Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals certification testifies your foundational knowledge of cloud services as well as how to provide them with Microsoft Azure. This designation is intended for the newcomers in this sphere who want to test the waters of cloud-based solutions and services. It proves that you are knowledgeable of cloud concepts, Azure workloads, services, security, and privacy in Azure, along with Azure support and pricing. Before enrolling in the process of gaining this accreditation, candidates should know the general networking, compute, storage, app support and development concepts.
The exam one has to pass is known as Microsoft Azure Fundamentals or simply AZ-900. It includes 40-60 questions of various types and lasts 45 minutes. Before taking this test, you are to pay $99 of exam fee. Exam AZ-900 assesses one’s skill to describe the following concepts: cloud concepts, primary Azure services, fundamental solutions and management tools on Azure, general security and network security features, privacy, governance. Identity, and compliance features. And Azure core management and Service Level Agreements.
The exam questions refer to the 6 domains included in the evaluation. The first one checks your ability to describe cloud concepts. It means that you should be knowledgeable of the benefits of HA, Scalability, Agility, Elasticity, and Disaster Recovery, be able to differ such cloud services as IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS and define a use case-based service type. In addition, you should know different types of cloud computing, such as cloud, Public, Private, and Hybrid, and be able to compare and contrast them.
The second domain is dedicated to core Azure services and verifies your knowledge of the core Azure architectural components, such as Availability Zones, Azure Resource Manager, Management Groups, Subscriptions, Resource Groups, Subscriptions, and Regions and Region Pairs. Thus, you should be able to describe their benefits and how to use them. Moreover, in this section, you should describe core resources available in Azure, such as follows: Azure App Services, Azure Virtual Desktop, Disk Storage, VPN Gateway, Azure Database for MySQL, to mention a few.
The third domain spins around the description of core solutions and management tools on Azure. It implies your ability to describe core solutions available in Azure, such as IoT, Azure Sphere, Azure Databricks, Azure Machine Learning, Logic Apps, GitHub, Azure DevTest Labs. And you also should be capable to describe Azure management tools, which include Azure PowerShell, Azure Mobile App, Azure Advisor, ARM templates, Azure Monitor, Azure Service Health.
The fourth domain deals with general security and network security features. Here your knowledge of how Azure security and Azure network security should function will be checked. So, you should be able to describe basic features of Azure Security Center, Key Vault, Azure Sentinel, and Azure Dedicated Hosts. Besides, you should demonstrate your knowledge of defense concepts, Azure Firewall, Azure DDoS protection, and NSG.
The fifth domain is focused on description of identity, privacy, governance, and compliance. It proves your ability to describe the core Azure identity services, which include Azure Active Directory, Conditional Access, Multi-Factor Authentication, and Single Sign-On (SSO). Regarding Azure governance features, you should be able to describe how to use Azure Blueprints, Azure Policy, Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure, and Role-Based Access Control. As for privacy and compliance resources, you should be able to describe the purpose of their usage.
The sixth domain is about Azure cost management and Service Level Agreements. You should be knowledgeable of the methods used for planning and managing costs. These include factors that affect costs (resource locations, services, ingress & egress traffic), reduce costs (spot pricing, hybrid use benefit), Pricing calculator, TCO calculator and Azure Cost Management.
It’s a pleasant fact to mention, that with the Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals certification you can earn annually about $97,554 per year, as is indicated on the Ziprecruiter website. Still, your salary can increase up to 178,500 based on the gained experience.