NOTE: This exam is now retired. I now have guides for AZ-300 and AZ-301.

The first thing to note about this exam is that it is intended only for those who have previously sat and passed the 70-535: Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions exam. So if you’ve passed that exam, read on!

Next thing to note, this exam isn’t here to stay. It’s a transition exam to earn the more up to date certification. As such, Microsoft are retiring it on June 30, 2019.

What’s great is that if you pass, you will earn the Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert with just the one exam.

Here is what Microsoft have to say about this exam:

The transition exam is intended for people who have already demonstrated skills in the content domain by passing the existing exam(s) that the new role-based certification exams will be replacing. They cover the delta between the current certification and what we expect people who earn the new certification to be able to do. We don’t want to retest people on the same content where they have already demonstrated competence by passing the existing exam.

Transition exams cover net new content, content that wasn’t covered in enough depth, and content on aspects of the technology that have likely changed since someone took the exam. As a result, the transition exam is not shorter than a typical exam but more focused on the key tasks and skills that were not assessed in the existing exam or certification that is being replaced.

Candidates for this exam are Azure Solution Architects who advise stakeholders and translates business requirements into secure, scalable, and reliable solutions.

Candidates should have advanced experience and knowledge across various aspects of IT operations, including networking, virtualization, identity, security, business continuity, disaster recovery, data management, budgeting, and governance. This role requires managing how decisions in each area affects an overall solution.

Candidates must be proficient in Azure administration, Azure development, and DevOps, and have expert-level skills in at least one of those domains.

Below I’ve put together a collection of links relevant to the sections highlighted as being part of the skills measured for this exam. As always, these are only guide links, sometimes you need to explore a topic much more deeply if you are not familiar with it.

One final important note, as this is a solution architecture exam, there is a presumption that you are aware of service SLAs, performance tiers, dependencies etc. This sort of knowledge will only come with experience and practise. Again, you would have needed to know these to pass 70-535 so nothing new there!

If you spot something, or have a better link for a topic, get in touch! I will update this post regularly as I work my way towards taking this exam and appreciate any feedback.

Determine workload requirements

Determine feasibility and refine requirements

• There are no real links that help with this section as it is so broad. This requires that prior over-arching knowledge of the platform I mentioned earlier.

Optimize consumption strategy

• https://devblogs.microsoft.com/premier-developer/optimize-your-azure-spend/
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/advisor/advisor-overview
• https://azure.microsoft.com/pl-pl/blog/optimize-your-apps-for-your-business-with-azure-application-insights/
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/app-service-best-practices
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/virtual-machines/windows/prepay-reserved-vm-instances
• https://azure.microsoft.com/is-is/blog/azure-storage-performance-checklist/

Design for identity and security

Design authorization

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/security/azure-ad-choose-authn
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/authentication-scenarios (root link, explore the topic)
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/overview-authentication-authorization
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/role-based-access-control/role-assignments-portal

Design a business continuity strategy

Design a site recovery strategy

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/site-recovery-overview
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/recovery-plan-overview
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/site-recovery-plan-capacity-vmware (vmware link, explore other capacity planning)
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/site-recovery-runbook-automation
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/site-recovery-test-failover-to-azure
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/azure-to-azure-about-networking (Azure link, explore other network options)
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/azure-to-azure-support-matrix (Azure link, explore each matrix)

Design for high availability

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/manage-availability
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/platform/autoscale-get-started
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/guide/design-principles/redundancy
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/vpn-gateway/vpn-gateway-highlyavailable

Implement workloads and security

Configure serverless computing

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-compare-logic-apps-ms-flow-webjobs
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/logic-apps-serverless-overview
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-how-to-use-azure-function-app-settings
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/event-grid/compare-messaging-services

Implement authentication and secure data

Implement secure data solutions

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/security/azure-security-encryption-atrest
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sql-database/sql-database-always-encrypted-azure-key-vault
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/protect-data-in-use-with-the-public-preview-of-azure-confidential-computing/
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/key-vault/about-keys-secrets-and-certificates

Develop for the cloud

Develop long-running tasks

• https://docs.microsoft.com/bs-latn-ba/azure/batch/batch-technical-overview
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/resiliency/
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/videos/introduction-to-webhooks-for-azure-alerts/
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/best-practices/background-jobs

Configure a message-based integration architecture

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-bus-relay/relay-what-is-it
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-bindings-event-grid
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/notification-hubs/configure-notification-hub-portal-pns-settings
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/event-hubs/event-hubs-create
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-bus-messaging/service-bus-messaging-overview
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/best-practices-concept

Develop for asynchronous processing

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-bus-messaging/service-bus-async-messaging
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/durable/durable-functions-concepts

Develop for autoscaling

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/platform/autoscale-best-practices
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/platform/autoscale-common-scale-patterns
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/platform/autoscale-common-metrics

Implement distributed transactions

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sql-database/sql-database-elastic-transactions-overview
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/elastic-database-transactions-general-availability/

Develop advanced cloud workloads

**This section is vast. A lot of practise and reading required**

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/computer-vision/home

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/speech-service/overview

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/bot-service/bot-builder-tutorial-basic-deploy?view=azure-bot-service-4.0&tabs=csharp

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/machine-learning/service/samples-notebooks

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/iot-fundamentals/iot-services-and-technologies