Roadmap towards Microsoft Azure…

Sometime ago, about 1 and a half month I decided to focus in Microsoft Azure Technology and acquire expertise on it…

This is a bit what I have decided to do and how I am doing it.

To say, that I do not like taking chances and usually I overprepare… which is convenient given how TRICKY some of this exams are (at least to me..).

This is the current Exam & Certification roadmap:

Azure_Certifications_04_2019

I disagree a bit on the Architecture Path, the green one on the Picture, towards getting the “Azure Solutions Architect”. Even you should be able to “paint boxes and connect them”, to me a Software Architect is somebody that also knows very well what is inside of These boxes and how they do work.

So for me the Roadmap towards the Azure Solutions Architect has the AZ-203 before the AZ-300.

So, in short, my initial roadmap is:

Get AZ-900 (Update: got it!).
Get AZ-203.
Get AZ-300.
Get AZ-301.

I’d like to have some solid foundations so I focus on a good understanding of the basis so to me, AZ-900 is a must have. There are simply too many “Things” (services, types of services, concepts…) laying around… So having a clear ground basis is a must.

For the AZ-900 I have done:

Microsoft Learn : https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/azure-fundamentals/
Udemy courses:
- https://www.udemy.com/crash-course-to-pass-the-microsoft-azure-fundamentals-az900/
- ~~https://www.udemy.com/az900-azure/~~ Update: Did not like this course, had some misleading points and seems not to follow the usual Quality of the author (sorry). One of the points in SaaS section is to put SQL as an example… when it is PaaS. So do not invest 3h or more on it.
And some exam preparation to get the “hands on” feeling.

~~(now I am pending to have some time hopefully this week to prepare and execute the exam which you can do online through here:~~

Update: The exam is done and passed, will post shortly some of my comments and thoughts on it..

For the AZ-203 I am halfway preparing and have done/plan to do the following:

A very nice course from Scott Duffy at Udemy here: https://www.udemy.com/70532-azure/ (done, as well as some of the recommended HOLs)
The Pluralsight Paths
- “Microsoft Azure for Developers” , 34h. (in Progress)
- To highlight that their paths have a “role IQ”, an in portal exam system that helps to measure your Level and where to focus on. This is what I got when started, just after Scott Duffy training and some “hands on”
- “Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure (AZ-203)“. And yes, this totals to 59hours but probably it will be really worth watching. (not started yet)
The official HOL (Hands On Lab) for AZ-203 from Microsoft itself! (recommended by Scott Duffy)
Support from some of the Microsoft Learn resources, but if you filter by azure developer there are way too many… I found that this link helped me greatly to focus. here you can see the following picture-recommendation for learning roadmap:
Basically, in Microsoft Learn all the following learning paths. But I plan to do them just as a support if I consider I am not confident on the topic.
I am setting up some projects of my own to put some things together so I can glue them in a way that makes sense, but this has some work implications and thus, cannot share in full detail. One of them is implementing a full REST API with Azure Functions and expose it through Azure API Management, to finally consume it from an Azure App (a web app). Is still have decided if the data will be stored in a Cosmos DB or SQL Azure database… but for sure it will have AD authentication.
And, of course, some exam preparation to get hands on feeling and get to know some of the tricks and traps you might face 😉
If you have any tip or recommendation, just shoot in the comments or contact me directly, would be greatly appreciated. I know that some people just take the Scott course, some exam practice and get it but I want some more hands on experience on me before moving forward.