At the September 2018 event, that new exams of the AZ-*** series appeared, and the 70-53 * series went into oblivion.
The description has already been and in my . But a lot has changed since then, and this article includes changes from December 2018, March 2019, which are also not taken into account in those articles.
In addition, there appeared , which also did not fall into earlier articles.
In this , there will be a list of resources to prepare for the Azure Dev/Infra/Architecture exam.
For those who are not interested in the reasons for the changes, skip this section.I'll try to list the key points:
- Didn't have an Azure core exam (this is especially noticeable for non-technical roles). Previously, you immediately had to pass a rather difficult infrastructure/development/architecture exam.
- Now imagine that you have been working in Sales for 5 years already, you donāt write code, you donāt raise servers. To get any valid certification, you have to go much deeper than you need in your role, and spend a lot more time, which is not rational. (Now I do not take into account certificates that are issued at one-day or even shorter seminars from Microsoft, because this is not about knowledge, but about the fact of attending a seminar)
- You canāt update the exam for 3-4 years and pretend that those who passed in 2015 and those who passed in 2018 have the same knowledge of a rapidly changing platform.
- There was an attempt to make exam 70-535 to replace 70-534 in architecture, but it was not enough.
- You can't cram all the questions into one exam. in infrastructure, in another - all in development, and in the third - all in architecture. Azure has 100+ services. Obviously, the exams had to be divided.
- Although, Microsoft left this point by March 2019. In December 2018, the az-200 / az-201 were collapsed into one az-203. Then . Only the architecture exam remained in 2 parts, and so far they do not seem to be planning to collapse it.
- Business (as well as developers, admins and architects) does not change as fast as trends change (and with them, Azure services, and the desires of Microsoft). Microsoft can add services at least every day to follow new trends (Blockchain / IoT / Cognitive Services and AI, Quantum computing, etc.), but you do not use them in your projects and do not plan to use them, because these services are not needed in the project or are needed, but in another team. As a result - the relevance of the certificate began to fall with each new question on new topics. And this is true not only for traditional companies with a rather slow introduction of innovations, but also for super-innovative startups, which also do not need everything.
- There were, of course, words about what Microsoft wanted to do. certificates that would correspond to real roles (positions for which hr are looking for people). But initially 2 + 2 + 2 + 1 certificates for Azure were declared, which probably looked like types of Azure specialists, but after the collapse, when 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 remained, this argument became not very clear.
The explanations were logical, but the community still has reason to be outraged.
The opinion of the community about the problems, if desired, you can also skipHere are the ones I saw:
- Between 70-535 (replaced 70-534 at the end of 2017) and new architecture exams (az-30*) less than a year has passed. Probably, with the replacement of 70-534 (for 70-535) it was no longer possible to pull, because. he lagged behind reality by 2 years, but the problems were the same for all 3 exams, and only one was replaced.
- Somebody already started preparing for 70-53* exams, and they were ārejoicedā that the exams were outdated, they had to rebuild their preparation and take other exams. (In theory, the exams are similar, but the passing process is different due to the presence of practical laboratory work with a real Azure portal right during the exam, while there were no official courses at first)
- Transition exams - good, but transitional exams Paid (az-*02). It turns out that someone could have handed over 70-532 and spent 165$ (in the US, in Russia $80), and a month later find out that you need to prepare more money.
Until this moment, there was nothing out of the ordinary, because. this has happened before. But there were also unique reasons for resentment.
- Even beta versions exams (az-20*,az-30*) Paid (They say beta exams used to be free, and people were willing to take the risk of waiting a few months to find out if they passed or not, at the same time helping to make the exam better).
- There were voices on the topic: "A at once Š ŃŠ ŃŠ ŃŠ Ā»Ryo do it right? There were no such problems in AWS.ā I have nothing to say to this.
Probably, if both transitional exams and beta were free (for those who had already passed), then no one would be particularly indignant.
But in March 2019, Microsoft finished off the community with a message that. From this, almost everyone starts to burn.
What has fundamentally changed?
- The complete replacement of existing exams with new ones is certainly a significant change, but I was not impressed.
- For architectures, there are 2 exams instead of one - this doesnāt change much at all, because. to obtain an architect certificate, you still need to pass both. There are just more exams.
- The Azure DevOps exam (ex VSTS, ex VSO) has appeared.
- The biggest innovation was adding a practical part where they give you access to the real Azure portal, give you a real subscription, an account from which to work and several tasks to complete. It's just super because. examinations began to test the practical skills of a person.
- From personal experience of passing, if you have experience with Azure, then the laboratory part makes the delivery easier, not harder. You may not remember right away the correct answer to the question, but in the practical part, by looking at setting up the environment in Azure, you will find it.
Azure for dummies, or AZ-900
was announced much later than the rest, but I believe that this is the first thing to do. AZ-900 contains all the basic questions about Azure without being tied to technical roles (developer/architect/itpro). Examples: what is CAPEX / OPEX, public / private / hybrid cloud, how billing works, who owns the data, in 2 words you need to be able to explain a couple of dozen basic services, what is the difference between public data centers and Azure data centers in Germany / China / US GOV etc. And at the exit, you can even get a basic certificate.
Finally, an exam has appeared for people who are still too early to take something serious or do not need it at all, but at the same time they need a certificate of sanity that they are familiar with the topic. In my humble opinion, this exam must be taken by all managers and salespeople who are involved in projects related to Azure. It's a way to make sure people understand what they're doing. Technical roles are also not a sin to pass such a at the very beginning of their journey to certifications, because the exam covers questions on several dozen basic services (what is it and why), and at the same time gives general overviews of the platform, which are usually overlooked.
Already after you have mastered the exam, you can think whether to continue to āgive upā or not, because. Each exam requires a lot of effort to prepare.
Infrastructure (itpro/or trendy devops)
Initially, there were 2 exams (az-100 / az-101), but in March 2019, a metamorphosis occurred with the exams similar to the development exam, when .
The community did not like it very much (read the comments in the announcement in English)because az-100 / az-101 were created (and were in the release state) in September 2018 and already in March 2019, they announced that they would become obsolete from May 2019. And people have wasted time and money.
The best comment was āWho's managing that stuff? The same guy from Windows Phone department? Ā©
It is clear that the certificate, unlike the exam, is not outdated and that those who passed the az-101 were promised a voucher for change. But the situation with the withdrawal of the exam 7 months after the release is not pleasant.
Since the time of 70-533, (after the fold of az-100/az-101 to az-103) globally, little has changed, although there was a reason for the emergence of a new exam. 70-533 exam was already 3-4 years old, and it was necessary to do a new exam, because. knowledge in 2015 and at the end of 2018 are clearly different.
- Of took almost all the questions: about how and what you can do in Azure (create a machine, access resources, subscriptions, resource groups, work with azure active directory objects, networks, etc.). True, several topics were removed on: āAzure AD Identity Protectio and Enterprise State Roaming; configure self-service password reset; implement conditional access policies; manage multiple directories; perform an access review"
- Of took only work with "Implement Azure load balancer", "Monitor and troubleshoot virtual networking", "Integrate on premises network with Azure virtual network", "Managed role based access control (RBAC)", "Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) ā and slightly expanded the section āImplement and manage hybrid identitiesā
Development
Initially, in September 2018, 2 exams were announced: and exam in . However, on December 29 (2 days before the exams from Beta), Microsoft made a New Year's gift, namely: all 3 exams AZ-200/AZ-201/AZ-202 were out of state beta transferred to the state retired. But the exam was published a new exam in which the wishes of the community were ātaken into accountā (an article in ).
The community was not happy with this move.You can read the full version right in the comments below. .
For the few who took the exam between September and December, it was a hard blow. Eventually:
- For those who passed the AZ-200, the results were counted and some were enough for a certificate. They say that those who passed only AZ-201 did not have enough points for the certificate.
- AZ-202, after dissatisfied comments under the announcement, was also counted in a cunning way with 70-532 exams together. Here Microsoft did not deceive us and some people received the Associate Developer certificate.
The AZ-203 exam asks about Web Apps, SQL Database, Functions, AKS, CosmosDB, Logic apps, Grid Events, API management etc. I believe this is the right set of services to reflect the current state of Azure.
What did Az-203 lose relative to az-200/az-201Itās a pity that questions on Cognitive Services, Bots and IoT were removed regarding AZ-201, but there was probably too much content for one exam and they decided to sacrifice these topics as the least common, albeit extremely fashionable.
The AZ-203 retained 3 of the 8 issues I noted for the AZ-200/AZ-201
- Why did Batch Services make it into the exam? Is it really impossible to live without a number crusher? (WebJobs/Functions will suffice if you don't need to do Compute Intensive operations).
- Why do we need Mobile Apps from Microsoft in 2019 I also don't understand. Microsoft lost the fight for its mobile platform, and when you don't have your own mobile platform, then services to support it are not in demand. But they are included in the core exam.
- I really like the instructions for setting up Notification Hub for Android, which sounds like this: ābefore creating the Notification Hub for Android, create a Firebase (which can send notifications to Android/IOS free)Ā».
- - this is a question about Asp.Net Core and stands out from the general series. in the same Node, this is implemented differently, but you need to know the code (Microsoft has been trying to make its services cross-platform in recent years) and is not directly related to Azure.
What is now is much better / fresher than what was in the 70-532 exam from 2015 to 2018 (And if it were not for the set-up of those who handed over the AZ-200/201/202, then everything would have been very good.)
Architecture
There are 2 such exams, for passing both the certificate of Solution Architect is issued. In my opinion, renting one without the other is a rather strange undertaking, because. This 2 points of view on the same thing.
- In case of we go from specific services (azure active directory, azure storage, virtual machines)
- And in the case of we go from the key logical blocks (authorization, storage, compute).
I would not say that there is a one-to-one mirror correspondence between them. For example, in 301, the word compute in the corresponding section can mean both azure batch, and aks, and vmss. At the same time, in 300 there will be a clear division into 3 different parts (parallel processing, containers, vms).
I donāt see the point in translating here a list of services that you need to know. you need to know not only the services, but also how they are interconnected and when to use what. And also because the list is very long, and the full version is not even on the pages with the description of the exams. The architect must know the subject, broadly (and the developer deeply).
Once again, I recommend take both exams and prepare for them in parallel.
DevOps on Azure on Azure Services
focused on a very wide range of issues. The exam requires, on the one hand, to understand processes and methodologies (working with work items, planning, etc.), and on the other hand, to know how to manage project dependencies, how to build code, publish, how to use external utilities for code analysis, how to receive feedback from the user through tools, etc.
Personal opinionPersonally, I would make the exam similar to the AZ-30* (split into 2 parts: processes & practice / craft part of the devops work) because. it's like the difference between a scrum master and a devops engineer. But the authors know better.
To get a Certificate , you must first obtain a certificate or by either by .
- If you want certification specifically for Azure / Cloud, then everything is fine for you. I would recommend that you first pass AZ-203, because. in it you will get an overview of some Azure services, and already in AZ-400 a whole section about Azure Kubernetes Services, Azure Container Registry, ARM, Azure CLI in the context of publishing.
- Well, if you want togive an exam, but don't publish to Azure, then the anyway, you will have to familiarize yourself with Azure. You still have no choice, because. December 31, 2018 Microsoft and now either Cloud version or nothing.
Data Platform exams
All of the above exams were only the first step in the changes.
- In December there was an announcement in that all exams in which there is a dense work with data will be Retired in six months, on June 30, 2019.
- And at the very end of January 2019 .
These exams were created in the era "Cloud First, Mobile First", but this era ended in the fall of 2017. Now a new time has come at Microsoft: Ā«Ā«.
Microsoft is very much reconsidering its attitude to storing and processing data and all kinds of Artificial Intelligent based services, and exams follow this.
- For example, since 2016 (maybe even since 2017) there was the role of Cloud Solution Architect - a person responsible for the growth of Azure consumption by customers. This role had 2 directions (which either appeared or merged again): App Platform and Infrastructure (we are not considering O365 now because I am not an expert in this). In 2018, began hiring DSA - Data Solution Architect. These are the same CSAs, only projects for storing / processing large amounts of data and all sorts of cognitive services, bots, machine learning are important for them.
- In addition, one of the reasons for canceling az-200 / az-201 and replacing them with az-203 was that questions on bots and cognitive services belong more to the āData & AIā domain, and not to development, and therefore from exams for developers removed them.
As a result, we received 4 exams in the beta stage (if you look at what happened with az-10*/az-20*, I would not rush to take it).
I canāt call myself a great specialist in data analysis and even more so artificial intelligence, but my understanding of the difference in exams is as follows:
- DP-100 Data Science Solutions - Description of this exam, does not include questions about Azure. It is rather a general, methodological examination.
- DP-200/DP-201 is about storing and processing data in Azure (Azure Data Solution). This includes both general questions and those specific to SQL Azure, CosmosDB, SQL DWH, etc.
- AI-100 - everything is more or less clear here, because. AI is not about storage or a large volume, but about analysis methods that are based on machine learning (not just - I took a bunch of sources, cleaned, aggregated, merged into DWH)
But this is just my understanding, as a person who is interested, but not deeply in the subject.
Source: habr.com
