The trilogy of Microsoft Azure Certification exams first debuted more than one year ago. In that time there have been some tremendous changes and additions to the entire Microsoft Azure Platform. As a result, coming March 10, 2016, Microsoft is updating the exam objectives to reflect some of these changes. But, what are the changes?

What’s Changing?

Microsoft has published documents listing the exam objective changes to each of the exams information pages on the Microsoft Learning website. These can be a little verbose, so here’s a more simplified change log of the coming changes for each of the individual exams:

70-532 Developing Microsoft Azure Solutions Exam Updates

• Rename App Service “Websites” to “Web Apps”
• Rename “Hosting Plan” to “App Service Plan”
• Change references of Windows PowerShell to be Azure PowerShell instead
• Remove “configure access control list (ACL)” for Virtual Machine management
• Add “configure Network Security Groups (NSG)” for Virtual Machine management
• Add “implement Azure Premium Storage” under storage strategy objective
• Remove “implement Azure Cache Service”
• Add “migrate solutions from Azure Cache Service to use Redis caching”

70-533 Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions Exam Updates

• Rename App Service “Websites” to “Web Apps”
• Rename “Hosting Plan” to “App Service Plan”
• Change references of Windows PowerShell to be Azure PowerShell instead
• Change “configure DNS at the cloud service level” to “configure DNS at the virtual network level”
• Remove “configure access control list (ACL)” for Cloud Service implementation
• Add “implement Network Security Group (NSG)” for Cloud Service implementation
• Remove “configure network access rules” for Cloud Service implementation
• Add “implement Azure Premium Storage” under Storage implementation
• Remove “implement dirsync” under Azure Active Directory implementation
• Add “implement Azure AD Connect” under Azure Active Directory Implementation

70-534 Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions Exam Updates

• Rename App Service “Websites” to “Web Apps”
• Rename App Service “mobile services” to “Mobile Apps”
• Add “design Resource Groups”
• Add “manage identity and access by using Azure Active Directory B2C”
• Add “identify, assess, and mitigate security risks by using Azure Operations Management Suite”
• Remove “Biztalk” from connecting to on-premises data from Azure applications
• Add monitoring to “analyze logs by using the Azure Operations Management Suite”
• Add “design and deploy Azure Site recovery”
• Add “automate tasks by using the Azure Operations Management Suite”

Exam Study Materials

Studying for certification exams can be a little daunting, and finding the right study materials is really of key importance. The good news about this update is that the vast majority of the material on the exams is remaining the same. Because of this, Microsoft is keeping the same exam numbers (70-532, 70-533, 70-534) while just updating some objectives and related questions on the exam.

Using all the existing study materials will still get you extremely far, but you also need to keep in mind the exam changes so you don’t skip studying anything.

Here are some links to study guides that list out materials that can be used to study for these exams:

• 70-532 Developing Microsoft Azure Solutions Exam
• 70-533 Implementing Microsoft Azure Solutions Exam
• 70-534 Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions Exam

If you are still figuring out which Azure certification exam is best for you, or even which would be best to start with in working towards the MCSD: Azure Solutions Architect certification (earned by taking all 3 exams) then you’ll want to read my short guide outlining some of the major differences between the exams, available here: Which Azure Cert Exam is Best for Me?

Also, the open source Azure 70-532 Developer Certification Practice Test project on Github has been updated so that all questions in the practice test reflect the coming exam changes.

Go study and may the cloud be strong with you!

About the Author

Chris Pietschmann

Chris Pietschmann is a Microsoft MVP, HashiCorp Ambassador, and Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) with 20+ years of experience designing and building Cloud & Enterprise systems. He has worked with companies of all sizes from startups to large enterprises. He has a passion for technology and sharing what he learns with others to help enable them to learn faster and be more productive.