Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions (AZ-400) is an industry-recognized certification that validates the expertise of IT professionals in implementing, designing, and managing DevOps practices and solutions using Microsoft Azure technologies. The AZ-400 exam is designed to test candidates’ knowledge and skills in various areas of DevOps, including Agile planning, source control, continuous integration and delivery, monitoring and feedback, and management and operation of infrastructure.
If you’re planning to take the AZ-400 exam, understanding its format and structure is crucial for your success. In this blog post, we’ll explore the various aspects of the AZ-400 exam format, including its duration, question types, passing score, and other important details that you need to know before taking the test. Whether you’re a seasoned IT professional or a newcomer to the DevOps world, this post will provide you with the essential information you need to prepare for and ace the AZ-400 certification exam.
Glossary for Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions Terminology
here’s a glossary of some common terminology related to Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions:
- Azure DevOps: A cloud-based collaboration and software development platform from Microsoft.
- Continuous Integration (CI): Automatically creating and testing code changes as they’re added to a shared storage is known as continuous integration.
- Continuous Deployment (CD): Automatically putting code changes into a production environment after they pass automated testing is the process of continuous deployment.
- Build Pipeline: A series of steps that automate the process of building and testing software code.
- Release Pipeline: A series of steps that automate the process of deploying software code to production environments.
- Agile: Agile is a way of developing software that focuses on working together, being flexible, and making progress step by step.
- Scrum: An agile framework that emphasizes iterative development, cross-functional teams, and frequent communication.
- Kanban: An agile framework that emphasizes visualizing and managing work in progress, and optimizing workflow.
- Sprint: A time-boxed period of work in agile development, typically lasting 1-4 weeks.
- Backlog: A prioritized list of features or tasks to be completed in a software project.
Exam preparation resources for Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions (AZ-400) Exam
Here are some exam preparation resources for the Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions (AZ-400) exam:
- Microsoft’s official AZ-400 Exam page: This page provides a detailed overview of the exam, including the skills measured, exam format, and resources for preparation. It also includes links to Microsoft Learn modules that cover the exam topics.
Link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/az-400
- Microsoft Learn: Microsoft Learn offers free self-paced courses and learning paths that cover the skills measured in the AZ-400 exam. You can take these courses to prepare for the exam and earn certifications.
Link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/azure-devops
3. Practice tests: Practice tests are a great way to evaluate your knowledge and identify areas where you need to improve. You can find several practice tests for the AZ-400 exam online.
Link: https://www.testpreptraining.com/microsoft-azure-devops-solutions-az-400-free-practice-test
- Exam Ref AZ-400 Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions: This is a book by Sjoukje Zaal that covers all the topics required for the AZ-400 exam. It is available in print and e-book formats.
Exam Format
- Firstly, the Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions (AZ-400) exam consists of 40-60 questions.
- Secondly, all the questions will be multiple choice/ multiple response questions which need to be finished within a time frame of 150 minutes.
- Additionally, to pass the exam, the candidate needs to achieve a score of at least 700 points or more.
- Further, the registration fee for the exam is $165 USD including all the additional taxes.
- Additionally, the exam is available in four languages, namely English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), and Korean.
Scheduling
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.
Pearson VUE: In order to appear in the Microsoft exam, the candidate has to schedule the exam and make themselves register with Microsoft. The candidate can schedule their exam with the Pearson VUE.
Certiport : The candidate also schedules the AZ-400 with Certiport. Schedule Your Exam Now!
Now, we have acquired all the information related to AZ-400. It’s time for you to understand the Course Outline. The Course Outline forms the most crucial aspect of the examination. So, let’s begin.
Course Structure
It is important to go through the whole course structure once and to understand and learn all the objectives.
1. Design and implement processes and communications (10–15%)
Design and implement traceability and flow of work
- Design and implement a structure for the flow of work, including GitHub Flow
- Design and implement a strategy for feedback cycles, including notifications and issues
- Design and implement integration for tracking work, including GitHub projects, Azure Boards, and repositories
- Design and implement source, bug, and quality traceability
Design and implement appropriate metrics and queries for DevOps
- Design and implement a dashboard, including flow of work, such as cycle times, time to recovery, and lead time
- Design and implement appropriate metrics and queries for project planning
- Design and implement appropriate metrics and queries for development
- Design and implement appropriate metrics and queries for testing
- Design and implement appropriate metrics and queries for security
- Design and implement appropriate metrics and queries for delivery
- Design and implement appropriate metrics and queries for operations
Configure collaboration and communication
- Document a project by configuring wikis and process diagrams, including Markdown and Mermaid syntax (Microsoft Documentation: Create a wiki for your project)
- Configure release documentation, including release notes and API documentation (Microsoft Documentation: Releases, Releases – List)
- Automate creation of documentation from Git history (Microsoft Documentation: Understand Git history simplification)
- Configure notifications by using webhooks (Microsoft Documentation: Set up notifications for changes in resource data)
- Configure integration between Azure Boards and GitHub repositories
- Configure integration between GitHub or Azure DevOps and Microsoft Teams
2. Design and implement a source control strategy (10–15%)
Plan and implement branching strategies for the source code
- Design a branch strategy, including trunk-based, feature branch, and release branch (Microsoft Documentation: Adopt a Git branching strategy)
- Design and implement a pull request workflow by using branch policies and branch protections (Microsoft Documentation: Branch policies and settings)
- Implement branch merging restrictions by using branch policies and branch protections (Microsoft Documentation: About branches and branch policies)
Configure and manage repositories
- Design and implement 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
- Configure permissions in the source control repository (Microsoft Documentation: Set Git repository permissions)
- Configure tags to organize the source control repository (Microsoft Documentation: Set Git repository settings and policies)
- Recover data by using Git commands (Microsoft Documentation: Git command reference)
- Remove specific data from source control
3. Design and implement build and release pipelines (50–55%)
Design and implement a package management strategy
- Recommend package management tools including GitHub Packages registry and Azure Artifacts
- Design and implement package feeds and views for local and upstream packages (Microsoft Documentation: Upstream sources)
- Design and implement a dependency versioning strategy for code assets and packages, including semantic versioning (SemVer) and date-based (CalVer) (Microsoft Documentation: Implement a versioning strategy, Package versioning)
- Design and implement a versioning strategy for pipeline artifacts (Microsoft Documentation: Implement a versioning strategy)
Design and implement a testing strategy for pipelines
- Design and implement quality and release gates, including security and governance
- Design a comprehensive testing strategy, including local tests, unit tests, integration tests, and load tests
- Implement tests in a pipeline, including configuring test tasks, configuring test agents, and integration of test results
- Implement code coverage analysis
Design and implement pipelines
- Select a deployment automation solution, including GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines (Microsoft Documentation: Deploy to App Service using GitHub Actions)
- Design and implement a GitHub runner or Azure DevOps agent infrastructure, including cost, tool selection, licenses, connectivity, and maintainability
- Design and implement integration between GitHub repositories and Azure Pipelines
- Develop and implement pipeline trigger rules (Microsoft Documentation: Trigger one pipeline after another)
- Develop pipelines by using YAML (Microsoft Documentation: Create your first pipeline)
- Design and implement a strategy for job execution order, including parallelism and multi-stage pipelines (Microsoft Documentation: Task Parallel Library (TPL), jobs.job.strategy definition)
- Develop and implement complex pipeline scenarios, such as hybrid pipelines, VM templates, and self-hosted runners or agents
- Create reusable pipeline elements, including YAML templates, task groups, variables, and variable groups (Microsoft Documentation: Define variables)
- Design and implement checks and approvals by using YAML-based environments (Microsoft Documentation: Release deployment control using approvals)
Design and implement deployments
- Design a deployment strategy, including blue/green, canary, ring, progressive exposure, feature flags, and A/B testing (Microsoft Documentation: Progressive experimentation with feature flags)
- Design a pipeline to ensure that dependency deployments are reliably ordered (Microsoft Documentation: Add stages, dependencies, & conditions)
- Plan for minimizing downtime during deployments by using virtual IP address (VIP) swap, load balancing, rolling deployments, and deployment slot usage and swap (Microsoft Documentation: Swap or switch deployments in Azure Cloud Services)
- Design a hotfix path plan for responding to high-priority code fixes (Microsoft Documentation: Using a hotfix production environment)
- Design and implement a resiliency strategy for deployment
- Implement feature flags by using Azure App Configuration Feature Manager (Microsoft Documentation: Manage feature flags in Azure App Configuration)
- Implement application deployment by using containers, binaries, and scripts (Microsoft Documentation: App Service overview)
- Implement a deployment that includes database tasks
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
- 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
- Monitor pipeline health, including failure rate, duration, and flaky tests (Microsoft Documentation: Manage flaky tests)
- Optimize pipelines for cost, time, performance, and reliability (Microsoft Documentation: Tradeoffs for performance efficiency)
- Optimize pipeline concurrency for performance and cost
- Design and implement a retention strategy for pipeline artifacts and dependencies (Microsoft Documentation: Set retention policies for builds, releases, and tests)
- Migrate a pipeline from classic to YAML in Azure Pipelines
4. Develop a security and compliance plan (10—15%)
Design and implement authentication and authorization methods
- Choose between Service Principals and Managed Identity (including system-assigned and user-assigned)
- Implement and manage GitHub authentication, including GitHub Apps, GITHUB_TOKEN, and personal access tokens
- Implement and manage Azure DevOps service connections and personal access tokens
- Design and implement permissions and roles in GitHub
- Design and implement permissions and security groups in Azure DevOps
- Recommend appropriate access levels, including stakeholder access in Azure DevOps and outside collaborator access in GitHub
- Configure projects and teams in Azure DevOps
Design and implement a strategy for managing sensitive information in automation
- Implement and manage secrets, keys, and certificates by using Azure Key Vault (Microsoft Documentation: Use Azure Key Vault secrets in Azure Pipelines)
- Implement and manage secrets in GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines
- Design and implement a strategy for managing sensitive files during deployment, including Azure Pipelines secure files (Microsoft Documentation: Azure data security and encryption best practices)
- Design pipelines to prevent leakage of sensitive information (Microsoft Documentation: Design a data loss prevention policy)
Automate security and compliance scanning
- Design a strategy for security and compliance scanning, including dependency, code, secret, and licensing scanning
- Configure Microsoft Defender for Cloud DevOps Security
- Configure GitHub Advanced Security for both GitHub and Azure DevOps
- Integrate GitHub Advanced Security with Microsoft Defender for Cloud
- Automate container scanning, including scanning container images and configuring an action to run CodeQL analysis in a container
- Automate analysis of licensing, vulnerabilities, and versioning of open-source components by using Dependabot alerts
5. Implement an instrumentation strategy (5–10%)
Configure monitoring for a DevOps environment
- Configure Azure Monitor and Log Analytics to integrate with DevOps tools
- Configure collection of telemetry by using Application Insights, VM Insights, Container Insights, Storage Insights, and Network Insights
- Configure monitoring in GitHub, including enabling insights and creating and configuring charts
- Configure alerts for events in GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines (Microsoft Documentation: Azure Monitor Alerts task)
Analyze metrics from instrumentation
- Inspect infrastructure performance indicators, including CPU, memory, disk, and network (Microsoft Documentation: Supported metrics with Azure Monitor)
- Analyze metrics by using collected telemetry, including usage and application performance
- Inspect distributed tracing by using Application Insights
- Interrogate logs using basic Kusto Query Language (KQL) queries (Microsoft Documentation: Log queries in Azure Monitor)
AZ-400 Study Guide and Learning Resources
The followings are some learning resources which a candidate can refer to in order to prepare for the Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions (AZ-400) Exam.
- Microsoft Learning Platform – Microsoft offers various learning paths, the candidate should visit the official website of Microsoft. The candidate can find every possible information on the official site. For this exam, the candidate will find many learning paths and documentations. Finding relatable content on the Microsoft website is quite an easy task. Also, you can find the study guide for Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions (AZ-400) on the official website of Microsoft.
- Microsoft Documentation – Microsoft Documentations are an important learning resource while preparing for Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions (AZ-400). The candidate will find documentation on every topic relating to the particular exam.
- Instructor-Led Training– The training programs that Micorosft provides itself are available on their website. The instructor-led training is an essential resource in order to prepare for the exam like Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions (AZ-400). For this exam, Microsoft suggests Course AZ-400T00-A: Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps solutions.
- Testprep Online Tutorials– Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions (AZ-400) Online Tutorial helps you understand the exam concepts better. It also includes details and policies about the exam. So, using these Online Tutorials will make your preparation stronger.
- Try Practice Test– Practice tests are a way to make sure you’re ready for the exam. They help you see where you need improvement so you can focus on those areas. With many practice tests online, you can choose the ones that suit you. We, at Testprep training, also provide helpful practice tests for your preparation.
