Study Guide for Passing Microsoft Certification Exam: AZ-400 Designing and Implementing Azure DevOps Engineer- Expert

Introduction:

In recent years, DevOps practitioners are in high demand in the IT industry as organizations using DevOps practices are overwhelmingly high functioning. The Microsoft Azure Exam AZ-400 required DevOps professionals capable of combining processes, people, and technologies for delivering services and products to meet the business objectives.

1. What to expect from this article?
   

   A comprehensive study guide for the AZ-400 exam is made available for you here. Eligibility criteria for the exam highlighted points to remember, a summary of all the main learning points included in the modules, and reference material are posted to support your learning growth.

2. Prerequisites:

   Candidates preparing for this exam must be acquainted with a thorough knowledge of either Microsoft Azure Administration AZ-104 certification or Microsoft Azure Developer AZ-204 certification and must be an expert in at least one of these areas. Proficiency in agile practices, the ability for designing and implementing Azure DevOps practices for version control, configuration management, build compliance, release, and testing by leveraging Azure technologies is highly recommended for AZ-400 certification exam applicants.

3. Key Benefits of AZ-400 Certification: 

   • For individuals looking to establish their credibility and value in the market as experienced DevOps practitioners, agile practitioners, and cloud computing professionals, the Azure DevOps Solutions certification is highly important.
   • It also helps system administrators, software developers, project managers, and technical leads aspiring to lead the DevOps.
   • DevOps market in the IT industry is ready to boom and AZ-400 certified personnel will automatically qualify for a majority of MNCs securing high paying jobs as an Azure DevOps Engineer.

4. Exam Pattern: 

   The table below summarizes all additional information about the exam.

5. Percentage of the Question for all the Modules:

   • Develop an Instrumentation Strategy (5-10%)

   Questions from this module are based on log aggregation and storage strategy, crash analysis, design and implement telemetry, monitoring tools such as Azure Monitor Application Insights, Dynatrace, New Relix, Naggios, Zabbix, platform monitoring tools such as Azure Diagnostics extension, Log Analytics agent, Azure Platform logs, Event Grid and managing their access controls.

   • Develop a Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) strategy (5-10%)

   Fewer questions are expected from this module such as developing an actionable alerting strategy, designing a failure prediction strategy, design and implement health checks such as liveness, startup, and shutdown.

   • Develop a security and compliance plan (10-15%)

   From this module, you can expect questions on Azure AD Privileged Identity Management (PIM), Azure AD Conditional Access, MFA, Azure KeyVault, HashiCorp Vault, secret storage and retravel strategies like KeyVault secrets, GitHub secrets, Azure Pipeline secrets, developing security and compliance, designing governance enforcement mechanisms, etc.

   • Manage Source Control (10-15%)

   From this module, you can expect questions on developing a modern source control strategy, planning, and implementing branching strategies, configuring repositories, and integrating source control with tools.

   • Facilitate Communication and Collaboration (10-15%)

   Creating dashboards combining boards, pipelines, generate DevOps process documentation, automate communication with team members by integrating monitoring tools, notifying stakeholders about key metrics, alerts, severity are some topics from this module from which you can expect some questions for the exam.

   • Define and implement continuous integration (20-25%)

   Design-build automates by integrating the build pipeline with external tools, integrate multiple tools, design package management strategy, design, plan, implement and maintain build strategy, create reusable build subsystems like YAML templates, Task Groups, Variable Groups, etc are some topics from this module from which you can expect most of the questions for the exam.

   • Define and implement continuous delivery and release management strategy (10-15%)

   From this module, you can expect questions based on deploying scripts and template solutions, Infrastructure as code (ARM, Terraform, PowerShell, CLI), develop complex deployments (IoT, Azure, IoT Edge, mobile, App Centre, DR, multi-region, CDN, sovereign cloud, Azure stack, etc), plan and deploy environment strategies, implement release strategies using deployment slots, load balancer configurations, Azure Traffic Manager, feature toggle, etc.

6. Study Material and References:

   • Microsoft Official Courseware (MOC) is provided by CloudThat upon enrolment for the course.  
   • Microsoft Learning Path 
   • Microsoft Documentation
   • Case studies for understanding customer requirements. 
   • Instructor lead training is available from CloudThat for structured learning of Designing and Implementing Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions.
   • CloudThat also provides Test Prep for anyone attempting this course where unlimited access is provided to our library for Azure, MCQs, and performance tracker.

7. Get Certified Now:

   It is always great to get the right source of learning to Move Up. At CloudThat we have a course aimed at preparing participants/candidates for AZ-You can register by visiting the Microsoft website. 

   If you have just begun your Microsoft Azure journey, then the study guide for Microsoft Azure Fundamentals AZ-900 Certification Exam will be a good course to get started.

   Join the Azure revolution along with 100+ fortune 500 companies and CloudThat will be there to support your career growth.

WRITTEN BY Anusha Shanbhag

Anusha Shanbhag is an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Technical Content Writer specializing in technical content strategizing with over 10+ years of professional experience in technical content writing, process documentation, tech blog writing, and end-to-end case studies publishing, catering to consulting and marketing requirements for B2B and B2C audiences. She is a public speaker and ex-president of the corporate Toastmaster club.