The cloud industry has been going through major changes. Every day things are moving so fast and keeping up to date on your area of expertise is important. Earning cloud certification is one way to learn and test your skills. Microsoft Azure developer certification AZ-203 validates the developer’s knowledge about the Microsoft cloud platform. The article intends to provide study guides (books, pdf, links, etc.) of the AZ-203 syllabus. You can also use the practice test to prepare for the real exam. It’s my advice not to rely on the AZ-203 dumps. It might help you to pass the exam but it’s of no use thereafter.

A new version of the exam, AZ-204, became available on February 24, 2020. You’ll have the ability to take this exam before it retires on or about August 31, 2020.

AZ-203 Exam Structure

Microsoft had revamped the certification track to introduce role-based certification. You can become an “Azure Developer Associate” after earning the Azure developer certification AZ-203 exam. To make certification more effective, the exam comes with a new format. It has around 45-55 questions divided into 4 to 5 sections. There are case studies and questions that are scenario-based referring to the case studies. Pay special attention while reading the instruction during the exam. Also, make sure to distribute the allocated 180 minutes to cover all the sections and questions. There could be a section where answers are unchangeable, once given.

AZ-203 Exam Prerequisites

Candidate aspires to take the Azure developer certification AZ-203 exam, should have at least 6 months of hands-on experience of Microsoft Azure. Any prior experience with other cloud platforms like AWS, GCP, etc. helps to get hold of the concepts in Azure. You can refer to the AZ-203 official site, learning paths, and study guides for more details.

AZ-203 Exam Guidance

The AZ-203 syllabus includes six high-level sections such as

I would recommend going through every topic to understand the services in detail. At the same time, I’ve compiled the following list based on my experience while preparing for the exam. It is important to realize that hands-on knowledge is must-have to pass the exam along with the knowledge of the below-mentioned list of topics

Compute Solutions under Azure Infrastructure Service

• Guidance to Implement solutions that use virtual machines (VM)
  • FAQ on Azure VMs
  • Disk Encryption for Azure VM
  • Powershell Commands for Azure VM
  • Azure VM CLI
• Guidance to Implement batch jobs by using Azure Batch Services
  • Batch Service Overview
• Guidance to Create containerized solutions
  • Azure Container Registry Overview
  • FAQ on Azure Kubernetes Service
  • Azure Kubernetes Service Security
  • Docker File

Compute Solutions under Azure Platform Service

• Guidance to Create Azure App Service Web Apps
  • Azure App Service Security
  • Azure App Service on Linux FAQ
  • Overview of Azure WebJobs
• Guidance to Create Azure App Service mobile apps
  • Offline Sync
  • Push Notification
• Guidance to Create Azure App Service API apps
  • Using MSI
  • Using Keyvault
• Guidance to Implement Azure functions
  • Triggers & Bindings
  • Hosting Options
  • Performance and Reliability

Develop for Azure storage

• Guidance to Develop solutions that use storage tables
  • Using MSI
  • Query Table Storage
• Guidance to Develop solutions that use blob storage
  • Handle Concurrency in Blob
  • AzCopy Tool
• Guidance to Develop solutions that use a relational database
  • Security Capabilities
  • Always Encrypted
  • Dynamic Data Masking
• Guidance to Develop solutions that use Cosmos DB storage
  • CosmosDB FAQ
  • Consistency Level
  • High Availability

Implement Azure security

• Guidance to Implement authentication
  • Authentication Scenarios
  • OpenID Connect
  • oAuth 2.0
  • Multi-Factor Authentication
  • Managed Identities
• Guidance to Implement access control
  • Role based Access Control
  • Claims based Access Control
• Guidance to Implement secure data solutions
  • Keyvault Overview

Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize Azure solutions

• Guidance to Develop code to support scalability of apps and services
  • Autoscale Overview
• Guidance to Integrate caching and content delivery within solutions
  • Redis Cache FAQ
  • CDN Overview
• Guidance to Instrument solutions to support monitoring and logging
  • Application Insights FAQ
  • Application Insights Usage Overview

Connect to and Consume Azure Services and Third-party Services

• Guidance to Develop an App Service Logic App
  • Logic Apps Overview
  • Logic Apps Connectors
• Guidance to Integrate Azure Search within solutions
  • Azure Search Service FAQ
  • Azure Search Service Index Management
• Guidance to Establish API Gateways
  • API Management FAQ
  • API Management Policies
• Guidance to Develop event-based solutions
  • Event Hubs Overview
• Guidance to Develop message-based solutions
  • Service Bus FAQ
  • Compare Azure Messaging Services
  • PowerShell Commands

Winding-up

I have gone through the topics before appearing for the exam. This indeed helped me to pass the exam. To sum up, a few suggestions from my side

• Try to understand the above Azure services at a high level (Overview and FAQ section)
• Check out the free learning available in the official exam site
• Take the course Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure (AZ-203) and it requires a Pluralsight subscription. Please note this is optional
• A study guide AZ-203-Developing-Solutions-Microsoft-Azure is available
• Security and Compliance are of prime importance nowadays. Thereupon the recommendation is to review the security capabilities of the Azure services. Please refer to Azure Security center for more details
• Go through the Samples section available in the Github repository for hands-on implementation
• Say NO to AZ-203 dumps for initial preparation. Once you complete preparation, use the AZ-203 dumps as a practice test. There are plenty of AZ-203 dumps available on the internet
• Last but not least, there is no alternative to hard work

With these tips, I wish you all the best for your certification journey. Please share your experience and feedback in the comment section to make the blog post more effective and useful to the developer community.