Microsoft Azure Architect 70-534 Exam Study Guide & Resources

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this a bit, for example by dropping the Pluralsight course altogether (even though I really like them, it is too out of date to be useful, other than for historical knowledge).

legacy azure cloud asm classic mode

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    • Pretty out of date now, but an ok intro if you have a bit of extra time to really reinforce things. I love Pluralsight, but this course was just too far out of date to be really useful.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!

Fry shut up and take my money

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!

practice

  • Exam Voucher
  • 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:

still going

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:

Microsoft Azure Architect 70-534 Exam Experience and Tips

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Microsoft Azure Architect 70-534 Exam Experience and Tips

The information below covers my Microsoft Azure Architect 70-534 Exam experience. Following this I will post a list of my study materials, so keep checking back for updates!

One real positive for me when taking this exam was that I realised if you have an MCSA 2012, you do not need to take another Azure exam to achieve the MCSE title. Handy, especially as I have been pretty vocal about my thoughts on re-certification for versioned exams!

Microsoft Azure Architect 70-534 Exam Experience

Almost everything I read in the run up to taking the Azure Architect 70-534 exam, suggested that it was going to be pretty tricky. Many people suggested to me it was harder than typical MS exams. For those of us who are already a bit cloudy, harder than the AWS SA Associate exam but easier than the SA Pro.

My personal experience (having done both) was that it was a little harder than the AWS SA Pro exam, mainly in prep time and breadth of information, but and the reputation was perhaps a wee bit overblown. Don’t get me wrong, it was definitely tricky, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they may have dumbed it down a little in the past few months, as my experience did not quite match that of those who came before me!

tricksy Azure 70-534

The scoring methodology was WAY better than many other exams I have taken in the past (including from Microsoft). When you have a multi-part answer (e.g. choose 3 of 5, etc), then for each correct PART you get a point. In other exams, one wrong selection means “nil points”! In the 70-534 exam, I could have got one wrong selection in every multi-part answer, and still walked away with half or more of the points, which is AWESOME! This really took the pressure off!

The exam is very similarly formatted to most other MS exams, with a couple of notable exceptions. There is a section with standard multi-part, ordering, drag/drop, multi-choice as you would expect. Once this is completed (or perhaps before?), then you do a number of case studies. Note: Once you complete each case study, you cannot go back to it, however, the timing for the case studies was cumulative, so you don’t have to worry if one takes you a bit longer than another.

The number of questions I had in my exam left me with plenty of time, vs some of my colleagues who have done it in the past as well as since, who had 50% or more questions and case studies than me (I had 39 questions spread across all sections of the exam). I can only suggest that perhaps there have been some changes of late which mean you may or may not end up with more time per question.

It’s also worth noting that one or two of the questions I received were based on ASM (i.e. classic) instead of ARM! Not enough that it would be worth learning ASM, but don’t be surprised if something does come up.

legacy azure cloud asm classic mode

Exam Tips and Advice

Here are a few tried and tested tips for most exams as well as specific to the 70-534 exam (based on my experience):

  • Flip through the case study questions as you get to each one to get an idea of the kinds of questions being asked (e.g. security, authentication, networking, etc) so that you can bear these in mind as you read the case study.
  • Don’t worry too much about the clock, they give you plenty of time, especially as there is no specific time limit on the individual case studies (I think there may have been in the past?). For around the number of questions you are likely to get, this is loads of time.
  • Personal opinion: Old questions are dead to me! What I mean by that is that I don’t mark questions for review and once I click Next I never, ever, ever, ever, [ever!] go back. Chances are if I wasn’t sure about an answer and I go with my gut, it’s more likely to be right. If I sit there paralysed with indecision, I just waste time (or worse, potentially change a correct answer to an incorrect one!). By the time I hit the end of an exam I generally have a feeling whether I have passed or not, so going back to get a couple of extra points is a waste of time and I am just desperate to see the result! 🙂
    The one and only contradiction to this rule is if I come across a later question which immediately triggers me remembering something, or even blatantly answers a previous question by asking another. These are as rare as hen’s teeth though!
  • Finally, this may sound a bit cryptic, but I can’t go into any detail obviously due to NDA. All I can say is don’t get weirded out by what seems like an odd handful of questions at the start of the 70-534 exam. I got some which didn’t make sense to me at all until the end of the series (which doesn’t allow you to go back). I can’t go into more detail than that, but hopefully this preps you more than me, so you are not as surprised!
Architect Grumpiness

I do have one complaint about this exam which I will therapeutically air publicly now; why on earth as an “Architect” exam should anyone have to memorise the thousands of possible combinations of PowerShell commands, or indeed any commands whatsoever?! Fortunately, the percentage of the exam weighted towards this is small, but it is ridiculous IMO. 532/533, yes! 534? Stupid!

There also seems to be a key focus on understanding the exact specs of exact machine types. IMO this is also dumb as with any cloud platform you simply pull up your machine list and match the right machine at the time. Wasting time memorising the spec of every A-series, D-Series, etc machine is completely pointless, but is unfortunately required reading (at least as a minimum to remember the key “odd” ones, such as which provide RDMA).

powershelgl azure 70-534 exam tips

Anyway, all in all, a reasonably fair exam across a broad and relatively deep set of information and services. Best of luck to you, and if you found this article useful please leave a comment below! 🙂

Want to Learn More?

Part 2 of this article, my 70-534 exam study guide and all of my 70-534 study materials is available here:

Microsoft Azure Architect 70-534 Exam Experience and Tips

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HOWTO Get Free Official AWS Practice Exam Voucher Codes!

I’ll keep this post really brief, but you could blow me down with a feather when I found out that it is possible to get completely free and official practice exam voucher codes from Kryterion!

The only proviso is that you need to already have passed at least one exam. It seems that one key benefit to being AWS certified is that they will provide you with a free exam voucher code for the next exam you do, which could be used towards either Associate or Professional level exams! How great is that?

For me personally, the practice exams are a brilliant (if not the best) way to prepare for the AWS exams. I always use them in the last couple of days as a way to check my progress, build confidence before the exams, and weed out / fill in any gaps in my knowledge.

Free Official AWS Practice Exams

So… how do I get these free official AWS practice exam voucher codes then?

It’s very simple! To get the free official practice exam voucher code, follow the steps below!

  1. Log into your certification account.
  2. Click Redeem My Benefits.Redeem My Benefits
  3. Select one of the lines from an existing exam and click Claim Benefit.claim
  4. It will then provide you with an exam voucher code for free!
  5. Then just go to Schedule and Manage Your Exams.
  6. Click Register for an Exam.
  7. Expand +AWS Practice Exams.AWS practice exams
  8. Add your preferred test practice to your basket.SA pro practice
  9. Enter your code into the Coupon / Voucher Code field.
  10. Click Continue.
  11. You’re done! Now just click Launch!

There we go, easy peasy! Even better, this is repeatable for as many exams as you have done, so each time you pass an exam, you will get another voucher!

Thanks very much AWS, what a great perk!

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Does Cloud Provide Infinite Storage Capacity and Retention?

I wrote last week about the challenges of long-term retention of data, and some of the architectural considerations and decisions we take in designing long-term backup or archive solutions. The follow-up question therefore is, does the cloud provide infinite storage capacity and retention?

“Cloud Integration”

One of the key themes which I have been seeing of late with many (if not all!) modern storage solutions, is some form of cloud integration. It seems to me that many vendors are trying to ensure they can tick the “cloud integration” check box in an RFP or RFI!

I recall one time at a previous organisation, our storage team did an RFP asking for an array which was capable of doing file presentation. The response in the RFP was “Yes”, but when this was dug into a bit further (after the fact), it turned out that this was only possible with an HA pair of custom vendor file gateways. In other words, not much better than building your own file server!

Anyway back to the point, this “RFP checkbox” mentality means that some vendors have a very tight cloud integration with multiple target replication options (such as DC to DC, DC to Cloud, Cloud to DC, Cloud to Cloud, etc), whilst others provide little more than lip service to cloud integration.

The best suggestion I can make in this scenario is to push your vendor for either a demo, a PoC, or a software copy of their array, if they have one. That way you can be absolutely sure that what is claimed, is indeed what you are looking for!

One Possible Solution… EMC Unity

One solution I believe falls more and more into the cloudy camp with each code release, is the new EMC Unity arrays, for which we were provided a briefing at the recent Storage Field Day 13 event.

What I found particularly interesting was that the arrays were natively capable of up to 256 redirect-on-write snapshots per volume, which sounds like a lot, but if you do one every 5 minutes then you will run out pretty fast! By utilising the EMC Cloud Tiering Appliance (a totally separate management interface today, which I really hope EMC fully integrate into the Unity pretty quick, as multiple panes of glass are no fun for anyone!), we can utilise any S3-compatible storage to provide UNLIMITED snapshots.unlimited snapshot retention

This is pretty cool if you have to provide very granular restoration points for your application data, as well as the ability to off-site at relatively low cost in a near-infinite data storage facility!

Sadly, you can’t currently run VMs directly from those snapshots in the cloud, but bearing in mind that EMC has a software only version of the Unity already available, I have a sneaking suspicion that there will be some engineering talent working on this as we speak! This would potentially provide the ability to snap and replicate your entire estate natively to S3 buckets in the cloud, then restore very quickly locally within that IaaS platform. Let’s hope I’m right!

Want to Know More?

EMC’s sessions on Unity, Scale-IO and Isilon were recorded and are now available to stream online:

Some of the other SFD13 delegates had their own thoughts on the session and EMC in general. You can find them here:

Disclaimer/Disclosure: My flights, accommodation, meals, etc, at Storage Field Day 13 were provided by Tech Field Day / Gestalt IT, but there was no expectation or request for me to write about any of the vendors products or services and I was not compensated in any way for my time at the event.

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