Following on from my previous Microsoft Azure Architect 70-534 exam experience and tips post, the following article describes the study materials I used towards the exam.
Having been warned that the exam was a bit tricky, I made sure to do more studying for this than most exams, probably spending fast approaching 100 hours to prepare. Based on my actual experience I believe I could have reduced this a bit, for example by dropping the Pluralsight course altogether (even though I really like them, it is too out of date to be useful, other than for historical knowledge).
Microsoft Azure 70-534 Study Materials
Whilst studying for the exam, I used the following study materials:
Training Courses
- Pluralsight – 70-534 by Orin Thomas
- Pretty out of date now, but an ok intro if you have a bit of extra time to really reinforce things. I love Pluralsight, but this course was just too far out of date to be really useful.
- Linux Academy – 70-534 Prep Course
- Excellent course, and pretty well presented by Doug Vanderweide. This does cover most of the topics at a broad level, with some deep dives. It is not enough to pass the exam on its own, however.
- The BEST thing about this system (IMHO) is the Flash Cards. I did all of the decks provided by Linux Academy, and some bits of the other ones.
- Doug, and the “Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions Exam 70-534 Prep” deck from “Dominic”. The great thing with these is that you can just pick them up and do them for 5-10 minutes when you have some spare. They are also really good for helping you remember the ridiculous and pointless minutia which you need to know (such as the precise specs of individual names instances, e.g. A8 vs A10).
- The quiz at the end of each section was also pretty useful.
- I believe they have also just introduced some hands on labs, which will also help to solidify things, as well as help you remember the specific order in which certain implementation steps need to occur.
- Udemy 70-534 prep course from Scott Duffy
- I only found this one with a couple of weeks to go until my exam, so only had time to watch the videos described as updated in 2016/2017. This was useful however as it covered several areas not included in the Pluralsight / Linux Academy courses.
- The best thing about Scott’s course (which was glaringly missing from Linux Academy and Pluralsight) was that it asked you to do labs with your Azure test account, then showed you how to do them afterward.
- Scott has also released some practice tests, which I bought (on offer for £10) but then didn’t have time to go through!
Preparation
- 70-534 Exam Blueprint
- This is always the go-to document for almost any current industry certification, and should be used as your primary guide for resources and areas to study. In the case of the AWS Exam Blueprint, they actually direct you to specific white papers, docs or FAQs to review as well as the content areas to study.
- Labs
- Normally I would lab like crazy to learn a new technology, as I genuinely believe you learn something best when you get your hands on it. I only managed to get a few labs done in Azure, purely down to lack of time. To be honest I really felt it when it came to exam time, and there were a couple of questions where I really wished I had created at least one or two ARM templates and configured a few bits via PowerShell, just to help memorise syntax.
- You can get a free $25 of credit per month by signing up for the Microsoft Cloud Essentials scheme (https://www.microsoft.com/cloudessentials), which is more than enough to spin up a few services.
- Concentrate on learning the ORDER in which you do things, as this is a learning outcome for MS.
- Reading other people’s exam tips (just google it!)
- Practice Exams
- I had purchased an exam voucher which gave me the exam, a free retake and a free MeasureUp practice test, for less than the full price of the normal exam!
The MeasureUp practice test was very good prep as it had LOADs of questions (179 IIRC), and covered a broadly similar set of topics. There were one or two questions in there which seemed to be out of date, but when I got to my actual exam, I had a couple of legacy questions, so this made sense to me after the fact! What I did was do an untimed exam with the setting that tells you the answer after you hit next every time. That way as soon as I got a question wrong, I then went and read up more on the specific topic.
This was absolutely invaluable in my prep as I think I got just under 70% in the MeasureUp, but passed comfortably in the actual exam (largely due to MeasureUp prompting me to “fill in the blanks” to my knowledge). This is an excellent resource, and highly recommended!
- I had purchased an exam voucher which gave me the exam, a free retake and a free MeasureUp practice test, for less than the full price of the normal exam!
- Exam Voucher
- As above, make sure you check out the Second chance and Measure Up for free offer here:
- http://www.mindhub.com/microsoft-cloud-exam-bundles-p/mcp-azure-skills-1_p.htm?1=1&CartID=0
- One thing to note is that it is time limited. I ordered my exam voucher on 16th Feb and the last available day for me to book my exam (after I moved it back a couple of times) was 16th May.
- FAQs and Docs (over 75 articles – see below)
- I skim read these looking for key points. I copied these into a giant OneNote file for future reference and rationalisation!
- If you want to be sure to absolutely nail the exam, read the FAQs. If the exam has indeed changed and become slightly easier (as I suspect it may have), then you may be able to get away without this.
- The extremely long list below is what I read to augment my own knowledge; do not feel you have to read any or all of them, this is entirely at your own discretion!
List of FAQs
The following is a mahoosive list of all the FAQs I read, as per the above:
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/aws-professional/services
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-subscription-service-limits
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/expressroute/expressroute-faqs
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/linux/faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/virtual-machines/windows/sizes-general
- https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/licensing-faq/
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/virtual-networks-faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/virtual-networks-nsg
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sql-database/sql-database-faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/sql/virtual-machines-windows-sql-server-iaas-faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/redis-cache/cache-faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/storage-faq-for-disks
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/storage-standard-storage
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/storage-managed-disks-overview
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/backup-azure-backup-faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/site-recovery-faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/site-recovery-vmm-to-azure
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/site-recovery-hyper-v-site-to-azure
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/load-balancer/load-balancer-overview
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/application-gateway/application-gateway-faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/application-gateway/application-gateway-introduction
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/traffic-manager/traffic-manager-faqs
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/vpn-gateway/vpn-gateway-vpn-faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/best-practices/cdn
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cdn/cdn-map-content-to-custom-domain
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/cdn/cdn-create-new-endpoint
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-web/choose-web-site-cloud-service-vm
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-fabric/service-fabric-overview
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-web/app-service-best-practices
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-web/app-service-linux-faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-web/app-service-continuous-deployment
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-web/app-service-app-service-environment-intro
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/app-service-authentication-overview
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-web/web-sites-authentication-authorization
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/logic-apps-what-are-logic-apps
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-api/app-service-api-apps-why-best-platform
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-web/web-sites-create-web-jobs
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-mobile/app-service-mobile-value-prop
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-mobile/app-service-mobile-ios-get-started
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-mobile/app-service-mobile-offline-data-sync
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/notification-hubs/notification-hubs-push-notification-faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/notification-hubs/notification-hubs-push-notification-overview
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-mobile/app-service-mobile-auth
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-overview
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/api-management/api-management-faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/active-directory-faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/active-directory-editions
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/connect/active-directory-aadconnect-user-signin
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/active-directory-passwords-faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/active-directory-passwords-writeback
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory-domain-services/active-directory-ds-overview
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory-domain-services/active-directory-ds-faqs
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/multi-factor-authentication/multi-factor-authentication-faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/media-services/media-services-overview
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/media-services/media-services-frequently-asked-questions
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/machine-learning/machine-learning-what-is-machine-learning
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/stream-analytics/stream-analytics-introduction
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-lake-analytics/data-lake-analytics-overview
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-lake-store/data-lake-store-overview
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/iot-hub/iot-hub-what-is-iot-hub
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-bus-messaging/service-bus-messaging-overview
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-bus-messaging/service-bus-faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-bus-messaging/service-bus-performance-improvements
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-bus-relay/relay-what-is-it
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-bus-relay/relay-faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/key-vault/key-vault-whatis
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/application-insights/app-insights-overview
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/application-insights/app-insights-troubleshoot-faq
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search/search-what-is-azure-search
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search/search-capacity-planning
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/automation/automation-intro
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/batch/batch-technical-overview
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/batch/batch-api-basics
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/security-center/security-center-planning-and-operations-guide
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-bus-messaging/service-bus-azure-and-service-bus-queues-compared-contrasted
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/best-practices-availability-paired-regions
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/documentdb/documentdb-distribute-data-globally
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-subscription-service-limitshttps://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/networking-to-and-within-the-azure-cloud-part-2/
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/best-practices/cdn
Anyway, that’s probably about enough reading material for now! Best of luck to you, and if you found this article useful or have any other recommended resources (eval please, no brain dumps!), please leave a comment below! 🙂
Want to Learn More?
You can find more information on this exam in my exam experience and advice article, here: