A comprehensive blog detailing the current available Azure Certifications and the pathway that leads to them.
Are you new to Azure?
If you have answered yes to the above, I do not recommend attempting any Microsoft Azure exams just yet, they are tough! Don’t pressure yourself and enjoy what Azure has to offer before you are thinking about passing a formal exam! Lets get you started:-
- Start your free trial
- What is Azure?
- Get started with Azure Portal
- Core Cloud Services – Introduction to Azure
Lets start your journey
Now that you have used and worked on Microsoft Azure for some time, you may want to achieve some certifications, whether it be a personal achievement or company requirement; lets have a look at the current Azure certifications and potential paths you may want to go down.
AZ-900:- Microsoft Azure Fundamentals
Recommended learning path / course to take prior
The first exam I recommend taking is AZ-900:- Microsoft Azure Fundamentals, the exam is designed for users who can demonstrate fundamental knowledge of Azure and how various resources may be pieced together. Skills for this exam is measured in four areas:-
- Understand Cloud Concepts
- Understand Core Azure Services
- Understand Security, Privacy, Compliance and Trust
- Understand Azure Pricing And Support
Certification obtained – Microsoft Certified Azure Fundamentals
Road to certifications….
Now that you have passed the fundamentals exam, its time to look at an associate certification path or expert. I do recommend obtaining an associate certification before partaking in expert.
These paths are defined into areas of Azure and depending on your job role, you can begin to choose the certification path from that.
As of writing this blog there are 6 associate level and 2 expert level certifications.
Associate level certifications
- Security Engineer
- Azure Administrator
- Azure AI Engineer
- Azure Data Engineer
- Azure Data Scientist
- Azure Developer
Expert level certifications
- Azure DevOps Engineer Expert
- Azure Solutions Architect Expert
I will now look at a brief detail for each certification, similar to the above for AZ-900, before I do this – lets have a look at Microsoft Learn
Microsoft Learn
Microsoft Learn is the easiest way to learn products and services through task-based, interactive learning with over 80 hours of free content, localized into 23 different languages, covering Azure, Dynamics, Power Apps, Flow, with more coming in the future! You can find more information on our Introducing Microsoft Learn blog post.
docs.microsoft.com
Learn includes:-
- 80+ hours of free learning content
- 23 different languages
- Learn by doing step-by-step tutorials
- Azure sandbox creation during each specific tutorial to allow you to towards a working solution
- Track progress, check knowledge, and validate your scripts to earn points, achievements, trophies, and levels
Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate
Certification designed for users who work primary as Azure administrators and who those who implement and maintain resources in Azure including compute, storage and network security
Skills Measured:
- Manage Azure Subscriptions and Resources
- Implement and manage storage
- Deploy and manage virtual machines (VMs)
- Configure and manage virtual networks
- Manage identities
- Evaluate and perform server migration to Azure
- Implement and manage application services
- Implement advanced virtual networking
- Secure identities
Exams Required:
Certification obtained Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate
Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate
Certification designed for Security engineers and those who implement security controls and threat protection. Will include both Azure and on hybrid environments (Azure and on-premise etc)
Skills Measured:
- Manage identity and access
- Implement platform protection
- Manage security operations
- Secure data and applications
Exams Required:
Certification obtained Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate
Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate
Certification designed for Azure AI engineers who use numerous AI services from machine learning, cognitive services to knowledge mining
Skills Measured:
- Analyze solution requirements
- Design solutions
- Integrate AI models into solutions
- Deploy and manage solutions
Exams Required:
Certification obtained Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate
Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Engineer
Certification designed for Azure data engineers who utilise the full Azure Stack from management to privacy of data
Skills Measured:
- Implement data storage solutions
- Manage and develop data processing
- Manage data security
- Monitor data solutions
- Manage and troubleshoot Azure data solutions
- Design Azure data storage solutions
- Design data processing solutions
- Design for data security and compliance
- Design for high availablity and disaster recovery
Exams Required:
Certification obtained Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Engineer
Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Scientist Associate
Certification designed for Azure Data Scientists who apply Azure’s machine learning techniques from train to deploy
Skills Measured:
- Define and prepare the development environment
- Prepare data for modelling
- Perform feature engineering
- Develop models
Exams Required:
Certification obtained: Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Scientist Associate
Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate
Certification designed for Azure Developers in relation to the build and deployment of applications and cloud solutions
Skills Measured:
- Develop for cloud storage
- Create Platform as a Service (PaaS) Solutions
- Secure Cloud Solutions
- Develop for an Azure Cloud Model
- Implement cloud integration solutions
- Develop Azure Cognitive Services, Bot, and IOT solutions
- Develop Azure Infrastructure as a Service compute solutions
- Develop Azure Platform as a Service compute solutions
- Develop for Azure Storage
- Implement Azure security
- Monitor, troubleshoot and optimize solutions
- Connect to and consume Azure services and third-party services
Exams Required:
Certification obtained: Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate
Microsoft Certified: Azure DevOps Engineer Expert
Certification designed for DevOps professionals that will combine people, process and technologies to continuously deliver valuable products
Skills Measured:
- Design a DevOps strategy
- Implement DevOps development processes
- Implement continuous integration
- Implement continuous delivery
- Implement dependency management
- Implement application infrastructure
- Implement continuous feedback
Exams Required:
Prerequisite:
Requirement of either:-
Certification obtained: Microsoft Certified: Azure DevOps Engineer Expert
Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
Certification designed for Azure Solution Architects
Skills Measured:
- Deploy and configure infrastructure
- Implement workloads and security
- Create and deploy apps
- Implement authentication and secure data
- Develop for the cloud and for Azure Storage
- Determine workload requirements
- Design for identity and security
- Design a data platform solution
- Design a business continuity strategy
- Design for deployment, migration and integration
- Design an infrastructure strategy
Exams Required:
A comprehensive blog into the current Azure Certifications – good luck in your journey!
Thomas Thornton - Microsoft Azure MVP - GitHub Star - HashiCorp Ambassador 