Review Notes for AZ-400 Exam
Introduction
After a month of taking AZ-204, I passed Microsoft’s Certification Exam AZ-400: Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions . I’m sharing again my notes during preparation and the exam itself.
It is recommended to take this exam after taking either the Azure developer associate exam (AZ-204) or administrator exam (AZ-104). This certification will earn you the expert badge so there is a level of knowledge expected from you prior to taking the exam. Personally, I took the following path: AZ-900, AZ-204, AZ-400.
Domains
Below is a brief overview of the domains covered in AZ-400 exam:
- Develop an instrumentation strategy (5-10%)
- Develop a Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) strategy (5-10%)
- Develop a security and compliance plan (10-15%)
- Manage source control (10-15%)
- Facilitate communication and collaboration (10-15%)
- Define and implement continuous integration (20-25%)
- Define and implement a continuous delivery and release management strategy (10-15%)
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 and the domains should serve as a guide for preparation. It is noted though in the exam page that the content will be updated on November 24, 2020.
Free Study Resources
Here are the free resources that I recommend to prepare for the exam:
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Microsoft Learn - In the main page of the AZ-400 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.
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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 .
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Azure Devops Labs - Azure Devops Labs walks you through several devops use cases such as deployments, automated testing, pipeline building, etc. This is very useful especially if you haven’t tried a specific scenario yet. Labs are supposed to help you familiarize yourself with Azure Devops and its tools. This goes hand in hand with Azure Demo Generator which generate Azure DevOps projects in your connected Azure account so you can test the labs yourself.
Paid Study Resources
If you are willing to pay for study resources, here are some that I will recommend:
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Instructor-led Training - In the AZ-400 page, the other way to prepare is an “Instructor-led Training” session. Take this if you prefer a formal training environment, with a teacher, notes, and lab exercises. The lab exercises we did though were mostly from Azure Devops Labs. This will be a scheduled training session so you have to find time for this. Mine was 5 whole days and in another time zone (started at 6am!). The problem I see in a class-based training is that the skill level of the participants are not all the same. Sometimes concepts which are familiar to some need to be explained for the benefit of others. Overall, I’d still recommend this to familiarize yourself with the domains and get some exam tips from the instructor.
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Online courses - The alternative to instructor-led training I would recommend is an online learning course from Udemy, Coursera, or any of your preferred online learning platform. Personally, I did not try any of these for AZ-900, AZ-204, or AZ-400 but this is a great alternative since usually it is much cheaper (especially if on sale) and you can do on your own time. I just read through the recommendations, ratings, and comments to help me decide which course to buy.
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Online mock exams - Mock or practice exams give you an idea on what kinds of questions are going to be in the actual exam. Since I had good experience using Whizlabs , I used it again for the practice tests. A week or two before the exam, take one of the practice tests to gauge your current knowledge and adjust accordingly. They provide answers and references so you can read more. Some answers though are debatable but you can check the queries section of that question to find discussions/comments by other users and answers from Whizlabs guys. I was also able to get a practice exam from measureup .com but some questions I got there were outdated. One answer they had was deprecated already in the Microsoft docs! Although they provide a good simulation of the actual exam environment and question types. If you get a low score in the mock exams, don’t worry! Review the references provided in the answers, try the exams again, then aim to increase your score every take.
Additional Exam Pointers
I’ll list some additional pointers for study and preparation and copy pasting some from the AZ-204 notes:
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The Microsoft official documentation is your best friend. Anything you are confused with or do not know the answer to, consult the documentation.
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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.
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Most of the exam is focused on Azure Devops concepts and services. This includes process related concepts like Agile and Scrum. Personally, I found this exam easier than AZ-204 since I came from a developer background. I have been using git, pipelines, automated testing, package management, agile/scrum for a few years now so I had no problem understanding those concepts. I have also been using Azure Devops itself for the past few months so I am familiar with most of its services (Repos, Pipelines, Boards). If you don’t have these experiences, I suggest you focus on the labs that cover these concepts so you’ll at least have hands on experience.
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Study Azure CLI, Powershell, ARM Templates. 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 setup your services from CLI, Powershell, or ARM Templates. 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. Another type of question I got was filling up an ARM Template. 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.
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Other services that you need (but not limited to): Azure Automation, Azure Container Registry (ACR), Azure Container Instances (ACI), Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Web App, Database Services, Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, App Center.
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I found it weird that I did not encounter any questions specific to AKS but all review materials I studied had a lot of AKS material so maybe I just did not get one from the question bank or my memory is really bad (did not have a good sleep the night before).
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You also need to familiarize yourself with third-party services that can be used/integrate with Devops: Github, Team Foundation Version Control, Jenkins, Whitesource Bolt, OWASP Zap, SonarQube, PMD, Slack, Teams, etc. Most likely you will encounter these while studying so just familiarize yourself with what each service does and how it integrates with Devops (e.g. service connection, service hook, importing, etc).
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If you are a practicing DevOps engineer already, you would likely need less time to prepare for this exam. If you’re using Azure DevOps already, this will be a lot easier.
Finally…
I hope these notes will help you out in your certification path. Do your best in preparation and everything will be fine. I wish you good luck!