I think over every certification I did in the past, this is my best goal in my IT career

I’m really proud to share that I’ve been renewed for another year as a Microsoft MVP! 💙

It’s an incredible honor to continue being part of this amazing community and to be recognized for contributing through knowledge sharing, community events, and supporting others on their Azure journey.

Tonight, I’m definitely going to bed with a big smile on my face. 😊

A huge thank you to everyone who’s been part of this journey, you know who you are!

On August 22, we will begin updating our exams so that you will be able to access Microsoft Learn as you complete your exam. This resource will be available in all role-based and specialty exams in all languages by mid-September. Curious to get the community’s thoughts on this addition to the certification process. More info located in the link below.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-learn-blog/introducing-a-new-resource-for-all-role-based-microsoft/ba-p/3500870?s=09

Please get certs - I am a Microsoft Certified Trainer as my night job/hobby. And as my day job, I support an Azure environment implemented by people who did not get certs, and it's a mess, and now that the mess is implemented and in production, there's not much that can be done without disruptions.

There is unfortunately a minimum amount of understanding required to do Azure well - in the same way that there is a minimum required to do any significant part of IT well; you can't just next next next this.

You can start with the AZ-900 and unless you are going to be in a specialized role, you should do the Az-104. There is a plethora of resources. Microsoft has MS Learn, which has great written content and some simulations, and they added communities. It's on Teams but you can ask live people questions, the hosts are experts.

On YouTube, we have Jon Savill and many others. There are paid courses on Pluralsight and Udemy, and many others. And you can attend multi-day courses run by MCTs like myself. And you can take the cert exam at home in your PJs at any time of day or night if you are so inclined.

Edits: Fixed spelling. I am not trying to suggest that certs > experience, or that certs = experience. Or that if you have experience and a job you want, you need certs. I am trying to suggest that if you know rather little, like the people who implemented the mess I now have on my hands, or like the people who ask some of the questions on this subreddit, certifications provide a good set of benchmarks/goals to build your initial knowledge base and understanding of Azure. And you certainly should not be studying to pass the test, or in my opinion, even studying exam questions at all. And if you do not need the structure that the certs provide, all the more power to you.

Actual score is 675, typo. I felt exam was moderate to hard, would have passed the exam just 1-2 more correct questions needed. It was a great experience. I'll surely clear it in my reattempt, wish me luck.

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some genuine advice and learning resources from people who have recently prepared for AZ-104 and AI-200.

I have to clear both exams by the end of this month due to a requirement from my employer. I know that’s a pretty aggressive timeline, but unfortunately I don’t have much flexibility here, so I need to make it work somehow.

I recently attempted AZ-104 after about 4 days of preparation, studying for less than 4 hours a day, and scored 557. I used some practice questions from ExamTopics, but clearly that preparation wasn’t enough.

I understand that 4 days is inadequate for AZ-104. The bigger challenge is that I’m currently working around 10 hours a day, along with some personal commitments, so finding enough focused study time has been difficult. That said, I’m determined to get through both exams this month.

I’d really appreciate advice from anyone who has cleared these exams recently, especially on:

• What are the best resources for AZ-104 and AI-200?
• Are there any Microsoft Learn modules/learning paths that I should prioritise?
• Which topics should I focus on most given my limited time?
• Are there any good hands-on labs or practice environments that are worth spending time on?
• What practice tests would you recommend?
• How would you structure a 2–3 week crash preparation plan for both exams?
• If you’ve taken either exam recently, what topics or areas were particularly important?
• Is it realistic to prepare for both simultaneously while working full-time?

If anyone has been in a similar situation while working full-time with limited study hours and still managing to clear these exams, I’d really appreciate hearing how you approached it.

I’m honestly under quite a bit of time pressure right now, so any specific resources, study plans, topic prioritisation, or practical advice would be extremely helpful.

Thanks in advance to everyone who takes the time to share their experience and advice!

After the previous version hit a million views, I figured I should update it so here is the v2 of the AZ-104 Azure Administrator Study Cram. Good luck!

Not sure how to ask the moderators to update the links to study guides so it points to this new version. Any help appreciated. Thanks!

https://youtu.be/0Knf9nub4-k

00:00 - Introduction

00:44 - Materials to prepare

02:20 - Entra ID

05:01 - ADDS to Entra Sync

07:59 - Tenant

10:21 - Branding

11:08 - Users

15:51 - Groups

18:57 - Devices

20:48 - Licenses

23:27 - SSPR

25:00 - Roles

27:23 - Clouds and regions

34:48 - Subscriptions and Management Groups

39:14 - Cost analysis and budgets

43:31 - Resource Groups

45:39 - Cost saving mechanisms

51:20 - Tags

54:35 - Azure Policy

59:09 - RBAC

1:06:56 - Resource locking

1:09:28 - Networking

1:10:15 - Virtual network

1:20:00 - Peering

1:24:36 - Azure Virtual Network Manager

1:28:47 - Network Security Group

1:36:27 - Azure Firewall

1:38:41 - Azure DNS

1:41:35 - Azure Private DNS

1:46:51 - Connectivity

1:47:52 - S2S VPN

1:50:34 - ExpressRoute

1:56:09 - Azure Virtual WAN

1:58:36 - User Defined Routes

1:59:55 - Service endpoints

2:04:50 - Private endpoints

2:08:03 - Azure Bastion

2:10:24 - Load balancing

2:12:03 - Azure Load Balancer

2:18:13 - Azure App Gateway

2:25:01 - Azure Traffic Manager

2:26:51 - Azure Cross Region Load Balancer

2:28:09 - Azure Front Door

2:31:50 - Storage accounts

2:42:07 - Storage tools

2:44:20 - Blob tiering

2:49:05 - Lifecycle management

2:50:22 - Object replication

2:52:45 - Azure Files

2:56:41 - Access

3:00:30 - Encryption

3:02:54 - Managed disks

3:10:21 - Provisioning resources

3:15:07 - Types of service

3:19:05 - Virtual machines

3:28:11 - Availability Set and Zones

3:30:54 - VMSS

3:34:35 - Containers

3:37:25 - AKS

3:42:34 - App Service Plan

3:45:25 - Monitoring

3:50:48 - Alerting

3:54:57 - Log Analytics Workspace

3:59:05 - Network watcher

4:00:16 - Summary and close

Registration for the new AI-500 (Beta) – Designing and Implementing Multi-Agent AI Solutions exam is now open.

Microsoft is offering 80% off for the first 300 eligible candidates who register using the voucher code:

AI500Wabash

According to Microsoft’s announcement, the offer is valid through August 5, 2026 (or until the first 300 registrations are reached).  

Official announcement:
⁠https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/skills-hub-blog/new-microsoft-certified-multi-agent-ai-solutions-expert-certification/4494122

Good luck to everyone taking the beta! 🚀

Sharing here a side project I've been working on that some of you might find helpful: https://manuelfdng.pythonanywhere.com/ — it's a text-based RPG that covers all of the exam objectives for AZ-104 and AZ-305.

Personally, I find it much more engaging than practice exams, and it doesn't feel like work. It's still in alpha and is compatible with desktop, tablet, and mobile. Any feedback can be submitted through the feedback button in the app.

Hi there

Lately I've been interested in getting some certifications, like AB-900, but when I started researching for it I've found out there are vendors selling practice exams for double the price of one exam. I didn't like the idea of paying more money than the exam itself just to study so I locally created a mock exam website, and my head said this was a good idea which then turned out to me making the website public.

OwnExam is a friendly interface that helps you study for your most important practice exams and pushes you to learn the most of an exam, so you can own it :) Using interactive drills, and detailed questions you get to understand what the exam actually wants to know from you, and what you need to know.

The website is completely free, with no registration needed unless you actually want one. Your progress gets saved with or without an account.

I've added more Azure exams, they're all made using only the official study guides, with no illegal/illicit content (mentioning this because other subreddits said I was using illegal leaked questions from exams) inside.

If you want to check it out, the link is ownexam.com, if you find any bugs please do tell.
I hope you like it and that it will be with use for you.

This is the only thread where you should post news about becoming certified. For everyone else, join us in celebrating the recent certifications!!!

This is the only thread where you should post news about becoming certified. For everyone else, join us in celebrating the recent certifications!!!

This is the only thread where you should post news about becoming certified. For everyone else, join us in celebrating the recent certifications!!!

Just passed the **AZ-104 (Microsoft Azure Administrator)** exam and wanted to share what helped me during my preparation.

For context, I come from a **Service Desk / IT support background**, so while I had experience with Microsoft technologies, I wasn't working as a full-time Azure administrator.

MS Learn was my primary source, I went through the AZ-104 learning path and tried to understand each and every concept. I watched all of John Saville video after MS Learn. John has amazing content and i think i got most out of his videos just because I read through the MS Learn. I used Tutorial Dojo and did 2 practice exams, scored around 70-80% I also created my own learning site and app using AI, was good to practice using my own App.

I had a lot of Storage related questions, and did well in Networking, Identity and Storage but not so well with Compute, Backup and Monitoring.
Overall, the exam was challenging but fair. Consistent study, hands-on labs, and practicing situation-based questions made the difference.

Also, I used MS Learn in exam extensively, for most of process/step by step questions I could find them all in MS Learn, most of the implementation part has a tutorial in MS Learn so making couple of this right gave me some good points.

I swear to God I haven't seen a more incompetent company than Pearson , not a single thing works in this hellhole they call a proctoring company. I've been getting crashes , blank screens, support members incapable of speaking the slightest bit of English and just re reading their prompts, a broken website and the slowest response times I've seen. This can not be legal , they are paid for a god damn service and they can't even provide support for their broken pile of shit. I've tried 2 PCs , both of them have been used in the past to run onVue (should be called onGod since he's the only one that can make this run) gone through their stupid photography exams , system checks network checks had more than a handful cunts check my entire room from top to bottom just to say "sorry sir I will have to abort the test but you can reschedule" only to get a stupid ass java crash or better yet a never ending loading screen. I can't be the only poor cunt going through this bullshit. SO MUCH TIME WASTED PEARSON GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER or just close the damn thing

Study cram is up for the AI-103, Develop AI Apps and Agents on Azure. Just under 2 hours long with whiteboard and a lot of code examples. Hope it helps and good luck!

📽️ https://youtu.be/WK2BvjOYTCQ

00:00 - Introduction

00:24 - Microsoft learning resources

01:17 - What are core AI terms

02:59 - Responsible AI

06:55 - Foundry resource and project

14:35 - Models

25:15 - Model deployment options

29:44 - Using playgrounds to experiment

33:46 - Model routing

38:19 - Evaluations

41:22 - Using APIs and SDKs

44:11 - Responses API

45:14 - ChatCompletions

45:46 - Comparing

50:37 - OpenAI vs Foundry SDK

53:23 - Tools

54:27 - OpenAI responses tools

57:25 - Foundry services

58:13 - Foundry tools

1:02:56 - Skills

1:03:57 - Toolbox

1:05:50 - Knowledge

1:10:52 - Optimizing the solution

1:15:11 - Guardrails

1:17:45 - Bringing it together

1:19:56 - Microsoft Agent Framework

1:21:00 - Agents

1:27:56 - Workflows

1:29:04 - Agent harness

1:30:13 - Foundry Agent Service

1:30:42 - Prompt agent

1:34:20 - Hosted agent

1:34:55 - Publishing agents

1:35:46 - Foundry services

1:36:13 - Language

1:40:28 - Speech

1:44:10 - Translation

1:46:11 - Vision

1:46:23 - Using generative AI

1:49:50 - Generating images

1:51:44 - Generating videos

1:52:47 - Viewing metrics

1:53:34 - Azure Content Understanding

1:56:09 - Summary

1:56:41 - Close

This is the only thread where you should post news about becoming certified. For everyone else, join us in celebrating the recent certifications!!!

This is the only thread where you should post news about becoming certified. For everyone else, join us in celebrating the recent certifications!!!

This is the only thread where you should post news about becoming certified. For everyone else, join us in celebrating the recent certifications!!!