Learn about Microsoft Azure and pass the Azure Fundamentals exam! The Azure Fundamentals exam (AZ-900) is an opportunity to prove knowledge of cloud concepts, core Azure services, Azure pricing, SLA, and lifecycle, and the fundamentals of cloud security, privacy, compliance, and trust. You will learn about all these things in this course.

✏️ Course developed by Andrew Brown of ExamPro. Check out the ExamPro YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2EsmbKnDNE7y1N3nZYCuGw
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⭐️ Course Contents ⭐️
☁️ (00:01:05) Introduction
Why should I get the AZ-900?
Exam Guide Walkthrough

☁️ (00:24:24) Cloud Concepts
What is Cloud Computing
Common Cloud Services
What is Microsoft and Azure
Benefits of Cloud Computing
Types of Cloud Computing
Types of Cloud Computing Responsibilities
Cloud Deployment Models
Total Cost of Ownership
CAPEX vs OPEX
Cloud Architecture Terminologies
High Availability
High Scalability
High Elasticity
Fault Tolerance
High Durability
Business Continuity Plan
Disaster Recovery Options

☁️ (00:57:44) Evolution of Compute
Dedicated Servers
Virtual Machines
Containers
Functions

☁️ (01:03:37) Global Infrastructure
Regions and Geographies
Paired Regions
Region Types and Service Availability
Special Regions
Availability Zones
AZ Supported Regions
Availability Sets Fault and Update Domains

☁️ (01:19:26) Getting Started Follow Along
Creating an Azure Account
Registered Providers
Create a User Account
Enabling MFA

☁️ (01:44:28) Compute Services
Computing Services
Azure Virtual machines
Operation Systems
Azure Scale Sets
Load Balancer
Scaling Policy
Health Montoring
Azure Virtual Desktop
Launching a Server

☁️ (02:06:57) Azure App Service
Introduction to Azure App Service
Runtimes
Custom Containers
Deployment Slots
App Service Enviroment
Azure App Service Plan
Configure and Deploy App Service

☁️ (02:27:13) Azure Container Instances
Introduction to ACI
Container Restart Policies
Container Environment Variables
Container Persistent Storage
Create an Azure Container Instances

☁️ (02:34:49) Virtual Networking
Introduction to VNets
VNet Peering
Network Interfaces
Subnets
Introduction to Azure DNS
Introduction to Virtual Network Gateways
Azure Express Routes
Private Links
Create a VNet

☁️ (02:49:27) Storage Accounts
Storage Services
Introduction to Storage Accounts
Storage Comparsion
Core Storage Services
Performance Tiers
Access Tiers
Replication Data Redundancy
LRS ZRS
GRS GZRS
RAGRS_RA GZRS
Introduction to Azure Blob
Azure Blob Types
AZCopy
Azure Storage Explorer
Introduction to Azure Files
Azure Files Use Cases
Azure File Sync
Storing files in Blob Storage

☁️ (03:24:14) Migration Options
Azure Cloud Adoption Framework
Azure Migrate
Azure Migrate Integrated tools
Azure Databox

☁️ (03:33:10) Microsoft Entra ID
Microsoft Entra ID Name Change
Introduction to Entra ID
Use Cases
AD vs AAD
Terminology
AD DS Microsoft Entra Domain Services
Single Sign On SSO
External Identities
Conditional Access

☁️ (03:49:46) Security
Zero Trust Model
Zero Trust Principles
Defense In Depth
Azure Defender
MFA
Azure Security Center
Key Vault
Azure DDoS Protection
Azure Firewall
Application Gateway
Routing Rules
Role Based Access Control RBAC
Management Groups
Service Health
Azure Advisor

☁️ (04:16:09) Technology Overview
Database Services
Application Integration
Developer and Mobile Tools
Azure DevOps Services
Cloud Native Networking Services
Enterprise Hybrid Networking Services
Azure Traffic Manager
IoT Services
Big Data and Analytics Services
AI ML Services Introduction
AI ML Services
Serverless Services

☁️ (04:39:34) Follow Alongs
Create a Resource Group
Creating an Azure Function

☁️ (04:45:54) Billing And Pricing
Service Level Agreements
Service Credits
Composite SLAs
TCO Calculator
Azure Marketplace
Azure Hybrid Benefit
Azure Subscriptions
First Look at Subscriptions
Pricing Calculator
Azure Cost Management
Resource Tags

☁️ (05:07:47) Governance and Compliance
Microsoft Purview Information Protection
Introduction
Resource Locks
Azure Blueprints

☁️ (05:15:31) Azure Management Tools
Azure Portal
Portal Preview and Features
Cloud Shell
Exploring Azure Cloud Shell
PowerShell
PowerShell Follow Along
Azure CLI
Azure CLI Follow Along
Visual Studio Code
Azure SDK Follow Along
Introduction to ARM
Use Cases
ARM Scoping
Introduction
ARM Templates Follow Along
Azure Bicep Follow Along
Azure Terraform Follow Along
Free Tier Spend and Usage

☁️ (08:12:11) Monitoring Tools
Introduction to Azure Monitor
The Pillars of Obervability
Anatomy of Azure Monitor
Log Analytics
Log Analytics Workspaces
Azure Alerts
Application Insights

Hey, it's Andrew Brown, your favorite cloud instructor over here on free code can't bring you another free cloud certification study course.

And this time, it's the Azure fundamentals, also known as the AZ 900.

And the way we're going to achieve Microsoft certification is by watching those lecture videos, doing those hands on labs.

And as always, I'm going to provide you a free practice exam.

So you can go get that certification, putting a resume, put it on your LinkedIn and go get that cloud role you've been looking to get, if you love these kinds of cloud certification study courses, the best way to support more free courses just like this 1 is to purchase the paid optional materials, it's going to help you increase your odds of passing the exam.

And it just helps the production of these courses.

And if you don't know me, I'm Andrew Brown.

And I've taught a lot of different cloud certification study courses here.

We've done AWS, Azure GCP, Kubernetes, Terraform, you name it, I've taught it.

Let's go ahead and learn some Azure and I'll see you soon.

Hey, this is Andrew Brown, and welcome to the Microsoft Azure fundamentals.

And we're asking the most important question first, which is what is the certification?

Well, the Azure fundamentals is the entry level cloud certification for Microsoft, Azure or Azure.

And you'll see me alternate between those pronunciations.

So whichever you prefer, There is no prerequisite for this certification.

But you should probably have a little bit of it experience.

If you're totally new to cloud, you're still be okay here.

The key topics that we are covering is understanding the basics of cloud computing, exploring the benefits of using cloud services, and looking at those core services, those being computing, networking, storage, and databases, understanding identity security governance.

So, you know, 1 example for identity would be Entra ID, previously known as Azure AD, something you'll hear again and again, through all the Microsoft certification courses, understanding how pricing works, things like subscriptions, and cost management tools, and learning about the tools available for managing Azure resources, such as Azure portal, or the SDK or the CLI, things like that.

Microsoft Azure is the second leading cloud service provider in the world, the first being AWS.

But let that not discourage you because Azure is still an extremely great cloud service to use.

So Azure fundamentals is a very common starting point for people breaking the cloud, similar to the AWS cloud practitioner.

So both are really great entries into cloud, who's a certification for will consider this fundamental certification.

If you're new to cloud, and you want to learn the fundamentals and benefits adopting cloud services in general, you are from a non technical background, such as an executive management or sales level, and you need to acquire strategic information about cloud for adoption or migration, you'll want to understand the capabilities of Azure and how to build basic solutions and deploy cloud services in your organization.

Very, very basic, but I mean, the objective of these fundamental certifications is not to really teach you how to build cloud workloads.

Or you're a senior cloud engineer or solution architect or, or cloud architect who needs a reset or refresh their knowledge after working with Azure for multiple years, but maybe you didn't notice some things change.

So it's a great revisit to get an idea of what is going on here.

So what is the value of the certification?

Well, the fundamentals is provides the most expensive view possible for cloud architecture and Azure.

I like to say this is going to provide you a bird's eye view or the 50,000 foot view.

But it's not going to be as detailed as you imagine.

But the idea here is to promote big picture thinking, zooming out and assessing the cloud and Azure landscape for changes, trends, opportunities, and being strategic about the approach and process for our cloud journey.

Okay, The Azure fundamentals is not a difficult exam, it will not validate that you can build cloud workloads.

For technical roles, such as developer engineer DevOps, it's not going to be enough to obtain those roles.

But it's possible that it could shortlist your resume for interview.

The exam covers content not found in other certifications.

So strongly recommend that you take this as your foundational certification.

A lot of people like to skip fundamentals because they say they think that they're easy.

But the exam content has a lot of stuff in it, especially mine, because I pack in a ton of stuff that I just I'm not going to put at the next level, because I'm going to assume that you're taking this course and getting all that knowledge there.

The AZ 900 lays a good foundation for specialized or specialization for Azure certifications, and is a stepping stone for professional development in cloud services.

So definitely there is value in the AZ 900.

Let's go take a look at the Azure roadmap.

And this is not all of the Azure certifications and Microsoft certifications, they just have too many, I cannot fit them all on screen here.

And I think all the course codes are up to date, but they're changing them all the time.

So it's possible that they might be incremented by some versions.

But the entry we have the Azure fundamentals, there are other fundamental certifications.

We have the AI 900, which is for AI, we have the DP 900, which is for data, we have the SC 900, which is for security.

But again, I don't have room for all that.

So I'm showing you the path that is commonly completed after taking the AZ 900.

So you have some associate certifications, you have a couple expert certifications, you have specialty certifications, there's definitely more associates, there's definitely more specialties, But there's always the 2 pros or experts, I should say.

So getting my handy pen out here, very often, what people go for after the fundamentals is the administrator, the AZ 104.

This is the most common path for those that are going to their next step in their Azure journey.

And a lot of times people are going for that solutions architect expert, which is over here.

But before you do that, you really want to go and grab that developer, the AZ 204.

These are the this is the the most common strategy right here is these.

But of course, it really depends on what you're doing.

If you're doing security, you have the SC 900.

And then there's 3 different associate level security certifications.

If you are going after data, that's a whole different track.

So it's going to really vary based on that.

But again, you know, this is the most common track.

And even if you go do all of this, and you want to do something else, that's totally fine, because this is going to lay a very, very strong foundation and give you really good skills in Azure.

So how long does it take to study for this certification?

Well, if you're a beginner, we're looking at about 30 hours.

And this is someone that's never written, or used Azure or any cloud provider have never written any code, or held a tech role.

Technically, the certification doesn't require you to code.

But I really want to make sure that I set you up really well.

Because in Azure, coding and scripting, and that kind of stuff is way more important than any other cloud provider, because you come across it a lot more.

And so I've stuck in a bunch of coding stuff.

And it is very challenging for beginners, but I want to try to get you best prepared as possible.

Because when you go to the associate level with like the AZ 104, it is so much more difficult.

So I made this much harder than it had to be to prepare you for the next level, despite the exam.

So again, 30 hours on that side of your experience, then you're already working with Azure, or you maybe are you've worked in AWS and GCP, and you are trying to pick up Azure, the it could be as little as 6 hours.

So you know, generally, the study time is 24 hours.

And I would say it's split between lectures and labs, and then you have your practice exams.

So just make sure that you put your time in with the practice exams.

Practice exams are very, very, very, very, very important for Azure because Azure has all these different question types.

But yeah, the recommend studies 1 to 2 hours a day for 14 days, take your time, let it absorb, you could finish it in a couple days, but don't do that.

You know, make sure that you are acquiring the knowledge for long term.

And the best way to do that is to take your time and and not try to pass it in a weekend.

Well, you got to watch those lecture videos, you got to do those hands on labs and follow along within your own account.

Strongly recommend that you do some paid online practice exams, we give you a full free practice exam, like a full set, which is on our platform there, we have a lot of practice exams, you get that at exam pro.co forward slash AZ 900.

Well, you're going to either take it in person at a test center or the convenience of your home.

And so I would just say just a second here.

Baker's the other Andrew, who you'll hear me talk about Bako a bit throughout the course, But he's the other person that works with me that's never on camera, you never see him.

But he helps do a lot of the work over here with the platform and creating the content.

But anyway, so Azure delivers exams via, I got to reclick here.

Pearson view is the proctoring system that Microsoft uses.

In the past, there used to be a bunch of ones, there's criterion, which Google used to use Google Cloud, there's PSI online, which AWS like to use.

But for whatever reason, both AWS and Microsoft exclusively only use Pearson view now.

And I think GCP is now using PSI online, and everyone else uses PSI, for whatever reason.

And you can do it online or Pearson view has a network of test centers that you can go to in person.

Personally, I recommend that you go in person if you can, because if there is a test center near you, the whole environment is controlled, it's going to be a lot less stressful.

Whereas if you do it from home, you know, if you have family, or you have the least ideal place to set up, because you have to have a non cluttered room, and they have to inspect your room and things can go wrong.

So I'm just saying if you have that opportunity to go to an in person in person test center, leverage that if you can't, that's okay.

But understand that these certifications are proctored.

So when you go sit that exam, there's someone who is monitoring you to make sure that you are not cheating.

In terms of the content outline, there is 3 domains, I think there used to be more, but they grouped up into 3, I'm not sure why.

And that determines how many questions in a domain will show up.

Something that's really interesting about Azure exams is that they, they don't give you the same amount of questions per person.

So they'll give you like you like you might sit the exam and get 35 and your friend might get 40.

So I had to give ranges here in terms of the percentage that will appear on your exam.

So we have describing cloud concepts, which is 25 to 30%.

So you're going to get about 13 to 15 questions, describe Azure architecture and services, that's 35 to 40%.

That is the majority of the certification, most fundamentals is about learning all the services that the cloud service provider is providing, then we have described Azure Management and Governance.

With 14 to 1616 questions, there is a sub domains under each of these.

So of course, securities in there and all those other things are in there, but we'll have to open up the exam guide to see that.

So again, you know, just pointing out that that domain 2 is the largest 1 there.

So make sure that we we're going to make sure that we know a wide range of Azure services.

But we're also going to make sure we know in depth a bit more about those core services.

Let's talk about grading, you got to get a 700 points out of 1000.

We say around because Azure uses skilled scoring, meaning that it doesn't necessarily mean you get 70%.

And you pass, you could technically pass with 71%.

But you could also technically pass with 69%.

So just understand, it's not based on percentage, it's based on a point system, in terms of what kind of questions you'll be getting.

Well, first, let's talk about the range of questions, but you can get between 35 to 50, I usually say 37 to 37 to 50.

It's confusing, because I don't know how they determine how many you get.

When I sat my exam, I got about 35 questions, some people get more, it's really, really tricky to to nail that down there.

So you know, we say about 10 to 14 questions, you have, you can afford to get wrong, there are no penalty for wrong questions.

So absolutely, always fill in the answers.

In terms of formatting questions, we have multiple choice, multiple answer, drag and drop, yes, And no, I do need to point out that when you go and take associate level and expert level certifications with Microsoft, they have way more question types.

And just to help prepare you for that level of difficulty.

But in our practice exams, we try to put in case studies.

So case studies is a much more advanced exam type question.

And, you know, I really feel that we need to do that.

Because if we don't, you're going to feel like you're ready for the AZ 104.

And you're going to get totally blindsided because again, the difficulty ramp is super hard.

So again, we're increasing the difficulty for your benefit.

So if you feel like this course is hard, that's good, because it's going to make the next 1 really, really easy for you.

In terms of duration, apparently, it's 45 minutes, I cannot remember how long it was when I sat it.

And when you search the internet, it's very difficult to determine that number.

Microsoft does not make it easy to find out that number, you think that they would other cloud service providers, their certification exams, they tell you right on the same page, good luck finding it on Azure, but 45 minutes would still leave us with about 1 minute per time.

Again, it depends if you get the 35 questions, or 45 questions.

So we're gonna have to say about a minute.

So we'll say the exam time is 45 minutes.

Some people say the seat time is 60 to 65 minutes.

When we say see time, we're talking about the time you should allocate for the exam that includes things like time to review instructions, read and accept the NDA, complete the exam, provide the feedback at the end.

Now, personally, I think that the seat time should always be 30 minutes on top of whatever that is.

So if it's 45 minutes, it really would be 75 minutes, or 70 minutes or something like that.

So you know, anyway, if you got a 45 minute exam, show up 30 minutes or 35 minutes earlier, because if you're checking in, especially online, you got to pull out your government ID, you got to make sure the lighting is right, and then it scans it in if things go wrong, you know, it's going to cut in your time.

So give yourself ample time and don't get stressed out for that.

So these certifications are for Microsoft are valid forever, this is specific for fundamental certification.

So if you take the any 1 that has 900 in the name, so AZ 900, DP 900, AI 900, sc 900, pl 900, ms 900, you get in the pattern here, if it says 900 in the name, it's a fundamentals, those certifications do not expire.

And so I just want to make that very, very, very clear.

For the other levels like associate expert, I think it's 2 years, it's either 2 or 3 years.

But the interesting thing is that if you want to get recertified, you don't have to pay to take the exam.

Again, you can take a simpler test to make sure that your knowledge is up to date.

So that's a great advantage that Microsoft has at the associate and expert level specialty level.

Alright, so I went on to the internet and I searched for AZ 900.

And we've ended up on the learn.microsoft.com.

The reason I want to show you this page is to get more familiar with where we actually get the information so that you can read up about about it if we didn't answer everything or if anything has changed.

But it's good, good, good to be familiar with these pages.

So once you're here on the AZ 900, What they'll have down below here is the study guide.

Now the study guide used to be in a PDF format.

And for whatever reason, Azure has just made it a website with all the other study guides here, I really don't like this format, I find that it's very hard to find information And to read it, I really prefer the old PDF, but that's never coming back.

But what we can see over here is the actual breakdown.

And so we think see things like defining cloud computing, share responsibility model, the different deployments of cloud, and a bunch of other stuff here.

You can see describing the cloud service types.

Now, at 1 point, they actually removed this.

I don't know why they ever removed it to begin with.

But it's good to see that that is returning, we have, I call this global infrastructure or and cloud networking.

So they call this core architectural components, which I suppose some of these things are, but this is more like a billing thing.

Then we have Azure Compute and networking services and recovering virtual machines, functions, skill sets, availability sets, Azure Virtual Desktop.

Now, we don't have to do all these things.

And we aren't going to do all these things, because some of these things are really hard, like Azure Virtual Desktop is not an easy task.

But we need to know what they are, we are going to launch a virtual machine.

And play around with that a little bit, we are going to launch an Azure function.

So we do a lot with Azure storage, because it is cheap and easy to use.

Then we need to know how to perform different operations with Azure.

As your storage there that we have Azure identity access and security.

So again, this is a sub category under here for sub domain.

So we need to know a bunch of things about security.

I'm just going to tell you that some of the content is going to say Azure ID, some of it's going to say Microsoft Entre ID, Microsoft, for some crazy reason, decided to change the name of Azure AD, even though everybody was fine with it, it confuses myself and Beko and everyone else to this day.

So just understand that some of its Azure AD, some of its Microsoft Entry ID, but this is this is really what's going to be going forward.

We have described cost management in Azure.

So that's TCO, some more pricing stuff here.

Azure purview, Azure policy, we have the Azure portal, which is just the platform which we use everything Azure Arc, which I guess it's okay to know, we actually do a lot of interesting coding here.

So I show you how to do ISE with arm templates and Azure bicep and terraform.

So that stuff's fun there, we look at monitoring tools.

So we look at Azure Service Health, Azure Advisor, all sorts of fun stuff.

Now, there could be other stuff that appears exam that's not on here.

And so we just do a very thorough job to show you basically everything.

And just to kind of round out your knowledge.

But again, it's very difficult to to find all the details like the time of the exam and the amount of questions, they really just do not make this easily available here.

If anyone finds it, please tell me because I sure can't find it.

And the only way I know is by sitting an exam and I have to remember those details afterwards, they do show what kind of changes that they make.

So they're always making teeny tiny changes.

But try not to worry about that too much, because we do ensure to include a lot of stuff here.

And this exam is up to date and and the fresh and as fresh as it can be as of this recording.

But you know, I find that even 2 years out, people are passing, like people are passing the current exam with the old the old 1, which is which is really interesting.

So it just shows you that not much changes on those exams.

Another thing I want to show you is the exam Sam sandbox.

So this emulates the Pearson view kind of experience.

And it'll just show you some of the question formats.

And it might show us more exam types and what we'll actually see on the exam.

So go here, this just has 10 questions, it's going to just show us all the types.

So here we have multiple choice, then we have multiple select, I'm not looking at what the correct answers are, or read any of it, I'm just showing you here, I believe that we drag these into these areas here.

So that's this 1, then this 1 is your answer area, and you're bringing them over, and then you're trying to determine the order.

So you're changing the order here, then this one's an answer area.

So we look at this graphic, and we try to match it based on this information.

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Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Certification Course (AZ-900) UPDATED – Pass the exam in 8 hours!