Passed Microsoft Exam AZ-301: Microsoft Azure Architect Design
The last Monday, I passed the Microsoft AZ-301 exam: Microsoft Azure Architect Design. And I can now finally call myself a Microsoft Certified for Azure Solutions Architect. I am really happy, it was hard work, but I think it was worth it.
If you plan to take this exam, you must have advanced experience and knowledge to design the necessary infrastructure and workloads for the followings topics.
- Design Identity Management
- Design a Data Solution
- Establish Business Continuity
- Design Deployment and Migrations
- Design an Infrastructure Strategy
How to prepare for the exam #
To prepare for the exam, I have used different training portals, online courses, and reading material. Below I will show you those resources and the time I dedicated to each of them.
Microsoft Learn #
One of the sources that I have consulted has been Microsoft Learn. This new educational platform is just great and comes to replace the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA). On this platform, complete the following learning paths:
- Architect network infrastructure in Azure (8h 59m).
- Architect storage infrastructure in Azure (6h 7m).
- Architect computes infrastructure in Azure (6h 54m).
- Architect infrastructure operations in Azure (3h 58m).
- Architect a data platform in Azure (8h 5m).
- Architect message brokering and serverless applications in Azure (6h 20m).
- Architect API integration in Azure (3h 44m).
- Architect migration, business continuity, and disaster recovery in Azure (6h 36m).
Pluralsight courses #
Another source that you can use to reinforce the concepts is to take the Pluralsight courses, in special the following courses:
- Design Governance and Identity Management in Microsoft Azure (3h 43m)
- Design a Compute Strategy for Microsoft Azure (4h 31m)
- Design Authentication for Microsoft Azure (3h 7m)
- Design Authorization for Microsoft Azure (2h 24m)
- Design a Networking Strategy for Microsoft Azure (3h 36m)
- Design a Data Management Strategy for Microsoft Azure (1h 36m)
- Design a Data Protection Strategy with Microsoft Azure (1h 32m)
- Design and Document Data Flows with Microsoft Azure (1h 16m)
- Plan for Data Warehousing with Microsoft Azure (1h 17m)
- Designing a Monitoring Strategy for the Microsoft Azure Data Platform (39m)
- Design a Monitoring Strategy for Identity and Security in Microsoft Azure (1h 31m)
- Design for Risk Prevention in Microsoft Azure (2h 22m)
- Design a Monitoring Strategy for Infrastructure in Microsoft Azure (2h 42m)
- Design Auditing for Microsoft Azure (2h 34m)
- Designing for High Availability on Microsoft Azure (1h 53m)
Cloudskills.io #
An excellent and very intensive course but highly recommended if you want to become a Microsoft certified cloud solutions architect
My Tips #
- Take your time to cover all the topics included in the exam.
- Open an Azure account and test, research the capabilities of the resources and check the available features.
- Use templates to deploy test environments more quickly.
I hope this information will be useful. If you want to know more about the AZ-301 exam, check out this link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/az-301