a learning path which is a collection of courses related to AZ-300 exam
.

There are 28 different courses authored by multiple authors. The total content length is more than 60 hours if you wish to cover each and every course. Most of the courses are short and to the point like 1 to 3 hours of length. There are few which are quite lengthy running more than 5 hours. One of the difficulties I found with Pluralsight courses is that there is no predefined structure. You can take them up in any order. It is difficult to understand which course should be taken up first and which ones later.

Udemy course by Scott Duffy

Personally, I always find it easier to refer to multiple resources. I got to know from a couple of other folks who were also preparing for the same exam that Udemy has courses material. A few months back I had subscribed to the 70-353 exam course. Since Microsoft replaced the older exam with AZ-300, the author Scott Duffy had restructured his course to cater to the needs of the new exam.

I found the course structure to be very well laid out and it helped me quite a lot. The content may not be very deep in this course but it covers all the basics required to get through the exam. There are also a lot of references provided for additional learning.

Microsoft learning with Hands-on Labs

Not many people are aware that Microsoft Learning offers free educational content. This is provided on a different axis like based on role or based on technology or product. I selected the Solution Architect role based learning. The content is very specific to the point.

I like the part where you can perform Hands-on Labs without having an Azure subscription. You are given temporary Azure account based on the duration of the topic and you can familiarize yourself with the capabilities of Azure. This is not just limited to the portal, there are cases when predefined VMs are also created with required tools in order to complete the required tasks.

Microsoft learning also has a bit of gamification. Every course you complete, you get some points in the form of experience. Although the points cannot be redeemed its a good incentive to collect more points and indirectly it shows how many features related to Azure you have covered via Microsoft learning resources.

Hands-on Labs

Although the online courses are helpful, I am one of those people who does not feel comfortable unless I try it out myself. In most cases, I used my Azure subscription to get familiar with the concepts. In some cases, it is not possible to do so. Like in case of migrating an on premise VM to cloud. In such cases, I had to rely on the online course. Thing related to Storage accounts, Virtual Networks, VMs, app services, containers is all easily doable using the Azure subscription.

I would highly recommend practising using your own subscription as much as possible. There are multiple reasons for this. First one is that many of the online courses are recorded more than 6 months before. Some of the features discussed in the module may not be available in the current Azure portal. Secondly, there are two sections in the exam where you will be required to perform tasks by accessing live Azure portal. If you have never tried it yourself, I can bet that you will not be able to perform these live tasks during the actual exam.

Sample Test

I think there is an option provided by some test providers to retake the test once in case you do not clear it in the first attempt. In my case, I had used my MVP benefits to get some discount on the online test. There was no such option for me. Which meant that if I did not clear the test in the first attempt, I had to repay the full amount again.

Luckily I found a sample test on Udemy by Scott Duffy and Riaan Lowe named AZ-300 Azure Architecture Technologies Practice Test. It has 2 tests with 50 questions each. Although the format does not match the actual exam, it still gives you an idea of what kind of questions to expect. It was also helpful for me to focus on areas which I was not very comfortable. One point to note is that this exam does not contain the live lab feature and is only restricted to the multiple choice type question.

I had never taken any online certification test before. So this sample test really helped me a lot. If you have already taken other online certifications, maybe you will have a different experience.

Notes

Every individual has different ways of studying. Some learn by reading books, some by watching videos. Others are good at learning by discussing with peers. I personally like to take notes in digital form. One Note is my favourite notes taking app. I made good use of One note’s note taking abilities during the preparation. Apart from using it on multiple devices like iPad pro and Surface Book, I found the handwritten notes along with highlighters and combination of images useful. Here is an example of my handwritten notes using One Note

Conclusion

This is was the first time I was taking any certification exam. In the past, I have never been a fan of certifications. I am thankful to Puneet Ghanshani for changing my perception of certifications. On multiple occasions, I found my discussions with Mayur Tendulkar very helpful. He was the one who suggested that I try Udemy along with other resources.

The certification exam looks at the breadth of the resources around Azure. I was able to complete the exam well before the stipulated time of 3 hours. If I were to go back and prepare for this exam again, I would follow a slightly different path. I would start with Udemy course and use Microsoft Learning in parallel with that. Then I would go through the Pluralsight courses and do the hands-on labs for deep dive kind of sessions.

During the exam, there are different scenario based questions. At first, I found it a bit difficult to understand the structure of the test. You are given a case study and then there are supporting documents like existing infrastructure, technical requirements and target scenario. The multiple choice questions are then related to these sections. The different sections are separated into a multi-tabbed interface. If you do not go through each of the tabs, the multiple choice questions do not make sense. It took me some time to understand this pattern, but once it was understood the rest of the exam went well.

I feel relieved that the monkey is off the back. It is a good starting point and I hope to continue with few more certifications. I hope that the people who are looking to clear this exam find it useful.
Until next time, Code with Passion and Strive for Excellence.

Share: