Introduction

This study guide is especially designed for you to easily and efficiently prepare for your certification AZ-400 Microsoft Azure. It is one of the most useful certifications to have a successful career in cloud computing. It is a certification exam offered by Microsoft that helps in upskilling and growing your knowledge in implementing DevOps practices using Microsoft Azure technologies. It critically analyzes a candidate’s ability to design and implement strategies to manage source code, build and deploy applications, testing and releasing software as well as monitoring and optimizing Azure solutions.

Main Learning Objectives 

  • Design a DevOps strategy 
  • Enforce the DevOps development processes 
  • Implement continuous integration 
  • Enforce continuous delivery 
  • Enforce dependency management 
  • Enforce application infrastructure 
  • Implement continuous feedback 

Useful Tricks to Crack the AZ-400 Certification 

  • Understand the exam format 
  • Know the skills measured which are included in various areas like designing a DevOps strategy, implementing DevOps development processes, implementing continuous integration and delivery, as well as managing application infrastructure.
  • Get your hands on practical experience as well as theoretical knowledge by using CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code and applying agile methods.
  • Focus on the documentation which is available to you for Azure DevOps, Git, etc.
  • Use practice tests so that you can check where you are lacking and need to study more on, as well as your strengths.
  • Join a study group and discuss about your difficulties and challenges with other fellow candidates who will efficiently help you with your doubts.
  • Manage your time by making study plans which will bring discipline in your study schedule, so that you can allocate appropriate time to all the aspects of the examination.
  • Read the questions carefully to make sure that you have answered everything correctly.

Analyzing the Objectives 

We have mentioned the percentage value of the importance of the module of your examination. If you focus more on the modules with a higher percentage, you are more likely to pass this exam with extra marks.

  1. Configure processes and communications (10-15%)

Configure activity traceability and flow of work

  • Understanding and planning out the structure for the flow of work and feedback cycles 
  • Check the appropriate metrics related to flow of work, like the cycle times, time to recovery as well as the lead time
  • Integrate Azure pipelines and Github Actions 
  • Implement traceability policies
  • Integrate a repository with Azure Boards

Configure collaboration and communication 

  • Communicate actionable information 
  • Document a project by using tools like wikis and process diagrams
  • Configure release documentation 
  • Automate creation of documentation from the Git history 
  • Configure notifications with the help of webhooks

      2. Design and implement source control (15-20%)

Design as well as implement a source control strategy 

  • Design and implement an authentication strategy 
  • Create an efficient strategy to manage large files
  • Create a strategy for scaling and optimization
  • Implement workflow hooks

Understand and implement branching strategies for the source code 

  • Create a branch strategy 
  • Design and implement a pull request workflow 
  • Implement branch merging restrictions 

Configure and manage repositories

  • Integrate Github repositories with Azure pipelines 
  • Configure permissions 
  • Configure tags 
  • Recover data 
  • Purge data from source control 

      3. Design and implement build and release pipelines (40-45%)

Design and implement pipeline automation

  • Integrate pipelines of external tools
  • Create an implement quality and release gates
  • Design and implement an effective testing strategy
  • Design and implement UI testing
  • Implement orchestration of tools

Create an implement a package management strategy

  • Designer package management implementation by utilizing azure artifacts and Github packages
  • Create an implement package feeds
  • Design and implement a dependency versioning strategy for code assets and packages 
  • Design and implement a versioning strategy for pipeline artifacts

Design and implement pipelines

  • Choose the deployment automation solution
  • Design and implement an agent infrastructure
  • Manage and implement pipeline triggers rules
  • Develop pipelines
  • Design and implement a strategy for job execution order
  • Develop complex pipeline scenarios
  • Configure and manage self hosted agents
  • Create reusable pipeline elements which include YAML templates, task groups, variables, and variable groups

Design and implement deployments

  • Designer deployment strategy
  • Design a pipeline to ensure reliable order of dependency deployment
  • Create a minimizing downtime during deployment
  • Design a hot fix path plan
  • Implement load balancing for deployment
  • Implement feature flags
  • Implement application deployment

Design and implement infrastructural as code (IaC)

  • Recommend a configuration management technology for application infrastructure
  • Implement the configuration management strategy
  • Define an IaC strategy
  • Design and implement desire State configuration for environments which include Azure  automation state configuration, Azure resource manager, Bicep, and Azure auto manage machine configuration
  • Create an implement Azure deployment environments

Maintain pipelines

  • Check for pipeline health
  • Optimise pipelines for cost, time, performance and reliability
  • Monitor pipeline load
  • Design and implement a retention strategy

      4. Develop a security and compliance plan (10 – 15%)

Create and implement a strategy for managing sensitive data in automation

  • Implement and monitor Service connections
  • Implement and manage personal access tokens
  • Implement and manage secrets, keys, etc.
  • Create an implement a strategy for managing private files during deployment

Automate security and compliance scanning

  • Automate analysis of source code
  • Automate security scanning
  • Automate analysis of licening, vulnerabilities, etc.

      5. Implement an instrumentation strategy (10-15%)

Configure monitoring for a DevOps environment 

  • Configure and integrate monitoring
  • Configure and integrate with monitoring tools
  • Manage access control 
  • Configure alerts for pipeline events

Analyze metrics 

  • Check distributed tracing 
  • Inspect application performance indicators 
  • Recognize and monitor metrics for their business values
  • Analyze usage metrics
  • Question logs 

Good Books to refer to, for az-400 designing and implementing devops certification 2024

  • Designing and implementing Microsoft DevOps solutions : Microsoft Azure (AZ-400) certification
  • Implementing DevOps with Microsoft Azure 

Conclusion 

With good planning and management of time while preparing for this certification m one can easily manage and get their hands on the certification AZ-400, or the AZ-400 designing and implementing devops certification 2024.