Azure Fundamentals exam is one of the newest exams offered by Microsoft. It verifies skills in a few key areas of Microsoft’s public cloud. On first sight, the scope of exam is huge, however, with some freely available materials, you can prepare for the exam in less than a week! I did so and I want to share with you today some tips!
My main motivation to pass the exam was a post on Facebook, leading to a great blog, VladTalksTech. When I read about free Azure training combined with Exam voucher for AZ-900, I immediately signed up. The training was 7 hours webinar regarding Azure basics. Even I was certified as MCSE for Azure in the past, it was a great refresher of knowledge and allowed me to get familiar with the exam requirements. Coronavirus outbreak made people staying at home and giving way more time for self-studying, so I decided to master the requirements and pass the AZ-900 as soon as physically possible. I scheduled my exam in 9 days and started my preparation. Let me briefly explain, which materials I used to prepare myself!
3 free methods to prepare to Azure Fundamentals
1. Azure Fundamentals path @ Microsoft Learn (Free)
I started by reading Skills outline for the exam, located on the AZ-900 Exam page. After I familiarized myself with the measured skills and main requirements, I started a free 12-modules training on Microsoft Learn website. You can click on a picture below and you will be guided straight into the course! 🙂
After completing an entire course and answered correctly to all test questions provided on the learning path I wanted to verify if my knowledge is enough to pass the test. So I started looking around the Internet to find some tests and found myself a place where I could run some quizzes.
2. WhizLabs (Free/$15.95)
WhizLabs has created a great platform, where you can do some free and paid training regarding Cloud technologies. I decided to access the free course first to check the quality of the website. The questions provided on the page checks wide range of Azure knowledge. I can strongly recommend a free test first and then decide if you need all 310 questions test to make sure you mastered the Azure Fundamentals! There is also Online Course on the topic, so you can learn from there as well!
3. LinuxAcademy (7-days free trial)
Another platform I used to prepare myself for the AZ-900 exam was to take a test provided on LinuxAcademy. However the academy is not free, I was able to sign-up for 7-days trial to did a test and confirm my knowledge is enough to pass the exam! And you know what? I passed all the tests provided by both sites, which gave me confidence that I will pass real exam!
How does the AZ-900 exam look like?
Well, I decided to go with Online Proctored exam, as the nearest exam centre is over 100 km from me, and I was passing my exam at 8:00 PM. Exams are provided via Pearson VUE and conducted using their software. The recommendation is to begin an exam about 15 minutes before the time scheduled due to fact, that you need to scan your ID and area around you before the exam will start. After you download the exam software and enter exam code, the entire procedure is simply explained and you just need to follow steps.
My exam contained of 36 questions, which was a combined set of multiple choice answers, some drag and drop questions or choosing answers from the dropdown list. I can tell that difficulty of questions was similar to these provided on Linux Academy and WhizLabs.
I can tell that the exam went smoothly, but at some point I saw just a white screen and popup message, that Skype is not allowed during the exam and it was logged as a security violation. I had to kill a process and re-start the exam – If I can do one advice for passing the exam on your own computer – DISABLE WINDOWS UPDATE before starting the exam – it will ensure yours exam will not be suspended and you peacefully pass it.
After completing and reviewing all the questions I was greeted with a beautiful screen – passed! And after about an hour I was able to download from the MCP portal my shiny certificate:
What are your experiences with Microsoft Exams? Do you have any other good sources for learning and advises for people who wants to pass Azure examination? Please let me know in the comments!
