Over the past 3 months, Microsoft has announced many changes to certification and exams. Some of them are described in this article .This article focuses not on completely new exams, but on updated versions of pre-existing ones: AZ-104 for administrators, AZ-204 for developers, AZ-303 and AZ-304 for architects.In January 2020 (just under 1.5 years from the initial announcement of role-based exams at Ignite2018, 1 year and 1 month after the advent of az-203 and az-103), Microsoft announced changes in exams for developers, administrators, architects and ai engineers (the latter is not as important as the first 3).Some exams are already available (az-204 / az-104) in beta, and architecture exams will be available later. It will be possible to pass the old (current) exams before the end of August 2020 (the deadlines were postponed due to Covid-19).It seems that Microsoft has learned from the last announcement when it “bombed” and “burned” very hard. In particular, after the introduction of new exams, new certificates are not introduced: as they were administrator / developer / architect, they remained. In general, multiplication by zero did not happen and for the external observer, as if nothing had changed, because before, certificates were visible, not exams.In this article I will tell you what has changed in the exams.The community rarely enjoys changing exams because each time this multiplies their previous exams by zero (even if this is not entirely true, the community still perceives this). But here, "not everything is so simple."Why did you need new exams at all?Microsoft , , , . .
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Let's move on to exam changes.AZ-203 / AZ-204
Analysis of changes made on the basis of official skill measurements . On the one hand, there are very few changes in az-204, relative to az-203. On the other hand, az-203 is already the second version, as he replaced az-200beta / az-201beta and from the second attempt, it was much easier to do normally.In AZ-204, the following were removed from the large: Azure Search, Azure Batch, Azure API / Mobile apps, Azure Storage Tables, Azure SQL Azure. From the experience of conducting courses in 2019, there were a lot of complaints about the inclusion of these services (except SQL) in the exam, because experienced developers who wrote on Azure for several years in different projects, these services have never been seen. Of course, this is subjective, but in a large sample, it is already representative.- Azure Search ( ) – , , Azure Batch azure developers , .. - Data .
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- Various trifles - such as “why should a developer know about disk encryption”, I suggest not discussing it much.
Let's move on to the AZ-104 for administratorsAZ-103 / AZ-104
Unlike Az-204, where they were removed in whole sections, and rearrangements were quite small, in Az-104 there was a continuous rearrangement.Instead of the subscription management section , we now have a proud Governance i.e. subscriptions, resource groups + a little about identity management.The Storage section contains the following changes:- Removed backup from storage (it’s logical, because it’s not storage) and moved it to a separate backup and monitoring section
- They removed the databox, which is also normal, because very few people work with him in practice, and what to ask about him at the exam is decidedly not clear.
- Removed CDN, because it is also not storage.
- Removed activity logs, because this is also not a storage specific thing, moved to a separate section backup and monitoring
The Virtual Machines section has been transformed into a Compute section and now contains not only Virtual Machines, but also Managed Kubernetes Cluster, Containers Instances and Web AppsAt the same time, DSC was also removed, although it may have been disguised as custom script extensions in the end. DSC, of course, is an interesting technology, but trivial, and in a world where Linux is much larger, it is not so interesting (in my personal opinion).The Networking section has been heavily supplemented. It clearly appeared Azure Application Gateway, Azure Bastion, Azure WAN.A separate monitoring section has appeared, which was previously part of the “Azure Resource Utilization”, which, frankly, does not correspond to the essence.Identity / Azure Active DirectoryVery much, the Azure Active Directory section has lost weight and has transformed. I rather support this decision, as Well, not every day we configure MFA (usually a one-time operation, for the whole tenant? and then not everyone uses azure MFA). Synchronization via ad connect is also good that they removed it, because although many clients use it, they usually set it up 1 time and don’t touch it anymore (99% of admins have never seen it, although they have been administering azure around the clock) Intotal, in my subjective opinion, the requirements for knowledge have not changed much, but the structure content has become more logical.Moving on to the biggest change - exams for architects.AZ-300 & AZ301-> AZ-303 / AZ-304
To pass a certificate in architecture, you had to pass 2 Design & Implementation exams. In this sense, nothing has changed: as there were 2 exams, it remains. But the structure of the exams has been greatly revised. In my opinion, the set of knowledge and experience, in fact, has not changed, but the structure of exams has changed radically. Conclusions are made on the basis of new skill measures 1 and 2.Parts that, of course, are good for real architects to know, but they are not Azure specific or are difficult to verify directly, were removed. For example, there was a section: “collecting requirements” in az-301.On the exam, using the scripts “case study”, you can understand whether the architect can isolate important requirements or not. But for the real collection of requirements you need to do whiteboarding sessions, questionnaires, hackathons and workshops. In tests this is not done.Of the 301 exams, they also “sawed out” the section on creating roles, persons, etc. Based on my experience in the role of Solution Architect, I can say that such things are work for Business Analytics, and only when there are none in the project, you can do it yourself. And Azure has nothing to do with it.The part that required the architect to be able to write SQL code was removed. The thing is useful, but there are different dialects, and in general, where does the architecture ?! An architect can play the role of a Tech Lead project, but in this case, questions about the basic sql syntax are not an architect's problem. But the High Availability architect should know, even if he is not a very large specialist in Data.Rather abstract words about Security from the SSL / TLS series were removed and replaced with specific services such as Azure Key Vault and Azure AD Managed Identity.It's nice that the migration section was nevertheless described in the Az-303 exam, and before the update it was too laconic.But in 304 it was only reformulated The networking section has become more azure features / services specific. In fact, we were told what to know. It used to be very abstract: network security, but what is included in it is not clear.Design Data management, Design Storage strategy, Data Protection, Archiving strategy (taken from Business continuity) were reduced to choosing the right databases and storage account. In my opinion, this is more of a repackaging than a change in content. Many points could be reduced, and so it was.The Design and Document Dataflow section became Design Data Integration, and services were also directly listed. It's nice that unchecked questions like “creating data flow diagrams” were removed. Once again, it seems to me that the description for az-301 was written about an abstract architect, and in 304 they decided to write only what can be verified and which is specific to azure.But the authorization section (looking at the list of topics) has changed completely. Previously, it was an abstract “blabla”. In the new version, they ask for specific services and features of Azure AD and Azure. Although, part of the new issues, he could also enter into governance.The Compute section, in fact, has not changed, except that they added an item about AKS, but it was previously in other sections, so we can say that nothing has changed.The Integration API section has been moved to the Design an Application Architecture section. Event / messages that were removed from the Az-300 (and eventually settled in az-304) fell into the same section.There, in Design an Application Architecture, the Design Deployments section moved.High Availability did not seem to have changed, just part of the questions went to Business continuity.The Disaster Recovery section also absorbed the backup part. It became more logical.So, we can confidently say that in the Az-303 / AZ-304 sections underwent a very large rearrangement and refactoring. But the amount of verified knowledge, in my opinion, has not changed. Those who were preparing for past exams should not have a problem passing a new one.If you look at all 4 exams, then there are noticeable improvements in the structure of exams (or at least in the structure of skill measurements). However, if you have created training courses, then you will have to redesign and restructure them.