Microsoft Azure certification - AZ-900
Notes on the Azure Fundamentals certification and some study tips for you and yours
Earth has been a little rough for a minute, so I’m starting off this year by moving to the cloud. In my work as a network support engineer at a Microsoft-partnered Managed Service Provider, I spend a little bit of time in the Azure ecosystem every day. it’s Azure Active Directory, a server running as an Azure Virtual Machine, or a code repository in Azure DevOps, there’s always something I get to work with.
I’m hoping to get an understanding of everything Azure has to offer, when and where to deploy it, and get a sense of what’s coming up next. This is an entry-level exam in the cloud field, but it seemed to me like a good place to start.
I found that Microsoft’s free training resources offered a lot of help in getting ready for this exam. If you’re considering taking this exam, I’d advise getting started by getting a notebook and a pen (or pencil, sure) and going into Microsoft’s six part training series. Going through all of it might take you a weekend or two, or a couple weeks of lunch breaks. Not all too much time, all things considered, and a lot of the concepts here will carry over to other cloud computing platforms like AWS and GCP.
The course is broken down into six sections:
- Describe Core Cloud Concepts
- Describe Core Azure Features
- Describe Core Solutions and Management Tools on Azure
- Describe General Security and Network Security Features
- Descirbe Identity, Governance, Privacy and Compliance Features
- Describe Azure Cost Management and Service Level Agreements
A lot of description! When I described to my girlfriend what the exam covered she joked that it sounded like an exam in Microsoft sales. Not entirely wrong. In my experience doing IT and network support, we’re often trying to sell a solution to a customer who doesn’t understand why we can’t keep doing things the same way. Being able to explain the advantages of security, reliability, etc. that we can offer in cloud services goes a long way, and helps to qualify my own motivations for learning these tools beyond my desire to play with cool stuff.
One cool feature of these Microsoft learning modules is that many of them will let you spin up a sandbox environment, where you can walk through labs where you can set up an Azure SQL Database or Network Security Group. There’s no replacement for hands-on learning, and these labs were a cool resource to play with Azure features I haven’t had the opportunity to use at work as well as getting more comfortable with the Azure management portal.
After reading through all these and taking notes, I went back through to the skills outline and typed each of them into my notes, highlighting what I didn’t think I had been sure of the first time going through the materials on Microsoft Learn. For me, that was the distinction and hierarchy between Management Groups, Subscriptions, and Resource Groups. Highlighting those, I went back through my notes and wrote up in my own words what I understood until it clicked.
I like to take practice tests to get a measure of my understanding and get some practice going through the material under a time crunch. I feel it may be harder finding quality practice tests for a newer exam like this than, say, one of the CompTIA exams. I was able to find a bundle of practice exams through Whizlabs, and while the format and some of the language on the tests wasn’t very precise it did help me feel a bit more prepared.
The night before an exam I try to take it easy and not cram. Before going to sleep I took one last look at some of my notes while watching an episode of Justified in bed and called it a night early.
I won’t talk too much about the exam experience itself, but I will say it was a relief that it was relatively easy to take the exam from the comfort of my own desk at home. Be sure to book some time to clear your exam environment with the virtual proctor before the exam starts. They will probably ask you to clear everything off your desk, and disconnect any external monitors or gear you have on your desk if you can’t clear it off.
After all that–I passed! I’m looking forward to building more with Azure and picking up some other certifications on the way. The day after the exam I ended up enrolling in a Windows Administration course at Cabrillo College covering Microsoft Azure and taught around the AZ-900, DP-900 and AZ-104 certifications. Looking forward to learning more and building out some projects in Azure! You’ll be the first to read about it all right here.