Passing Exam AZ-900 Microsoft Azure Fundamentals in 2 days

Today I just passed the AZ-900 exam and obtained the certification badge from Microsoft, and I'd like to share my personal learning experience with you immediately. Hopefully, it could be useful to people who're trying or planning to pass the same exam.

To start, the AZ-900 is officially marked for beginners and it is supposed to be easy to pass. It's the starting point of the learning path to become an Azure Expert no matter what role you aim for the future: Solution Architect, DevOps Engineer, or anything else.

However, for people who have never worked with MS Azure or don't know about any basic cloud concepts, I strongly recommend you to follow the official learning path of AZ-900 and go through all the modules at first: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/azure-fundamentals/, it could take up to 10 hours in total, but it covers at least all the basic topics. Although you can do the exercises in the learning modules by activating the sandboxes, I still recommend to get yourself a free account: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/, this will allow you to check out different types of Azure services, navigate in Azure Portal, and get familiar with the other products. Take 1 day to complete the learning modules and play around in Azure Portal, try out some fundamental features like cloud shell, resource groups, virtual machines, advisor, have a look at the measured skills related pages such as Azure security center, Azure knowledge center, Azure support plans, Azure updates page.

Practice makes perfect, taking online practice tests is suggested even for experienced IT professionals, I'm saying it because of the particularity of AZ-900. If we take a look at the measured skills, we'll find that it's focused mostly on the understanding of concepts, products, and theories. I personally used the measureup online test, but you can also find other free stuff such as exam dumps on the Internet. Here's my advice:

1. Beware of the correctness of the answers online, especially when they come from the public communities.
2. DO NOT try to remember all the questions, it doesn't guarantee the success of the exam, the questions that you see in online practice tests won't be the same as the ones you see in the real test, as a matter of fact, Microsoft updates quite frequently their question library to discourage such kind of behavior.
3. Use online practice tests to discover the blind spots of your knowledge, then read related articles and take notes.

Take 1 day to practice yourself intensely and learn from your wrong answers, cover as much knowledge spots as possible.

So, to recap the 2-day preparation planning to succeed the AZ-900:

DAY 1

- Go through the learning modules, get the basics done

- Grab a free Azure account, do the exercises, try out different services, play around with Azure Portal

- Visit the pages that contain important information about Azure Security, Privacy, Compliance, Pricing, Support

 DAY 2

- Take online practice tests

- Find out blind spots of the knowledge, and take notes

However, do not rush to take the exam on the third day as long as you don't feel confident, take the necessary time, and make sure that you could pass the online practice test at least.

On the exam day

- Sleep well before the exam day

- Connect yourself to the exam at least 15 minutes ahead

- Relax and follow the instructions during the exam

- Pay attention to the remaining time and do not waste too much time on one single question, mark it to review later

One little thing that I've remarked on the score report after the exam is that the percentage of the measured skills are different from what's been claimed on the official page:

Not sure if it was just an exception for me or the information on the official page is outdated. But one thing for sure is that the content of the exam will be updated on May 28, 2020, and you should follow the latest changes if you plan to pass the exam after this date.

Voilà! Having this certification badge at the end of the day is pretty nice after all, and I wish you good luck with your exam!