Exam AZ-400: Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions

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Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions AZ-400 exam is intended for the DevOps professionals who have already received the badge of Azure Developer Associate or Azure Administrator Associate. Microsoft Azure AZ-400 exam measures the ability of the candidate to design a DevOps strategy and implement – DevOps development processes; dependency management; application infrastructure; and continuous integration, delivery, and feedback. The responsibilities of a DevOps professional include:

  • Streamlining delivery by optimizing practice
  • Improving communications and collaboration
  • Creating automation
  • Design and implement strategies for application code and infrastructure

Who should take the exam?

Candidates appearing for AZ-400 exam are DevOps professionals who combine people, processes, and technologies to continuously deliver valuable products and services that meet end user needs and business objectives. Some of the important details listed for candidates planning to take this exam includes – 

  • Subject matter expertise working with people, processes, and technologies to continuously deliver business values
  • Ability to design and implementing strategies for collaboration, code, infrastructure, source control, security, compliance, continuous integration, testing, delivery, monitoring, and feedback.
  • Familiarity with both Azure administration and development and must be expert in at least one of these areas.

Learning Objectives

Microsoft being a dominant player constantly provides relevant and required documentation to meet the needs of all of today’s diverse learners and therefore, helping them to build a life in the world of cloud computing. As a result, the potential aspirants are easily able to locate the required detailed information along with the subtopics included in each domain.

The AZ-400 certification exam focuses on five key areas: 

  1. Develop an Instrumentation Strategy
  2. Also, Develop a Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) strategy
  3. Develop a security and compliance plan
  4. Manage source control
  5. Facilitate communication and collaboration
  6. Define and implement continuous integration
  7. Define and implement continuous delivery and release management strategy

Microsoft AZ-400 Learning Path

The AZ-400 exam helps candidates to design and implement strategies for application code and infrastructure that allow for continuous integration, testing, delivery, monitoring, and feedback. The AZ-400 exam tests your knowledge across seven different subject areas, and that’s how this AZ-400 learning path is structured.

AZ-400

Exam Format

The Microsoft Azure AZ-400 exam consists of 40-60 questions. However, the AZ-400 exam questions will be multiple choice/ multiple response questions which need to be finished within a time frame of 150 minutes. For AZ-400 passing score, Microsoft states that the candidate has to score at least 700 or more points in order to pass the exam. The AZ-400 certification cost is $165 USD including all the additional taxes. Additionally, the exam is available in four languages, namely English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), and Korean.

Exam Details

How to schedule the exam?

The exam measures your ability to design a DevOps strategy and implement the following: DevOps development processes; dependency management; application infrastructure; and continuous integration, delivery, and feedback.

Candidates can schedule the exam with the Pearson VUE. AZ-400 schedule

Exam Detailed Course Outline

1. Configure processes and communications (10—15%)

Configure activity traceability and flow of work

Configure collaboration and communication

2. Design and implement source control (15—20%)

Design and implement a source control strategy

  • Design and implement an authentication strategy (Microsoft Documentation: Design authentication and credential strategies)
  • Design a strategy for managing large files, including Git Large File Storage (LFS) and git-fat
  • Design a strategy for scaling and optimizing a Git repository, including Scalar and cross-repository sharing (Microsoft Documentation: Git limits)
  • Implement workflow hooks (Microsoft Documentation: Webhooks)

Plan and implement branching strategies for the source code

Configure and manage repositories

3. Design and implement build and release pipelines (40—45%)

Design and implement pipeline automation

  • Integrate pipelines with external tools, including dependency scanning, security scanning, and code coverage (Microsoft Documentation: Securing Azure Pipelines)
  • Design and implement quality and release gates, including security and governance (Microsoft Documentation: Deployment gates)
  • Designing integration of automated tests into a pipeline (Microsoft Documentation: Design a CI/CD pipeline using Azure DevOps)
  • Design and implement a comprehensive testing strategy (including local tests, unit tests, integration tests, and load tests)
  • Design and implement UI testing
  • Implement orchestration of tools, such as GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines (Microsoft Documentation: Compare and contrast GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines)

Design and implement a package management strategy

Design and implement pipelines

Design and implement deployments

Design and implement infrastructure as code (IaC)

  • Recommend a configuration management technology for application infrastructure (Microsoft Documentation: Configuration Manager)
  • Implement a configuration management strategy for application infrastructure, including IaC (Microsoft Documentation: infrastructure as code (IaC))
  • Define an IaC strategy, including source control and automation of testing and deployment (Microsoft Documentation: infrastructure as code (IaC))
  • Design and implement desired state configuration for environments, including Azure Automation State Configuration, Azure Resource Manager, Bicep, and Azure Automanage Machine Configuration
  • Design and implement Azure Deployment Environments for on-demand self-deployment

Maintain pipelines

4. Develop a security and compliance plan (10—15%)

Design and implement a strategy for managing sensitive information in automation

Automate security and compliance scanning

  • Automate analysis of source code by using GitHub code scanning, GitHub secrets scanning, pipeline-based scans, and SonarQube
  • Automate security scanning, including container scanning and OWASP Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP) (Microsoft Documentation: Develop secure applications on Azure)
  • Automate analysis of licensing, vulnerabilities, and versioning of open-source components by using Mend Bolt and GitHub Dependency Scanning
5. Implement an instrumentation strategy (10—15%)

Configure monitoring for a DevOps environment

Analyze metrics

Exam Policies

Microsoft is solely responsible to provide exam policies with a view to enabling the candidates to plan and manage a positive outcome. Microsoft Certification exam policies are an appropriate blend of all the exam-related details, accompanying the before and after exam procedures. These exam policies are the inclusion of certain rules that need to be followed during the exam time or at testing centres.

Exam FAQs

For More Queries Visit : Microsoft Azure (AZ-400) FAQs

Microsoft Azure Preparation Resources

 We will be providing the step by step AZ-400 study guide to get the most from your efforts in the exam preparation.

Preparatory Guide for AZ-400

Learning Resource 1: Microsoft Documentation

Microsoft offers Microsoft documentation that contains different learning pages. By using Microsoft documentation you can easily understand Microsoft azure expert’s solution DevOps fundamentals. Microsoft documentation helps you understand different scales of different azure services in a much detailed manner. This will make sure that you are working by the clock and learning so much new to azure technologies offered by industry experts directly to you.

Learning Resource 2: Instructor Led Training

Microsoft provides you with both online as well as instructor-led training. These instructor-led training courses are basically on-demand classroom sessions that you can easily arrange anywhere and anytime according to your convenience. These training sessions help you gain an upper hand in the AZ-400 exam. So the moment you are able to find a Microsoft training partner, now you just have to head towards their website for booking training sections.

Expand your certification portfolio with Microsoft Azure (AZ-400). Apply for Online Course and earn yourself a digital badge.

Learning Resource 3: Online Forums

The idea to get yourself enrolled in any study group or forum is completely subjective, implying that online forums are not mandatory but an option. Candidates preparing for the AZ-400 exam can join any study group and forums to boost their confidence. Online forums are best as they connect you to all other people who are also going through the same journey as yours. You can always ask a question related to the topic you’re having difficulty with or simply can help the other candidates. 

Learning Resource 4: Books and Periodicals

Books are your oldest yet the most efficient medium to study from. They help you acquire knowledge IN a clear and detailed manner which helps you understand the basics of the exam topics. The market is flooded with books and periodicals which you can refer to study for the exam. Following are the AZ-400 books which can support and guide your preparation process:

  • The DevOps Adoption Playbook: A Guide to Adopting DevOps in a Multi-Speed IT Enterprise by Sanjeev Sharma
  • DevOps: A Software Architect’s Perspective (SEI Series in Software Engineering) by Lenn Bass, Ingo Weber, and Liming Zhu.

Learning Resource 5: Practice Tests

Once you are done with your preparation phase, your performance phase begins. this phase is also referred to as the self-evaluation phase as it helps you find out your core strengths and weak spots. Remember you can only start performing AZ-400 practice tests once you are done with your whole syllabus. Practice tests are designed in such a manner that it helps the candidates to encounter the real exam environment around them.

Get ready to Practice and Prepare for Microsoft Azure (AZ-400) Exam

AZ-400 Free Practice Test
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