Microsoft Azure Certification Path

You might have wondered why Microsoft Azure is becoming a trendsetter in providing the best cloud services. It is just because of the delivery of unique features and innovative services offered by Azure on a constant basis.    

Microsoft has been restructured Azure certifications into role-based ones, that directly focus on aligning the job roles.  If you wish to take your career to greater heights in the cloud computing world, it is advisable to have Azure Certification.  

We have multiple certifications in Azure choosing the right certification plays a vital role in your career growth. In this blog, we are going to discuss detailed information about the Microsoft Azure Certification Path so that it is easier for you to choose the best certification that suits you.

What is Microsoft Azure Certification

Microsoft Azure is one of the topmost cloud providers and has designed specific standards for qualifying the various certifications. These certifications also have got the place in most valuable certifications in the IT segment. Depending on the user's experience, there are many certification paths available in Azure. Over the years, the adoption rate of Microsoft Azure growing rapidly, and this made a huge demand for certified professionals. 

Microsoft Azure Certifications Path:

Here we've simplified the path for Azure certifications. Below mentioned are the three levels in Azure certification:

• Fundamental level Certification
• Associate level Certification
• Expert level Certification

We have gathered here ample information to provide you with complete information on each certification level. By the end of this article, you will walk away with the complete knowledge of certification types, exam processes, exam fees, etc. Microsoft Azure provides role-based certifications in the cloud domain. Let’s discuss all the role-based certifications available in Azure.    

Role-Based Certifications of Azure:

Here are the role-based certifications of Azure:

Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900 Exam):

The purpose of the Azure fundamentals exam (AZ-900) is to validate the fundamental knowledge in Microsoft Azure and Cloud, from sales to the developer, purchasing or selling the cloud-based services and solutions. It can be considered as a precursor to the Azure cloud service exams. The AZ-900 exam is particularly designed for demonstrating the fundamental knowledge in cloud services and is also useful for candidates from a non-technical background. 

Prerequisites: 

• The candidate should be familiar with the Azure Platform.
• The candidate should know basic knowledge in Cloud Computing.

Languages:  English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. 

AZ-900 Exam Price: 99 USD.

Skills Measured and Exam Weightage:

Cloud Computing Concepts (15-20% Exam Weightage):

• Understand the terms Scalability, Availability, Fault Tolerance, Elasticity, and Disaster Recovery.
• Know the consumption-based model.
• Perceive the knowledge in understanding the differences between Operational Expenditure and Capital Expenditure.
• Understand the concepts of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Software-as-a-Service(SaaS), and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).
• Understand the differences between Private cloud, Public cloud, and Hybrid clouds.  

Core Azure Services (30-35% Exam Weightage):

• Understand the concepts of Zone Availability, Azure Resource Manager, Azure architectural components, and Resource group.
• Know how to compute Virtual machines, App functions, and services.
• Describe the availability of networking products such as Load Balancer, Virtual Network, VPN Gateway, and Content Delivery Network.
• Describe the availability of the product for Disk Storage, Blob Storage, Archive Storage, and File Storage.

Security, Compliance, Privacy, and Trust (25-30% Exam Weightage):

• Understand the concepts of Azure Firewall, Network Security Group, Azure DDoS.
• Know the differences between authorization, authentication, and multi-factor authentication.
• Enhance the concepts of Azure Security, Key Vault, Azure Policies, Azure Advisor assistance.
• Describe the Azure monitor, Azure service health, Trust center, and Compliance Manager.

Azure Pricing and Support (25-30% Exam Weightage):

• Understand the procedure of Azure subscriptions, billing purposes, Azure cost management, creating spending limits, and Azure advisor recommendations.
• Determine Azure Service Level Agreements (SLA), monitor feature updates, and a knowledge center.

Microsoft Azure Administrator Manager (AZ-103 Exam):

The Microsoft Azure Administrator Manager certification exam (AZ-103) is used to validate the user expertise in managing the span compute cloud services, security, networking, cloud capabilities, and storage within Microsoft Azure. The AZ-103 exam is a substitution of AZ-101 + AZ-100 or AZ-102. The candidates who are willing to take this AZ-103 certification must have to understand the services of the full IT lifecycle, which includes applications, infrastructure services, and environments. The AZ-103 exam is designed for candidates who have proficiency in the Azure portal, Command-line Interface, Powershell, ARM templates, virtualization, storage structures, cloud infrastructure, and networking.

Prerequisites:

• Basic knowledge of operating systems, Azure applications, and cloud infrastructure.

Languages: English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean

AZ-103 Exam Price: 165 USD.

Skills Measured and Exam Weightage:

Manage Azure Resources and Subscriptions (15-20% Exam Weightage):.

• Managing the administrator permissions and configuring costs.
• Configuring the settings of diagnostic resources, creating baseline resources, analyzing subscription metrics, and creating action groups.
• Configuring resource policies and implementing resource groups.
• Creating access to Azure resources by assigning roles.

Manage and Implement Storage (5-10% Exam Weightage):

• Creating storage accounts, exporting, and importing data to Azure.
• Implementing the replication of Azure storage. 
• Configuring Azure content delivery network (CDN).
• Reviewing backup reports and recovering service vaults.

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Manage and Deploy Virtual Machines (20-25% Exam Weightage):

• Automating virtual machine deployments.
• Managing the backups of virtual machines.
• Configuring VM for Linux and Windows.

Manage and Configure Virtual Networks (20-25% Exam Weightage):

• Troubleshooting virtual network.
• Configuring name resolution and Network Security Group (NSG).
• Virtual networks connectivity.
• Integrating the Azure virtual network with an on-premise network.
• Implementing virtual networking.

Manage Identities (15-20% Exam Weightage):

• Managing Active Directory (AD) objects.  
• Implementing hybrid identities.
• Configuring Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) accounts.

Microsoft Azure Developer Associate (AZ-203 Exam):

The AZ-203 exam is helpful for the Azure developers who design cloud solutions like services and applications. AZ-203 exam tests your expertise in solution design, software development process, and deployment. The candidates should be good at developing services, applications, security maintenance, storage, and communications using the Azure cloud platform.  

Prerequisites:

• Basic knowledge about data management, data security, and IT operations.

• The candidate should understand the basic concepts of Azure development and DevOps.

Languages: English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

AZ-203 Exam Price: 165 USD.

Skills Measured and Exam Weightage:

Develop Azure IaaS Compute Solutions (10-15% Exam Weightage):

• Implementing authentication by using form-based certifications.
• Creating ARM templates.
• Writing Azure batch service code.
• Creating Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS).
• Creating mobile Azure App Services.
• Implementing function bindings.

Develop Azure Storage (15-20% Exam Weightage):

• Designing policy tables.
• Creating data with appropriate APIs.
• Setting operation levels for consistency.
• Configuring relational databases.
• Setting metadata and retrieving properties.
• Implementing data retention.
• Implementing blob leasing.

Implement Azure Security (10-15% Exam Weightage):

• Implementing CBAC and RBAC.
• Encrypting data at rest.
• Creating certificates with KeyVault API.
• Implementing OAuth2 authentication.
• Creating Access signatures.

Monitor, Optimize, and Troubleshoot Azure Solutions (15-20% Exam Weightage):

• Developing code for services and apps support.
• Implementing autoscale patterns and rules.
• Integrating content delivery and caching.
• Invalidating cache content.
• Implementing Application insights.
• Analyzing solutions with Azure monitor.

Consume both Third-party Services and Azure services (20-25% Exam Weightage):

•  Creating a logic app, custom template, the custom connector for logic applications.
• Importing searchable data.
• Establishing API gateways.
• Configuring API authentication, policies, and APIM instance.
• Implementing Azure Notification Hubs, Azure Event Grid, Azure Event Hub, Azure Service Bus, and Azure Storage Queues.

Microsoft Azure Solution Architect Expert (AZ-300, AZ-301 Exams):

Microsoft Azure Solution Architect Expert certification validates the user’s knowledge of networking and designing cloud-based solutions. It also provides an excellent opportunity to advertise your expertise in the Azure cloud. Microsoft Azure Solution Architect Expert certification validates the user’s knowledge of networking and designing cloud-based solutions. It also provides an excellent opportunity to advertise your expertise in the Azure cloud. Configuring infrastructure, implementing workloads, and implementing authentication are key skills required for the Azure solution architect.

Required Certification Exams:

By qualifying for the following two exams, one can earn azure Solution Architect Expert certification:

• Azure Architect Technologies (AZ-300)
• Azure Architect Design (AZ-301)

Azure Architect Technologies (AZ-300):

Azure Architect Technologies (AZ-300) certification is designed for the Azure solution architects who can translate the business requirements and advise the stakeholders with scalable, secure, and reliable solutions.

Prerequisites:

• The candidate should have knowledge and experience in various IT operations like Virtualization, Networking, Business Continuity, Security, Budgeting, Identity, Data Management, and Governance.
• Understand the concept of DevOps.

Languages: English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

AZ-300 Exam Price: 165 USD.

Skills and Exam Weightage:

Deploy and Configuring Infrastructure (10-15% Exam Weightage):

• Configuring resource diagnostic settings.
• Analyzing metrics subscription and alerts subscription.
• Creating action groups and resource baseline.
• Monitoring unused resources.
• Utilizing Log search functions.

Configuring and Creating Storage Accounts (15-20% Exam Weightage):

• Generating a shared access signature.
• Managing Access keys.
• Implementing replication of Azure storage.
• Installing Azure storage explorer.
• Configuring Network Access.

Configuring Virtual Machines for Linux and Windows (10-15% Exam Weightage):

• Configuring the networking, and monitoring the virtual machine size.
• Deploying the scale sets.
• Configuring the high availability.

Creating the Connectivity between Virtual Networks (20-25% Exam Weightage):

• Configuring VNET peering.
• Verifying the connectivity of the virtual network.
• Creating a gateway for the virtual network.

Managing Active Directory (10-15% Exam Weightage):

• Adding custom domains.
• Configuring State Roaming and Azure AD connect.
• Managing multiple directories and password sync.
• Performing the access review.
• Migrating the servers to Azure.
• Preparing a virtual network.

Azure Architect Design (AZ-301):

Azure Architect Design (AZ-301) certification exam tests the knowledge of Azure solution architects who are responsible for translating business requirements and advising the stakeholders with scalable, secure, and reliable solutions.

Prerequisites:

• Candidates should clear the AZ-300 certification exam to write this Azure Architect Design exam (AZ-301).
• The candidate should have knowledge and experience in various IT operations like Virtualization, Networking, Business Continuity, Security, Budgeting, Identity, Data Management, and Governance.

Languages: English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

AZ-301 Exam Price: 165 USD.

Skills and Exam Weightage:

Determining Workload Requirements (10-15% Exam Weightage):

• Gathering requirements and information.
• Optimizing the Consumption Strategy.
• Designing and monitoring the audit strategy.

Designing for Security and Identity (20-25% Exam Weightage):

• Creating Identity Management, Authentication, and Authorization.
• Monitoring Security and Identity strategies.

Designing Data Platform Solutions (15-20% Exam Weightage):

• Creating a Data Management Strategy and Data Protection Strategy.
• Designing the Document data flow and Data platform monitoring strategy.

Designing Business Continuity Strategy:

• Creating a Data Archiving Strategy and Site Recovery Strategy.
• Designing a Disaster Recovery Strategy.

Designing Infrastructure Strategy (15-20% Exam Weightage):

• Creating the Storage provisioning strategy, compute strategy, Network strategy, and Identifying compute requirements.
• Monitoring the Infrastructure Strategy.

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Microsoft Azure DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-400 Exam):

The Microsoft Azure DevOps Engineer Expert certification exam is for DevOps professionals who can combine technologies and processes to deliver valuable services that meet user requirements and business objectives. This certification helps in optimizing practices and creating automation. 

Prerequisites:

• Candidate should know about Azure administration.
• Candidate must have proficiency in Agile practices.

Languages: English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

AZ-400 Exam Price: 165 USD.

Skills and Exam Weightage:

Designing a DevOps Strategy(20-25% Exam Weightage):

• Recommending DevOps tools consolidation strategy.
• Analyzing test management tools and work management tools.
• Implementing the work management approach to Agile.
• Designing a quality strategy.
• Recommending the performance testing and feature flag lifecycle.
• Designing a Secure development process and tool integration strategy.

Implementing DevOps Development Processes(20-25% Exam Weightage):

• Recommending branching models, code flow strategy, and version control systems.
• Third-party integration of source control and CI/CD systems.
• Implementing build infrastructure and third-party build systems.
• Implementing code flow and configuring branch policies.
• Managing UI test device sets and creating public distribution groups.

Implementing Continuous Integration (10-15% Exam Weightage):

• Managing security policies and code quality.
• Integrating security analysis tools.
• Implementing the container build strategy.
• Creating deployable images.
• Implementing multi-agent builds and hybrid build process
• Recommending the configuration of build tools.

Implementing Continuous Delivery (10-15% Exam Weightage):

• Designing a release strategy and recommending release tools.
• Automating the health signal inspection. 
• Creating release pipelines and configuring automated integration.
• Implementing canary deployments.
• Managing templates and tasks.

Implementing Dependency Management (5-10% Exam Weightage):

• Designing the dependency management strategy.
• Identifying the standardized versions of solutions.
• Managing compliances and security.
• Configuring secure actions.
• Inspecting the packages of open-source software.

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Implementing Application Infrastructure (15-20% Exam Weightage):

• Configuring management strategy.
• Analyzing the existing infrastructure and hosting infrastructure.
• Designing technical debt strategy, transient infrastructure strategy, mitigate infrastructure strategy.
• Implementing infrastructure as code.
• Recommending IaC strategy and configuration management technologies.
• Provisioning Azure resources.

Implementing Continuous Feedback (10-15% Exam Weightage):

• Recommending system feedback mechanisms.
• Monitoring tools and technologies.
• Optimizing feedback mechanisms.
• Analyzing telemetry.
• Integrating ticketing systems with the management system.

Microsoft Azure Security Engineer Associate (AZ-500 Exam):

Azure Security Engineer Associate (AZ-500 Exam) is designed for security engineers who maintain the security posture, implement security controls, protects data, and manage the identity. Azure security engineers are part of the cloud-based system managing team. They are also involved in threat protection implementation and security.

Prerequisites:

• The candidate must be familiar with Microsoft Azure services and products.
• The candidate should understand the concepts of virtualization, networking, and N-tier architecture. 

Languages: English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

AZ-500 Exam Price: 165 USD.

Skills and Exam Weightage:

Managing Access and Identity (20-25% Exam Weightage):

• Configuring Azure tenant security.
• Configuring Azure Active Directory.

Implementing Platform Protection (35-40% Exam Weightage):

• Implementing Network security and host security.
• Configuring container security.
• Implementing resource management security.

Managing Security Operations (15-20% Exam Weightage):

• Configuring security policies and services.
• Managing security alerts.

Secure Applications and Data (30-35% Exam Weightage):

• Configuring data encryption and application security.
• Managing Key Vault.
• Implementing application delivery security.

Conclusion:

A qualifying certification exam demonstrates your knowledge and expertise in the particular segment of the Azure cloud platform. Companies are looking for certified Azure Professionals. Till now, we have discussed detailed information regarding various certifications available in Azure. Hope you have found useful information from this blog. If you have any queries, please comment in the below section, and we will respond at the earliest. 

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