Introduction

I obtained the Azure Security Engineer Associate (AZ-500) certification for a month ago and right after passing the certification. I decided to get the Azure Solution Architect Expert (AZ-305) certification since the knowledge in AZ-500 and AZ-104 correlates with AZ-305.

Preparation

As always I first read through the Microsoft Learn: AZ-305 course. While going through the course I took notes and created graphs to further increase my understanding about Azure resources and features. Here is a example of the graphs which I make during the note taking process:

Azure Service Bus

Azure Event Hub

I also spent a lot of time going through my notes and researching the Azure resources and features which I wasn't familiar with such as:

• Azure Service Fabric
• Azure Cache for Redis
• Azure Application Insights
• Azure Data Lake
• Azure Data Factory
• Azure IT Service Management Connector
• Azure NetApp
• Azure Diagnostic Extension
• Azure HDInsights
• Azure SQL Analytics

Once I was familiar with these Azure resources and features, I spend decent amount of time re-calling the things which I learned throughout AZ-104, AZ-500, and AZ-305 course materials.

Exam

Today at 20:00, I was going through my notes and re-calling the things which I forgot. Out of boredom I decided to check if there were any AZ-305 exam seats available on PersonVUE and I saw one was available at 20:30 so I quickly purchased it and joined the AZ-305 exam.

My adrenaline was extremely high during the AZ-305 exam as I was taking the exam without fully preparing for it which is abnormal for me. Here's a overview of my experience with AZ-305 exam:

• Multiple of choices were difficult but I quickly went through all of these questions as my adrenaline was high
• Non-skipeable multiple of coices wasn't going my way as I was speed reading through some of the questions and probably got one or two questions wrong
• Case study was difficult but I was confident which the answers which I selected as I have been researching Azure for a long-time now

I finished 59 questions in 45 minutes and accidentally ended up pressing the end button without realizing it. The screen took a bit time to load and once successfully loaded I saw that I passed the exam with a score of 780 🎉. I was extremely reliefed and happy that I managed to pass the certification as it has been in my goal list for a while.

Conclusion

The Azure Solution Architect Expert (AZ-305) is a great certification for IT Architects and IT professionals who are interested in designing, implementing, and integrating on-premises solutions to Microsoft Azure. It goes through the best practices and articles to follow while implementing these solutions.