How To Pass ANY Azure Certification in 2024 | Complete Guide

what's up everybody it's Travis here from travis. media so it's currently October 2023 and there's 3 months left in the year then we're in 2024 and 2024 may be a great time for you to plan to get your first or your next Cloud certification perhaps you're looking to level up your position or your salary or maybe you're looking to add your first certification to your brand new resume as you work to break into the industry as a new developer whatever the case Cloud knowledge in my opinion is a required skill set of every developer nowadays not necessarily a sort of appliation but knowledge in knowing how to navigate the cloud is a requirement go to LinkedIn look up developer job applications they almost all require some knowledge of the cloud and having an actual certification is a way to demonstrate that you have this knowledge prior to anyone needing to see proof up front so I took the a 104 A couple of years ago I did a video on this topic already but some things have changed over the years and I decided to do a brand new video fully updated where I'm going to answer what courses do I need to take how should I do practice exams how do I Pace myself in the exam and it's open book did you know that a couple of months ago they made the Azure role-based certifications open book so I'm going to talk about how to use this to your advantage and instead of it being an a 104 video I think these principles in courses in methodologies can be applied to any Azure certification so let's get started so some stats on Azure um AWS has the largest market share of cloud infrastructure services at 33% in q1 2022 Microsoft Azure on the other hand in that same time period had a market share of 23% so not quite as popular and then there's Google at like 10% and I've had a lot of comments on this channel saying skip Google altogether I've actually heard great things about it but I don't use it much I don't have a lot of experience and I've seen a lot of negative comments I like Azure and I like AWS they're both great but in Q4 of 2022 Microsoft Azure reached a market share of 23% a 2% increase in the last four quarters so Azure is alive and healthy it's used heavily in the gov space there's lots of jobs and any company that uses Microsoft products already will naturally want to integrate into a Microsoft cloud that greatly extends their ecosystem with Services they already use like Windows and active directory net Visual Studio Etc they've led the way in online Cloud security platform as a service hybrid Cloud architecture and things like that so it's a solid option and maybe one you want to pursue in 2024 so what certifications are offered what certification should you take well it depends on one where you're adding your Cloud knowledge and two what field you're in so I'm going to pull up this chart that I found on the whizlabs website that kind of gives you a rundown on all the role based certifications so if you're brand new to the cloud you've never done anything in it you may want to consider one of the foundational certifications like you have this a900 Microsoft Azure fundamentals it's basically an intro to the cloud using Azure Services then there's the data equivalent dp900 Microsoft Azure data fundamentals and then the AI 900 which is the AI fundamentals so if you have no clue about the cloud at all you may want to go this route but when I took my certification I wanted a solid starting point I had used the cloud sum I'd used AWS sum and Azure sum and I wanted my first real industry level certification and that is found in the a104 which is the Microsoft Azure administrator if you don't know what certification you want to take in Azure and you just want a well-rounded overview of azure in all of its products and to be able to administrate the Azure cloud in a professional setting then this is the way to go the a 104 then if you're a developer you might want to take instead the a 204 which is the developer Azure certification so whereas the 104 is like an administrator and overarching administrator if you're a developer specifically you may want to take the 204 instead those are two entrylevel solid certifications and like I said it also depends on what field you're in in so you'll see down here there's a bunch of data Sears like the Azure data scientist data engineer data administrator AI engineer then there's networking there's the Azure network engineer and the security engineer if you're into cyber security so it depends on your skill level it also depends on what field you're in feel look at this PDF here there's a number of training Journeys like for cloud it Pros starts with the a104 hybrid Cloud AZ 104 it Pros expert level starts with the a 104 developers 204 like we mentioned and then when you get into Data you get into the DP exams the data exams I'm personally considering taking the AI 102 this year which is designing and implementing a Microsoft Azure AI solution I have the a104 CT and I want to learn more about the AI side of it so I may take this s this year I don't know next let's talk about the open book policy so this is brand new it's like 2 months old but essentially you can now use the Microsoft learn website during the exam to look stuff up so if you look at the website here at learn. microsof microsoft.com the section you'll want to use and want to be familiar with is the documentation section so if you click on documentation and then scroll down and click on Azure this is where you'll find all the information and then from here let's say you forgot some information about Azure storage you can scroll down find storage and say it has to do with Azure backup you can click there and get information here about it during the exam now just a side note this angered a lot of people there's a lot of people like hey I worked hard for my certification now these people get to do an open book they get to look up the answer they're dumbing down certifications there's just a lot of negative feedback that have come out of this of course there's positive too but in my opinion this is a great thing why because developers don't memorize all of the stuff we don't memorize all of the VM sizes in the storage parameters in all of these fine details as developers we learn the concepts we know about it we know there's differen size virtual machines we know the details how it works but in real life we go to the documentation and we look it up so this is actually more realistic than memorizing all the data and just spewing it out on the exam and in my opinion reading documentation is one of the most important skills of a developer and also you don't get extra time when I took my Azure certification I finished with like 3 minutes left that's as fast as I could do it if you're going to do something like the devop certification where there's long scenario based questions you're not going to have a lot of free time to go look things up so if I would have looked anything up when I took it I would have failed it I would have ran out of time so this isn't cheating in that regard either but you might be wondering well how is that to my advantage then if I don't have time to look stuff up why do they give me that option well let me give you two tips first while you're learning the material while you're preparing for your exam you're learning how to use Azure make sure whatever tutorial you're using you're also correlating that with the documentation if you're learning about storage you're going through like a udemy course when you're learning about that also pull it up in the documentation that way you can get familiar with where to find this information if you can't memorize the virtual machine sizes then memorize where it's at quickly in the documentation so that when the question comes you can pull it up and consult it so while you're learning correlate that learning with where it's at in the documentation that will not only help you look things up quickly if you forget something but it also shows you where it's at in real life when you get that job and they ask you to do stuff you're going to be in the documentation all day making sure you're doing things properly if you practice that while you're learning in real life you'll also use it properly and then second try not to plan to look anything up try to know all the answers because you don't get a lot of time use that as a fallback but also know where it's at hope that helps so just to point this out here on the exam you'll have this button called Microsoft learn that you can click on and it will open up Microsoft learn to the side then at that point you click on documentation you do what you need to do maybe pull it up at the beginning of the exam I don't know I didn't get to use it when I took it you can open multiple tabs you can adjust how much of the screen shows that website you can even make it full screen but you can't log in you can't go to other sites and you can't go to the Q&A if you try to you'll get access Den n this this isn't like the kubernetes exam where if you did that exam over you failed they have it blocked so if you accidentally click on it it's not the end of the world all right next up what courses do you need to take so I'm going to let you know the path that I would take the path that I did take on the a 104 in the same path that I would take for any other certification so there are lots of different resources and different paths you can take here but remember they're all going to teach you the same thing they're all going to teach you Azure so what I did on the last exam and what I would do again is my first course would would be on UD to me with this guy Scott Duffy he's the Azure expert he has all the Azure courses if you go down here Azure fill in the blank so right here here's the a 104 exam that I took there's a900 a24 a305 AI 900 he has all the courses he's good he updates regularly and it should be your first course you should work through this whole course the a104 is like 17 hours so you can knock it out in a couple of weeks this is going to give you the overview of everything you need to know this is going to be your first full study course for the exam you want to take and what he does is he goes through all of the exam requirements and make sure he covers them if you scroll down you'll see everything that's going to be on the exam and you'll not only want to watch these and watch him do things in Azure you want to do the same things in Azure as well you'll have to create an account you'll go in and get Hands-On and dirty yourself don't just watch do and he has stuff for you to do like right here Hands-On practice then you go to another section uh azure service Hands-On practice you're going to get Hands-On don't skip that but that's number one take one of his courses if you go to buy it and it's like 150 bucks don't buy it you'll see here I'm browsing this during a sale so $18.99 $12.99 $12.99 don't pay more for that don't pay this full 124 or 84 bucks if you can't find a deal go to travis. Media me you'll go to this page here and here you'll find all upcoming udemy deals so today is October 6th that's why there's a a deal 106 courses from $14.99 click the link you'll get the coupon if it's October 8th or 9th or something there's no deal but the next one will be from October 10th to October 13th I update this regularly I updated it last two days ago and any deals that I find will be on this page so if you don't see a good deal for it come to this page figure out when the next sale is use the link and get the course for under 20 bucks test number one take Scott Duffy's course in the case of a 104 take this course once you're done with that the second thing to do is to go to the Microsoft learn site and in my opinion you want to do this second the Scott Duffy course is your overview this is where you're going to get Microsoft telling you exactly how they want you to learn this now instead of trying to find this on the site I just go to Microsoft learn a104 or whatever exam you're taking and you'll find a direct path to it so here it is exam a 104 Microsoft as your administrator so it's going to tell you what you need to know it's going to give you some information here that we'll get to in a minute but the first thing you want to do when you come here and after taking that Scott Duffy course is go to the section down here that says two ways to prepare go to self- paste and take these modules or finish these modules so the first one is the prerequisites there are six modules second one is identities and governance in Azure it's eight modules then you get to storage you get to compute you get to all of that like if I click on compute it's going to have a number of modules configure virtual machines configure virtual machine availability and you'll take each one of these each one of these is going to be mini courses on the material you need to learn you'll see here I took all this when I did my a 104 I did this as my second step and they don't take long I mean 2 minutes 2 minutes 2 minutes 2 minutes and then at the end of each one you get this interactive lab simulation where you'll have an actual Azure lab hopefully you have an account anyway but you can use their lab to follow along the Hands-On material then you have a knowledge check which is a test and then some resources for further reading but you'll go through each one of these I think it's eight of them uh 1 2 3 4 five six it's six of them that's all and you'll work through that that's number two step two once you're done with this you'll move on to step three step three is your practice tests so you've learned the material in two different places now it's time to test yourself on real mock tests so my recommendation for this is whizlabs decom just go to whizlabs wh I ls.com they specialize in practice tests for many certifications and they're good and here it says practice tests1 1995 don't pay $ 19.95 pay like 11 12 bucks and you do that by finding some coupon code go to Google find a whizlabs coupon code or download this honey I don't think I'm showing this yeah download this honey Chrome extension I'll put a link to this below but here it tells me last successful coupon was 20 whatever that was used 17 hours ago and there's two available whiz 30 new this is probably 30% off so you're going to get cheaper than the 20 bucks but what you get is is let me log in real quick so you see here I had have purchased these practice tests I actually purchased a video course also because I wanted to go over some further things but if I go to my tests I'll see that I took three tests I actually took the free test also I'm not sure why that's not showing but I took test one two and three practice tests the first one I got a 72 then I got a 80 then I got a 90 so getting a 90 I felt good about it I probably did some other tests after this or some other studying as the day came closer but the great thing about taking these mock tests especially on whizlabs so if I click this report I'll show you what I'm talking about so let me find one that I got wrong so right here question three I got wrong and this is a scenario based question and I got it wrong but what happens is when you get it wrong on these tests it teaches you why that answer was wrong and why the right answer is right so if I look down here explanation I chose a the answer is B and then it goes over this whole reason why so I'm not only taking the test and like failing it or whatever but I'm actually seeing what I got wrong learning from that mistake being able to re-evaluate maybe learn about that again and then come back and take the exam again it's going to be a different exam but you should do better because you know what you got wrong on this one and you've corrected it so question four I got this wrong and it gives me an explanation so that's whizlabs decom I'll put a link to all of these below so make sure you check this out do all the practice tests I don't know why I didn't do the fourth one but they also have a but they also have a section tests and then a final test and actually a free test so you can try that out first see how you do if you do really bad you probably need to do more testing but that's step three do these practice tests until you have a good score I ended up with a 90 on this one maybe that's why I stopped I got 50 out of 55 right and then finally step four you want to do this go back to Microsoft learn go back to the page for your exam so if you're taking the a 104 let's try something different let's do the AI 102 let's say we're taking that and I can't spell so I'm taking the AI 102 I've done the Duffy course I've done the Microsoft learn modules I've done the practice tests I feel good about this I'm going to come back here I'm going to scroll down to where it says tip now it says watch ai102 exam prep videos this is going to be like five videos you should watch so this video is 18 minutes it gives you some overviews some practice questions and a review so do that next then come back here from here you can review the study guide again which will give you an overview of the concepts you need to know just to make sure you understand what all of those things mean and then you can actually demo the exam experience by visiting the exam sandbox it's going to give you a little mock sandbox like you're actually taking the exam and that's my pathway for you to be ready for any Azure exam now let me give you some extra tips here to help you on exam day and leading up to the exam first scheduling your exam so you'll want to schedule your exam as you're going through this pathway you want to find a good day to pick for your exam if you don't do that you'll never take it you'll study and study you'll never feel ready you'll just keep studying you'll forget about it you'll never get this certification go ahead and pick a day a reasonable day out not like 3 months out but like while you're doing this path maybe say hey the middle of next month I'm going to take it on the 15th pick a day go ahead and schedule it and plan your learning around that leading up until that day now regarding pacing yourself during the exam when I took the exam I had the case studies first so there were four of them they told me about this company that was doing this they had all of these resources they want to move to the cloud and it was this whole scenario I had to read and then I had to answer questions there were four of these these took me longer than I expected but when I finished them I moved on to the multiple choice section now when you get here you need to look at how many minutes you have left versus how many questions you have left if you have 50 minutes and 40 questions then try to pce yourself at one question per minute so that you have 10 minutes left over and keep that pace and keep that ratio going as you move through the exam and then finally let me give you three tips for exam day number one take your exam early in the day don't take it later in the day after you've gone through all this stuff you filled your head with problems in other material that isn't this exam do it early in the day where your mind's clear schedule it for like 9:00 in the morning 10: in the morning wake up drink some coffee relax and go into the exam clear-minded second don't study on exam day people that study last minute create situations where they second guess themselves they knew something up until today where they looked at something and now they're not sure anymore don't study on this day wake up like I said Relax exam early and nail it and then finally this is important when you flag a question to come back to it say you get to a question you don't know but you don't want to sit there all day so you flag it and you move on at the end of it it'll let you come back to those flagged questions when you do that make sure you pick an answer anyway so let's say you don't know the answer to this you're going to flag it there's four options and you think it's between one of two but you don't know go ahead and pick one but then flag it also that way when you get done if for some reason you're out of time let's say you finish with 30 seconds left if you didn't pick an answer you would get that wrong anyway because you don't have time to go back and complete your flagged questions you'll get them wrong so make sure even though you flag it just pick something just in case you run out of time if you don't run out of time of course you can come back and work through them again but don't leave them blank so that's it that's my tips on passing any Azure exam in 2024 I think it's a great suit I think every developer should have one and I think now is as good a time as any to get in the cloud every company is getting in the cloud you need to be there too so if you found this information helpful give it a thumbs up consider subscribing if you haven't and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Travis Media

Views: 259,745

Keywords: azure certification, cloud certification, az-104 study, microsoft azure cloud computing, azure fundamentals, microsoft azure courses, azure udemy, cloud computing udemy, azure whizlabs, azure practice tests, az-104 practice exams, microsoft azure ai, microsoft azure devops, azure fundamentals az-900, azure certification path, get cloud certified, az-204 preparation, az-104 preparation

Id: d59nAwmdoLk

Length: 18min 59sec (1139 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 08 2023