My tips and tricks for passing the AZ-204 Azure Developer Associate exam

I passed the AZ-204: Azure Developer Associate exam in August 2024 and would like to share some important tips before you take the exam.

General information

• I booked the Microsoft Exam Replay: MCP exam + Retake from Mindhub for peace of mind. In the end, I did not need to retake exam and passed on the first try.
• The online exam lasted 100 minutes and consisted of 53 questions. No labs were included. I used the entire time available to review questions I wasn’t 100% sure about.
• The first 6 questions were part of a study case, followed by many stand-alone questions, and the last 6 questions were part of a second study case.
• I found the study cases easy to understand and answer, but some stand-alone questions were challenging. Every minor detail in the question description can matter!
• Be 100% focused while reading the questions. Do not skim the text; read it carefully from top to bottom, and read it again if you don’t understand something.
• While taking the exam I used the link to Microsoft Learn provided in the onVUE application. The browser has no URL input field, and external links on the Microsoft Learn webpages do not work. You can use the search bar to type in keywords and search through the resulting pages.
• The Ctrl+F browser shortcut to search within the contents of the Microsoft Learn webpages is deactivated..
• Use keywords from a question you are unsure about and try to get information from the search results page. Avoid visually scanning detailed articles, as this will cost you valuable time.
• You can use a widescreen and split it in half. On one side, place the onVUE application with the questions, and on the other side, the Microsoft Learn webpage you opened via the onVUE application. This procedure is also shown in the video (click on the Launch the Sandbox button in AZ-204 page) from Microsoft when taking the demo exam.
• Do not try to search for every question; there is not enough time. My approach was to click on the Review Later checkbox for questions I wasn’t 100% sure about and then use Microsoft Learn for these questions.

Topics to focus on

I did self-directed studying, so the following advice is based on that. You may get different types of questions, so be prepared to study more content than the resources I provide below.

• Read all the modules from the self-directed Course AZ-204. The information is well-structured, the examples are helpful for hands-on experience, and the questions in the knowledge check units are similar to those on the real exam.
• While going through the modules, I took compact notes in OneNote, which helped summarize the content before the exam. My notes can be summarized in the following topics, however, this list does not cover the whole content:
  • App Services (WebApps)
    • Differences between scale up/down and scale in/out. Read more in the Microsoft Documentation.
    • Tiers that support autoscaling.
    • How to apply scale rules.
    • Azure CLI commands for WebApps.
    • Theory behind deployment slots.
    • Basics about ARM templates.
  • Functions
    • Differences between the tiers.
    • Configuration in the function.json and host.json files.
    • Difference between triggers and bindings.
  • Storage Accounts
    • Data access tiers (Hot, Cool, Cold, Archive).
    • Lifecycle policy management.
  • Cosmos DB
    • Consistency levels (Strong, Session, Eventual, etc.).
    • How to use a Change Feed. Read more in the Microsoft Documentation.
    • Metadata & composite indexes.
  • Containers (Registry, Instances, Apps)
    • Docker commands.
    • When to use Container Apps vs. Container Instances. Read more in the Microsoft Documentation.
  • Authentication / Authorization (Entra ID)
    • Theory behind Managed Identities & RBAC.
    • Azure CLI commands for Key Vault and File Share.
    • Azure CLI commands for the App Configuration service.
    • How to create new SAS and why to combine it with Stored Access Policies.
    • How to query the Microsoft Graph.
  • API Management
    • Create as many API policies as possible for practical experience. Read more in the Microsoft Documentation.
  • Event Based Solutions (Event Grid, Event Hub)
    • Differences between Service Bus, Event Queues, Event Grid, Event Hub (e.g., max size per message/event). Read more in the Microsoft Documentation.
  • Message Queues (Service Bus, Storage Queues)
    • Filtering messages.
    • Authenticating against a Service Bus service.
  • Application Insights
    • Instrumentation key and its usage.
  • Caching
    • Scenarios for using Redis Cache.
    • Steps used by a CDN to make a resource available to the user.
• Go through all the Lab exercises and apply the steps in your own Azure subscription. These labs taught me valuable lessons, and many exam questions were based on the topics covered in the exercises.
• Pass the Practice Assessment multiple times. I started with some failed attempts and finished with 5 passed attempts before taking the official exam. Do not try to memorize the answers; understand the reasons behind them.
• Optionally, you can go through the questions found in this Github repository. The explanations for some questions helped me understand topics in Entra ID and Service Bus better.
• I did not use any question dumps, as I wanted to deep-dive into the topics and refresh my practical experience with Azure Services. I suggest avoiding them, as the goal should be to learn the content to pass the exam, not just to pass the exam.
• I did not pay for any video resources available online. I think the content covered in the official Microsoft documentation suffices.

I hope this guide gives you a direction for your studies. I consider the certification an absolute must-have for people working with Microsoft technologies.