Study guide for Exam AZ-305: Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions

Purpose of this document

This study guide should help you understand what to expect on the exam and includes a summary of the topics the exam might cover and links to additional resources. The information and materials in this document should help you focus your studies as you prepare for the exam.

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Updates to the exam

Our exams are updated periodically to reflect skills that are required to perform a role.

We always update the English language version of the exam first. Some exams are localized into other languages, and those are updated approximately eight weeks after the English version is updated. Other available languages are listed in the Schedule Exam section of the Exam Details webpage. If the exam isn't available in your preferred language, you can request an additional 30 minutes to complete the exam.

Note

The bullets that follow each of the skills measured are intended to illustrate how we are assessing that skill. Related topics may be covered in the exam.

Note

Most questions cover features that are general availability (GA). The exam may contain questions on Preview features if those features are commonly used.

Skills measured as of October 18, 2024

Audience profile

As a Microsoft Azure solutions architect, you have subject matter expertise in designing cloud and hybrid solutions that run on Azure, including:

  • Compute

  • Network

  • Storage

  • Monitoring

  • Security

Your responsibilities for this role include advising stakeholders and translating business requirements into designs for Azure solutions that align with the Azure Well-Architected Framework and Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure. In this role, you implement solutions on Azure by partnering with various other job roles, including:

  • Developers

  • Administrators

  • Security engineers

  • Data engineers

As a candidate for this exam, you should have advanced experience and knowledge of IT operations, including networking, virtualization, identity, security, business continuity, disaster recovery, data platforms, and governance. You should manage how decisions in each area affect an overall solution. In addition, you should have experience with:

  • Azure administration

  • Azure development

  • DevOps processes

Skills at a glance

  • Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions (25–30%)

  • Design data storage solutions (20–25%)

  • Design business continuity solutions (15–20%)

  • Design infrastructure solutions (30–35%)

Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions (25–30%)

Design solutions for logging and monitoring

  • Recommend a logging solution

  • Recommend a solution for routing logs

  • Recommend a monitoring solution

Design authentication and authorization solutions

  • Recommend an authentication solution

  • Recommend an identity management solution

  • Recommend a solution for authorizing access to Azure resources

  • Recommend a solution for authorizing access to on-premises resources

  • Recommend a solution to manage secrets, certificates, and keys

Design governance

  • Recommend a structure for management groups, subscriptions, and resource groups, and a strategy for resource tagging

  • Recommend a solution for managing compliance

  • Recommend a solution for identity governance

Design data storage solutions (20–25%)

Design data storage solutions for relational data

  • Recommend a solution for storing relational data

  • Recommend a database service tier and compute tier

  • Recommend a solution for database scalability

  • Recommend a solution for data protection

Design data storage solutions for semi-structured and unstructured data

  • Recommend a solution for storing semi-structured data

  • Recommend a solution for storing unstructured data

  • Recommend a data storage solution to balance features, performance, and costs

  • Recommend a data solution for protection and durability

Design data integration

  • Recommend a solution for data integration

  • Recommend a solution for data analysis

Design business continuity solutions (15–20%)

Design solutions for backup and disaster recovery

  • Recommend a recovery solution for Azure and hybrid workloads that meets recovery objectives

  • Recommend a backup and recovery solution for compute

  • Recommend a backup and recovery solution for databases

  • Recommend a backup and recovery solution for unstructured data

Design for high availability

  • Recommend a high availability solution for compute

  • Recommend a high availability solution for relational data

  • Recommend a high availability solution for semi-structured and unstructured data

Design infrastructure solutions (30–35%)

Design compute solutions

  • Specify components of a compute solution based on workload requirements

  • Recommend a virtual machine-based solution

  • Recommend a container-based solution

  • Recommend a serverless-based solution

  • Recommend a compute solution for batch processing

Design an application architecture

  • Recommend a messaging architecture

  • Recommend an event-driven architecture

  • Recommend a solution for API integration

  • Recommend a caching solution for applications

  • Recommend an application configuration management solution

  • Recommend an automated deployment solution for applications

Design migrations

  • Evaluate a migration solution that leverages the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure

  • Evaluate on-premises servers, data, and applications for migration

  • Recommend a solution for migrating workloads to infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS)

  • Recommend a solution for migrating databases

  • Recommend a solution for migrating unstructured data

Design network solutions

  • Recommend a connectivity solution that connects Azure resources to the internet

  • Recommend a connectivity solution that connects Azure resources to on-premises networks

  • Recommend a solution to optimize network performance

  • Recommend a solution to optimize network security

  • Recommend a load-balancing and routing solution

Study resources

We recommend that you train and get hands-on experience before you take the exam. We offer self-study options and classroom training as well as links to documentation, community sites, and videos.

Change log

The table below summarizes the changes between the current and previous version of the skills measured. The functional groups are in bold typeface followed by the objectives within each group. The table is a comparison between the previous and current version of the exam skills measured and the third column describes the extent of the changes.

Skill area prior to October 18, 2024 Skill area as of October 18, 2024 Change
Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions No change
Design authentication and authorization solutions Design authentication and authorization solutions Minor