Study plan
A suggested two-week ramp. Adjust to your background — if you already hold AZ-204, domains 1, 3, and 4 will feel familiar and you can spend more time on the AI-specific data and vector topics in domain 2.
Week 1 — Build the foundation
| Day | Focus | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Read Domain 1: ACR, ACR Tasks, App Service | — |
| 2 | Container Apps, KEDA, AKS, monitoring | Domain 1 quiz |
| 3 | Read Domain 2: Cosmos DB NoSQL, RUs, consistency | — |
| 4 | Cosmos vector search & change feed; PostgreSQL/pgvector; Redis | Domain 2 quiz |
| 5 | Read Domain 3: Service Bus, Event Grid, Functions | Domain 3 quiz |
| 6 | Read Domain 4: Key Vault, App Config, OTel, KQL | Domain 4 quiz |
| 7 | Review weak areas · drill flashcards | Flashcards |
Week 2 — Reinforce and simulate
| Day | Focus | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| 8 | Re-take any quiz scored below 80% | Quizzes |
| 9 | Hands-on: deploy a container app + Cosmos vector search | Labs |
| 10 | Hands-on: Functions + Service Bus/Event Grid; Key Vault refs | Labs |
| 11 | Full mock exam, review every miss | Mock exam |
| 12 | Targeted re-study of the lowest-scoring domain | Flashcards |
| 13 | Second mock exam attempt | Mock exam |
| 14 | Light review · rest before exam day | Flashcards |
Tips for exam day
- Budget your time: with a timer running, don't sink more than ~90 seconds on any one question — flag it and move on.
- Read multiple-response questions carefully; the count of correct answers is often stated.
- For "most secure / recommended" questions, the answer almost always favors managed identity + RBAC and no stored secrets.
- For scaling questions, match the trigger to the workload: KEDA/queue length for backlog-driven work, HTTP/CPU for request-driven.