Review Notes for AZ-204 Exam

Introduction

I recently took and passed Microsoft’s Certification Exam AZ-204: Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure . I hope this article helps you prepare for this exam.

If you are just starting out with your cloud journey, I suggest you take AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals . It provides a great overview of cloud concepts and how Azure provides cloud services it with it’s wide range of applications. If you are coming from a technical background or have been working with cloud solutions for a while now, the AZ-900 exam is not that difficult. The Online - Free learning path in the same page might be enough for you to review and pass the exam. If this is also your first time taking a certification exam, AZ-900 is also a great way to have a feel of the exam environment so if you have the time and money, I suggest you take it first.

Domains

Here’s a brief overview of the coverage for AZ-204:

  • Develop Azure compute solutions (25-30%)
  • Develop for Azure storage (10-15%)
  • Implement Azure security (15-20%)
  • Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize Azure solutions (10-15%)
  • Connect to and consume Azure services and third-party services (25-30%)

The range of percentages means the number of questions in each domain can vary but the total should still be 100%. Each exam take should have a different set of questions. These domains should serve as a guide for your study focus.

Free Study Resources

Here are the free resources that I recommend to prepare for the exam:

  1. Microsoft Learn - In the main page of the AZ-204 exam , there’s a list of learning paths related to the exam provided by Microsoft for free. Look for “Two ways to prepare” and “Online - Free” learning path in the same page. This is a good starting point to get you an overview of the involved concepts and services.

  2. Microsoft Docs - All information that you will need will be in the official Microsoft documentation. Each service has detailed documentation including an overview, concepts, sample codes for different languages, tutorials, API references. You can get started with the Azure documentation here .

  3. Microsoft Learn GitHub - Microsoft Learn also has a public GitHub repository for this exam - GitHub link . You can follow the labs there to get a hands-on experience of using Azure. Azure has a free trial so you can use a free trial account to try the labs. Just make sure to check which services are free !

Paid Study Resources

If you are willing to pay for study resources, here are some that I will recommend:

  1. Instructor-led Training - In the AZ-204 page, the other way to prepare is an “Instructor-led Training” session. This is best for those who learn better in a formal training environment, with a teacher, notes, and lab exercises. This will be a scheduled training session so you have to allot time for this. This is also good if you have questions since you can directly ask the instructor to clarify some concepts you do not understand. I took an instructor-led training and it helped me get an overview of all the services and do hands-on work with the laboratory exercises which are very helpful.

  2. Online courses - If the instructor-led training is too expensive or you can’t carve out the time for it, the alternative I would recommend is an online learning course from Udemy, Coursera, or any of your preferred online learning platform. Personally, I did not take one of these for AZ-204 but I did take one for my previous certification in AWS. It is usually cheaper (especially if on sale) and self-paced. Which specific course to buy? Just look through the recommendations, ratings, and comments to help you decide.

  3. Online mock exams - Mock or practice exams give you an idea on what kinds of questions are going to be in the actual exam. I bought the ones from Whizlabs so this is the only one I can vouch for (I also bought one from Udemy but it was just lifted of the (Whizlabs)[https://www.whizlabs.com/microsoft-azure-certification-az-204/] practice exams, sigh). Maybe a week or two before the exam, try taking one of the practice tests to gauge which areas you need to improve on. They provide answers and references so you can read more. If you get a low score in the mock exams, don’t worry! Review your weak areas, try again, then aim to increase your score.

Additional Exam Pointers

I’ll list some additional pointers for study and preparation:

  • The Microsoft official documentation is your best friend. Anything you are confused with or do not know the answer to, consult the documentation. Exam questions are all situational and you have to choose the best answer that will satisfy the requirements. Read the question thoroughly because you might miss small details on the requirements such as costs need to be minimized, or access can be public, etc.

  • The exam has a lot of questions in the following services including how they work with each other: Storage Account, Web App, Active Directory, Monitor, Service Bus, Event Hub, Event Grid, Cosmos DB, Functions, Logic App. The questions are not limited to these services though. But you have to know details about these services and how to integrate them with each other and other services.

  • Study Azure CLI, Powershell, .NET SDK. If you use Azure in your daily life, for work or maybe leisure, the commands might be easy for you already. You don’t have to memorize the commands or functions but do have an idea on the sequence of how to create your applications from CLI, Powershell, or .NET SDK. You may be asked for a sequence of CLI commands to create a webapp from scratch, e.g., start from az group create to az webapp deployment. Read through the sample codes and tutorials if you have time. Aside from the sequence of commands or functions, try to remember also the parameters that you will need to provide e.g. location, namespace, endpoint, etc.

  • Try to remember the keywords used and how the commands are structured. For example, do create commands in Powershell start with New or Create (e.g. New-AzRm or Create-AzRM?). Small things like this will help you eliminate choices which are incorrect commands and maybe leave you with just one or two choices left.

Finally…

Just like any exam, preparation is the key. Give yourself enough time to study and prepare and for sure you will pass it! Good luck!