The AI-100 Designing and Implementing an Azure AI Solution certification exam tests and validates your expertise using the various services within the Microsoft Azure Artificial Intelligence (AI) portfolio.
This exam is the requirement to earn the Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate certification. This certification is for Azure AI Engineers who use Cognitive Services, Machine Learning, and Knowledge Mining to architect and implement Microsoft AI solutions involving natural language processing, speed, computer vision, bots, and agents.
For some time now Microsoft hasn’t really invested much into the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) site. The content there has been slowly aging and getting out of date. Microsoft has actually been investing in other learning avenues like the new Microsoft Learn site and EdX courses.
Recently, Microsoft Learning announced that the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) site will begin a retirement process starting on January 31, 2019. The first piece announced to be retired is the ability to earn Certificates of Completion for the MVA courses taken. If you want to complete any MVA courses, then you’ll want to do so before January 31, 2019 if that’s something that matters to you.
Microsoft is continuing to invest in Microsoft Learn training catalog instead of MVA going forward. Be sure to visit Microsoft Learn for more details.
The AZ-203 Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure certification exam tests and validates your expertise as an Azure Developer. This exam tests your expertise across all phases of the Microsoft Azure development process; from solution design, to development and deployment, to testing and maintenance.
The AZ-203 exam was rolled out as a replacement for the AZ-200 + AZ-201 or AZ-203 exams for earning the Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate certification. This was a move to simplify the process to earning this certifications based on feedback from those who have taken the exams while they were in a “Beta” state. Thanks to those early certification achievers, we all have a simplified process to follow now.
There’s so much talk about what certification to get, what exam to pass, what are the requirements, and how to get certified. However, the opposite side of the coin is the older certifications and exam that go away over time. When technologies become obsolete, Microsoft retires certification exams that are no longer as relevant as they once were to make room for the newer certifications coming out with current technologies. Read More
Recently, Microsoft announced some major changes to their certification program. These changes include retiring many of the existing certifications and exams, and releasing brand new exams and certifications as replacements that follow more of a “job-role” oriented path. These new job-role based certification paths are really great, but this leaves many with existing certifications in a bit of a confused state. Fortunately, Microsoft is offering “Transition” exams that you can take to easily upgrade to the new certification paths if you have previously been certified in Microsoft Azure. Read More
The AZ-400 Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions certification exam tests and validates a candidates expertise as a DevOps Professional around the use of Microsoft Azure technologies for designing and implementing DevOps practices. This exam is a part of the required exams needed to earn the larger Microsoft Certified: Azure DevOps Engineer Expert certification.
Certification Target Audience
The AZ-400 Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions certification exam is geared towards DevOps Professionals who combine people, process, and tools to continuously deliver value to meet users needs and business objectives. These candidates streamline delivery by optimizing practices, improve communication and collaboration, and create automation. They design and implement strategies for app code and infrastructure that allows for continuous integration, continuous testing, continuous delivery, and continuous monitoring and feedback.
Exam candidates are expected to be proficient with Agile practices, and must be familiar with both Azure Administration and Azure Development, and should be experts in one of these areas. They must be able to design and implement DevOps practices for version control, compliance, infrastructure as code (IaC), configuration management, build, release, and testing by using Microsoft Azure technologies.
Skills Measured
Here’s a very high level list of the skills and objectives measured on the AZ-400 Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions certification exam. The percentages for each objective area represents the number of questions on the exam for that particular exam objective.
Design a DevOps Strategy (20-25%)
Recommend a migration and consolidation strategy for DevOps tools
Analyze existing artifact (e.g. deployment packages, NuGet) and container repositories
Analyze existing test management tools
Analyze existing work management tools
Recommend migration and integration strategies for artifact repositories, source control, test management, and work management
Design and implement an Agile work management approach
Identify and recommend project metrics, KPIs, and DevOps measurements (e.g. cycle time, lead time, Azure Kubernetes Service, WIP limit)
Implement tools and processes to support Agile work management
Mentor team members on Agile techniques and practices
Recommend an organization structure that supports scaling Agile practices
Recommend in-team and cross-team collaboration mechanisms
Design a quality strategy
Analyze existing quality environment
Identify and recommend quality metrics
Recommend a strategy for feature flag lifecycle
Recommend a strategy for measuring and managing technical debt
Recommend changes to team structure to optimize quality
Recommend performance testing strategy
Design a secure development process
Inspect and validate code base for compliance
Inspect and validate infrastructure for compliance
Recommend a secure development strategy
Recommend tools and practices to integrate code security validation (e.g. static code analysis)
Recommend tools and practices to integrate infrastructure security validation
Design a tool integration strategy
Design a license management strategy (e.g. Azure DevOps users, concurrent pipelines, test environments, open source software licensing, DevOps tools and services, package management licensing)
Design a strategy for end-to-end traceability from work items to working software
Design a strategy for integrating monitoring and feedback to development teams
Design an authentication and access strategy
Design a strategy for integrating on-premises and cloud resources
Implement DevOps Development Processes (20-25%)
Design a version control strategy
Recommend branching models
Recommend version control systems
Recommend code flow strategy
Implement and integrate source control
Integrate external source control
Integrate source control into third-party continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) systems
Design build triggers, tools, integrations, and workflow
Implement a hybrid build process
Implement multi-agent builds
Recommend build tools and configuration
Set up an automated build workflow
Implement Continuous Delivery (10-15%)
Design a release strategy
Recommend release tools
Identify and recommend release approvals and gates
Recommend strategy for measuring quality of release and release process
Recommend strategy for release notes and documentation
Select appropriate deployment pattern
Set up a release management workflow
Automate inspection of health signals for release approvals by using release gates
Configure automated integration and functional test execution
Create a release pipeline (e.g. Azure Kubernetes Service, Service Fabric, WebApp)
Create multi-phase release pipelines
Integrate secrets with release pipeline
Provision and configure environments
Manage and modularize tasks and templates (e.g. task and variable groups)
Implement an appropriate deployment pattern
Implement blue-green deployments
Implement canary deployments
Implement progressive exposure deployments
Scale a release pipeline to deploy to multiple endpoints (e.g. deployment groups, Azure Kubernetes Service, Service Fabric)
Implement Dependency Management (5-10%)
Design a dependency management strategy
Recommend artifact management tools and practices
Abstract common packages to enable sharing and reuse
Inspect codebase to identify code dependencies that can be converted to packages
Identify and recommend standardized package types and versions across the solution
Refactor existing build pipelines to implement version strategy that publishes packages
Manage security and compliance
Inspect open source software packages for security and license compliance to align with corporate standards (e.g. GPLv3)
Configure build pipeline to access package security and license rating (e.g. Black Duck, White Source)
Configure secure access to package feeds
Implement Application Infrastructure (15-20%)
Design an infrastructure and configuration management strategy
Analyze existing and future hosting infrastructure
Analyze existing Infrastructure as Code technologies
Design a strategy for managing technical debt on templates
Design a strategy for using transient infrastructure for parts of a delivery lifecycle
Design a strategy to mitigate infrastructure state drift
Implement Infrastructure as Code
Create nested resource templates
Manage secrets in resource templates
Provision Azure resources
Recommend an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) strategy
Recommend appropriate technologies for configuration management
Manage Azure Kubernetes Service infrastructure
Provision Azure Kubernetes Service (e.g. using ARM templates, CLI)
Create deployment file for publishing to Azure Kubernetes Service (e.g. kubectl, Helm)
Develop a scaling plan
Implement infrastructure compliance and security
Implement compliance and security scanning
Prevent drift by using configuration management tools
Set up an automated pipeline to inspect security and compliance
Implement Continuous Feedback (10-15%)
Recommend and design system feedback mechanismsÂ
Design practices to measure end-user satisfaction (e.g. Send a Smile, app analytics)
Design processes to capture and analyze user feedback from external sources (e.g. Twitter, Reddit, Help Desk)
Design routing for client application crash report data (e.g. HockeyApp)
Recommend monitoring tools and technologies
Recommend system and feature usage tracking tools
Implement process for routing system feedback to development teamsÂ
Configure crash report integration for client applications
Develop monitoring and status dashboards
Implement routing for client application crash report data (e.g. HockeyApp)
Implement tools to track system usage, feature usage, and flow
Integrate and configure ticketing systems with development team’s work management system (e.g. IT Service Management connector, ServiceNow Cloud Management, App Insights work items)
Optimize feedback mechanismsÂ
Analyze alerts to establish a baseline
Analyze telemetry to establish a baseline
Perform live site reviews and capture feedback for system outages
Perform ongoing tuning to reduce meaningless or non-actionable alerts
To view the most up-to-date list of these exam objectives, please reference the official AZ-400 exam page.
Microsoft Certified: Azure DevOps Engineer Expert
The AZ-400 Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions certification exam is among the required exams necessary to earn the larger Microsoft Certified: Azure DevOps Engineer Expert certification. Prior to taking this exam, candidates will need to take a couple exams previously and have earned either the Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate or Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate certification. As the prerequisites show, candidates can be either Azure Administrator or Azure Developer experts, then take the AZ-400 Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions exam to prove their skills as a Microsoft Azure DevOps Expert!
The AZ-201 Microsoft Azure Developer Advanced Solutions certification exam tests and validates your expertise as an Azure Developer. This exam tests your expertise across all phases of the Azure development process; from solution design, to development and deployment, to testing and maintenance.
The AZ-203 Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure exam was rolled out as a replacement for the AZ-200 + AZ-201 or AZ-203 exams for earning the Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate certification. This was a move to simplify the process to earning this certifications based on feedback from those who have taken the exams while they were in a “Beta” state. Thanks to those early certification achievers, we all have a simplified process to follow now.Read More
The AZ-200 Microsoft Azure Developer Core Solutions certification exam tests and validates your expertise as an Azure Developer. This exam tests your expertise across all phases of the Azure development process; from solution design, to development and deployment, to testing and maintenance.
The AZ-203 Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure exam was rolled out as a replacement for the AZ-200 + AZ-201 or AZ-203 exams for earning the Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate certification. This was a move to simplify the process to earning this certifications based on feedback from those who have taken the exams while they were in a “Beta” state. Thanks to those early certification achievers, we all have a simplified process to follow now.Read More
The AZ-301 Microsoft Azure Architect Design certification exam tests and validates your expertise as an Azure Architect around Azure administration, Azure development, and DevOps; among a list of specific expertise categories within each of these. Read More
The AZ-300 Microsoft Azure Architect Technologies certification exam tests and validates your expertise as an Azure Architect around Azure administration, Azure development, and DevOps; among a list of specific expertise categories within each of these. Read More