Hey everyone, just took my first professional exam using a free voucher. I didn't pass, but considering the circumstances, I'm using this score sheet as a learning baseline.My background: I only have the Google IT Support cert and CS50 Cyber Security. No real-world enterprise or Entra ID experience yet.The prep: I’ve been navigating some heavy visa struggles, so I only got to study seriously for 5–7 days. I watched exactly 5 minutes of a YouTube practice exam and did the free Microsoft Learn Practice Assessment once (scored 60%).I quickly realized during the exam that the MS Learn assessment is completely different from the actual test format.As you can see, Identity Governance and Auth were okay, but Workload and User Identities dragged me down. Given that I went in nearly blind to the actual question depth, what high-quality practice exams or lab environments should I use to actually learn the real testing style? Thanks in advance!

PS: Ik yall might say why associate or this exam since no cloud experience but the thing is I got a free voucher (which is used) and the 900 series are just too foundational tbh.

Trying to see if I should spend time learning about services that are approaching depreciation on the end of this year like On Your Data etc. I see that ai-102 is newly retired and wondering if there will be some overlap. I believe I have been asked questions on deprecated services before on a Microsoft exam just wondering for those who took the exam saw alto of it.

This practice exam they offer has alot of them inside as well and not sure its a good source to assess how ready I am for the test.

AI Skills Navigator | Course Details | Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Apps and Agents Developer Associate

I passed my sc-200 exam a few days ago with the AI skills fest free voucher, and this is exactly how i achieved it as a beginner in the field with a few internship experiences. I had been active in this sub this past week and will reiterate most of the recommendations made by other test takers. I scored 771/1000.

My prep:

- not mandatory, but it is good to have some prior knowledge about cyber security concepts (ive only done security+ and some vendor trainings)

- If you are completely new to the Microsoft defender xdr and Sentinel environments, give yourself atleast 2 months to familiarise with the platforms and get used to the features.

- during this time follow a taught course, either from udemy or as others recommend, I followed the udemy course by Anand Rao and id give it a 7/10

Pros - good course structure and detailed explanations with fair amount of demonstrations and ai labs, definitely a better alternative if you get bored with ms learn.

Cons- content is a bit outdated, missing an entire module on security copilot, not much preparation for the actual exam. If i had the time and looked at this sub earlier i wouldve taken some other course.

- ive also had a free 1 month e5 trial where i got access to all the platforms, but there was no data to work with, still good to avail as you can explore the platforms freely. If you cant do this, the ms interactive cloud guides should work just as well.

The best investment i couldve made was the sc200 Tutorials Dojo practice exams, usually i try to find free resources but trust me this was $15 well spent! I was left with 2 days when i bought this and the prep i did here helped me significantly. Start with their practice modules as they're not timed and you'll review your answer immediately. Make sure to review both incorrect and correct answers, they have detailed explanations on each of the answers. Overall the structure and difficulty of the practice questions matched pretty well with the exam. (Not sponsored btw)

Areas I would focus on if i had to do it again:

- KQL syntax and operators!! Cannot stress on this enough. I had no prior experience but with practice i just began answering in a flow state.

- different kinds of logs and what data they store

- log retention periods - completely forgot this in the exam

- the list of commands you need to know when running a live response session (remediate, getfile, trace etc)

- have a basic idea of the features inside the different plans offered by MS e5, defender for endpoint, etc

- dont ignore the security copilot and Ms Purview modules (mistake)

- be completely thorough with the RBAC concepts, it becomes very confusing with different app specific role permissions (reader, responder, contributor, operator, admin and global admin etc).

- be prepared to allot atleast 25 mins for the case study questions.

This was too long but I hope this helps!

Yeah, so on Thursday last week. I got a notification that I had the AI-901 booked for today.

I tried to change it as I hadn't studied at all for it. But as it was a free voucher I couldn't reschedule.

So I did a bit of study with tutorials dojo, the practice exams and cheat sheets and ChatGPT to basically condense down what I needed to learn in a short time frame.

I think I did maybe 4 hours of study..

Passed with 816!

Now, before anyone thinks of being as stupid as me I should mention I have quite a bit of foundation AI knowledge from personal projects etc.

I've never touched foundry etc, so I still feel like I kind of fluked it 🤣

For those who passed both Azure Fundamentals and AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exams, how much commonality in concepts did you find between the two tests?

I already passed the AWS one, and I am pondering taking the Azure Fundamentals too for having additional breadth. I have only done some practice quizzes on Azure Fundamentals and am finding the material to be quite similar to that of AWS Cloud Practitioner. It makes me think I won't need to study as hard for Azure Fundamentals, that I can infer much from names alone.

Hey peeps! I cleared my AI901 certification on first try.
Prepared using Udemy mock questions and gave it a try.

My background is non technical. So no experience in IT at all.

Udemy had some really tough questions, but in the exam, it was mostly easy.

I aced the ai fundamental parts like responsible ai scenarios. The difficult part was matching the python script and answering questions about functions and related topics.

Overall spent 10hours at max.

799/1000 score. It was harder than I expected. I didn't think I passed but I hit submit and got the congratulations you passed message. Very happy to knock that one out. Not sure what certification to go for next. Open to ideas. Cheers!

Just passed the DP-750 with an 800+ after 1–2 months of prep. I had zero hands-on work experience with Azure Databricks going into this, so I had to build everything from scratch.

What I Used
Ankit Bansal (Namaste SQL) Databricks Course: Super helpful for getting down the core concepts and practical flow.
MS Learn: Absolutely critical. Go through the documentation thoroughly and pay attention to syntax and configs.

Watch Out For
No MS Learn Access: I’d seen mixed comments on Reddit about this and wasn't 100% sure, but can confirm you do NOT get access to MS Learn during the exam.

Good luck!

I booked my exam in July for September but sadly due to external factors like mental health I haven't been able to focus. I did try rescheduling both exams but apparently my voucher has expired so I can not reschedule it. I just took sc900 done around 1 day of studying and revision and got 560/700. I have az 900 schedule for the exact time next week how do I prepare for it if I have a week to study?

Hello,

Exam was not so difficult as I expected it to be. Studied about 4 months for it and have 3 year experience in IT field. I did not use any type of labs since I currently attend my master study in cybersecurity field, we had a whole subject on microsoft azure cloud where I did full IT infrastructure project in cloud and it took me about 3 months to finish it and additional study and preparation took me another one month. I managed to achieve 853/1000. I'm also very proud, exam is not easy also, tested me to my very core and I wouldn't recommend to sign for exam appointment without at least lab practice. It is strongly focused on real life configuration that you may encounter in I believe any real work regarding Azure. I wish all the best and good luck to anyone who's considering on taking the exam.

Wish you all the best!

Planning to take the AZ104 cert exam in a month. Does anyone have recs/resources/guides/tips/tricks for navigating Microsoft learn effectively and quickly?

Although the AZ-800 is going to expire soon it is highly relevant to the work I perform. I have 17 years experience with on-prem and ~2 years experience with Azure.

I passed the AZ-800 exam on the first attempt and utilized the following resources for study - in total I spent ~45 hours studying.

Resources:

- Microsoft learn AZ-800 modules & practice assessment 10 times.
- AZ-800 practice exams - completed about 7 of these trying to get my time management skills ready. I also used MS Learn docs side-by-side to figure out search strings that worked well.
- I used Claude to quiz me and explain answers I got incorrect - Did this for a total of ~6 hours.

Things to consider:

- Time management - I know the content, I'm quick when searching MS Learn, but I wasn't able to finish the very last question on the exam because I ran out of time. Time management was the most challenging part for me.
- You may know the content well but the wording used for each question can be confusing.
- I did not have a virtual whiteboard during the exam. Some questions/scenarios are tricky and difficult to visualize quickly so when taking a practice exam try not to use a notepad/whiteboard.

I am really getting tired of these exams testing for edge cases that happen somewhere around 1-2% in a tenant configuration.

Where exactly would something like this be used? Can somebody give me some more context and explanation for what this question is even asking or trying to ask?

https://i.imgur.com/giwtiK9.png

In a production environment if I want to apply Exchange Online Plan 2 licensing to users and the users are being synced from the on-prem Active Directory, then the only steps required are:

1. to create a security group online
2. to add all the users to that group
3. and then add the Exchange Online licensing to that group

And if the users are already using a business premium license and you only want to enable some additional license eg power bi something to only a few users within that group.. Then you only need to create a new security group with those few users and add the other license to that group.

But AI tells me the answer is A - Configure the options for Exchange Online (Plan 2) on a template user.

How's that possible?

So Microsoft have say, target release of 802 in August, it’s not released yet.
Someone know more?

Hi everyone, I wanted to share something I built instead of acting like a random user, since that wouldn't be fair to this sub.

I'm Thiago, an MCT, and I built Azurecertified.com, a practice exam platform for AZ-900/104/305. It's not a dump (I don't think dumps are a real path to passing); it's questions built to cover the actual exam objectives. AZ-104 is $14.90.

Not trying to spam the sub, genuinely just think it could help some of you studying for AZ-104. Happy to answer questions about the exam or the platform either way.

Finally passed MS-102. I prepared for 1,5 Month, did some Labs, MS Learn and Measure Up test exams. Exam was realy hard and differs from Measure Up questions.

I'm looking for resources to clear ai103, but it seems like there's nothing out there except for MS, and Udemy isn't looking good.

People aren't recommending any courses (I checked the Udemy courses, and they all have negative reviews).

What should I do?

Failed AI 103 on First attempt

687/100

Total of 60 question

53 standalone and 7 case study

Okay, where should I begin? I'm thinking about pivoting to IAM. I'm currently a Network Admin, but I know cloud will be here soon (just not sure when), so I'm trying to skill up or skill-out (I know that's not a real thing). I have a background in various non-technical admin roles, Human Resources, etc. IAM seems like something I'll be interested in.

The dilemma. Research paralysis. Too many "maybe's" out there, and the last few times I came to reddit, you wonderful people have guided me to success. I was thinking about taking MS learning path along with a Udemy course, then finish up with labs. So if you could recommend some courses, especially Udemy (I do better when I have to pay for something, it's like I have skin in the game, lol). I really appreciate all the help and opinions. Thanks.

I.e to see if what you put was correct. I feel like this just adds stress…

Hello guys,

Just wanted to make this post to see who has benefitted from any Microsoft certification, or if the majority of y'all already work for a company that needs Azure and you guys are just trying to get certified to show your employer or for whatever personal reason.

I passed my AZ-900 1 month ago, and I currently do work for a company that uses Azure; however, I am somewhat limited to what I can do. I am currently studying for my AZ-104 and will be looking for jobs once I pass, just not too sure what to look for or filter, if that makes sense...

For those that have already accomplished big certs and are looking for jobs, can y'all share your experience? Did it take a while to find another job? Are you still looking for one, etc.?

Thanks, Amigos,

I scored a 741, first time it was 642, second time it was 678.

Super proud of myself. I’m posting this because I just want to say don’t give up.

The only resources you need are: (in my opinion)
Tutorial dojos practice test
Shireen Khan Practice Tests
Any sandbox or subscription (free credits)
Claude AI

I think 60% of this exam is just Microsoft’s wording, they do try to trap you. You also have to know everything because each test was different (at least for me).

Shireen Khan practice exams had VERY similar questions to the actual exam.

Ask Claude to help you with the traps after taking the practice tests.

Things you should know, that you might have just skimmed.

1) can things be moved from resource groups, such as apps, if there are locks, cannot deletes?
2) can an arm template deploy things if there is a count of 3 to be deployed and the second instance says “lock on resource groups”?
3) What is a storage account key service operator versus just a storage account key reader?
4) What data plane actions are needed to do things?
(Can you link a dns private zone with just a virtual network contributor)
5) what could cause an image to be denied to a container?
6) max amounts of update domains and fault domains
7) public zone vs private zone auto registration
8) can vms communicate if one nsg is linked to each, but have different outbound, inbound rules?

There are countless others and I’m happy to try and remember them if you want to message me. I will say, this time, mslearn did really help me.

Good luck everyone

Today I passed AZ-104 on my first attempt with a score of 783! This is my first MS certification i bypassed az 900 because i thought it was too easy

I don’t have much professional Azure experience since the public cloud team where I work is separate from mine, so most of my experience came from home labs and personal projects.

I studied for around two months, though not consistently. I went through Microsoft Learn, completed the labs and quizzes, and used legitimate practice tests to find gaps in my knowledge.

I actually planned to reschedule the exam again, but only realized on Thursday that it was scheduled for this weekend and it was too late to move it (Used a free voucher from MS so came with restrictions). So I spent Friday and Saturday doing some last-minute preparation.

Not the highest score, but a pass is a pass and I’m really happy with it.

For anyone without much real-world Azure experience: AZ-104 is definitely doable with Microsoft Learn, hands-on practice, and good preparation.

Next up: DP-800 in late November and AZ 305 or 400 next.