I took the Azure Fundamentals exam (AZ-900) this morning and passed with flying colors. This test is the first foundational cert upon which all other Azure certs are built, so it’s a great (and necessary) place to start! Not overly expensive either, just $99. Also, this one can be done remotely – take that, Coronavirus!
How did I pass? Below are what I consider to be my top 3 tips for the Azure Fundamentals test:
1) Hands-on Experience. I had a bit of a leg-up – I’ve been working in Azure for about 2 years, so I’m already familiar with most of the basic concepts. Even if you haven’t had that chance so far, you can still have the luxury of getting hands-on experimental access with Azure – and it’s free!
Azure offers a few great free trials that unlock everything you need to be familiar with for the Fundamentals exam. Just go here and open an Azure account using the e-mail of your choice – or if you want to make a new one on the spot specifically for Azure, you can make a free Outlook.com account while setting up your free trial.
If you’re not sure where the begin after setting it up, I recommend starting off by getting the free license trials first, creating a few Azure AD users, and start exploring the basic features of Azure AD. After your’ve spent about a week on that, move to the infrastructure pieces – VMs, virtual networking, etc. Just spin up a few resources (for free, under the trial account credits) and experiment with options.
2) Study Material. All I needed to use were some practice tests available on Udemy.com from trainer group Exam Pass. I drilled myself on the five tests in the linked module roughly 3 times apiece and felt totally prepared on test day. Any troublesome concepts you repeatedly get wrong? Make yourself some flash cards – I used this free app to brush up on troublesome terms and concepts.
3) Learn Your Specific Terms. A big part of the test is knowing precisely what a given service or Azure tool does and how to verbalize it (or match it to a definition). So tying in to the flashcards recommendation above, don’t be afraid to make flash cards for every key term you encounter in the practice tests. Also – know the subscription and support plan types. The Fundamentals exam isn’t very technical but it definitely tests your knowledge of basic Azure services/concepts and what they do.
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