Preparing for the New Azure Certification Exams

Now that I have a few Microsoft certification exams under my belt, I decided that it's time to write a post with tips on preparing for the new Azure exams. Microsoft recently updated most of the Azure exams - and they're updating the rest over the next several months - so the exam experience isn't what it was even a year ago.

Your first stop should be to review the exam overview page, especially the skills measured section, as that is the official list of topics the exam covers.

Next, watch Azure videos and online classes related to the exam topics. You can find free Azure classes on Microsoft Learn and Pluralsight. Pluralsight and Udemy have many in-depth paid Azure training classes as well.

You will also want to get experience in Azure itself. Be sure to check out the Microsoft hands-on labs which allow you to get practical Azure experience without incurring cost from your own paid Azure subscriptions.

Finally, try a few practice tests. I recommend Microsoft’s official practice exam vendor MeasureUp, because they have the most up-to-date practice exams which include all the current type of questions.

In addition to questions, there are now practical tasks (or labs) on the exams. The new labs require you to log into a live environment and complete a number of tasks in Azure. The labs are not  simulation nor stripped down environments, but rather examples of real-world scenarios to truly test your skills and abilities.

The exams will always begin with a series of conventional questions to provide time for the labs to be provisioned and loaded into the environment. If you answer these questions too quickly, you will have to wait for the labs to finish loading. Carefully manage your time in the exam - at the end of each section, you can review your answers, but as soon as you leave that section, you cannot return to it. 

In the labs, you do NOT have to wait for tasks to complete before moving onto the next one. Starting a task by hitting "create" is sufficient for scoring since the provisioning of that resource will complete while you are finishing up other parts of the exam. Microsoft does NOT require you to use a specific method to perform tasks in the labs. If you are more comfortable using PowerShell or CLI, instead of a GUI, then use it. The exam is scored on the end result not on how the tasks were executed.

Each Role-based certification expires in two years. That may not sound like a good thing, but given the rate at which Azure changes, it makes sense - the current certification aligns more closely with the current state of Azure. Microsoft hasn't yet announced what the recertification requirements will be.