Study guide for Exam AZ-204: Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure - A guide made through notes and self-study guide

The content here is under the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license

Before we start, this is a collection of what I went through to get the 204 certification from Azure. The process was similar to the one I did for AWS. The idea is to get some structure on how to get started with the subjects needed to pass the exam.

Before taking the exam I started to work with Azure services for about one year. Also, I feel comfortable with how to navigate the integration between terraform and Azure (terraform is not related by any means to Azure exam, it was just how I got used to it).

Then I started collecting resources and got some help from different people on the journey, this is also an attempt to document and share how the process was for me and which areas of the exam are covered. I know that most of the content here is already shared on the internet, but the approach I am taking is more personal, instead of a course or an overview.

Before starting

While I was starting with the content and what is covered in the exam, I started to poke around and get everything I could (the result is the next section), so from blog posts to official Microsoft material and so on, it was more an exploratory thing.

As I started to feel more familiar with the exam topics and how much they weigh in the exam I went for a more structured way. In a structured way, I focused on some resources from that first around exploring. The result was the resources in the next section. Last but not least, make sure to create your account at Microsoft Learning the material there helps with theory and practice.

The certification goal

Build end-to-end solutions in Microsoft Azure to create Azure Functions, implement and manage webapps, build and manage containers, and develop solutions utilizing Azure storage and CosmosDB.

Takeaways

• The courses are starters, and most of the questions are not related to the courses
• Mock exams are the best way to understand what the exam asks
• Fill in the gap between mock exams and support material

Resources

• AZ-204 Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure by Udemy
• Azure official learning path by Microsoft and study guide by Microsoft
• Pluralsight Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure (AZ-204)
• Study guide for Exam AZ-204: Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure

General concepts

In this section, I will cover some general concepts that are important to understand before going into specifics of the exam. Note that the general concepts are a building block for the exam, questions might use the general concepts to ask about specific Azure services or features.

Service plan

A service plan is a set of resources that are allocated to a specific Azure service. It defines the resources that are available to the service, such as the number of instances, the amount of storage, and the amount of memory. The service plan also defines the pricing for the service, which is based on the resources that are allocated to the service.

Skills measured

The exam goes over a set of skills that are measured in the exam. The skills are divided into five main categories, each with a percentage indicating how much each skill weighs in the exam. The percentages are subject to change, so it is always good to check the official Microsoft documentation for the most up-to-date information. At the moment of writing this post, the exam covers the following skills, and the percentage indicates how much each skill weighs in the exam:

• Compute solutions (25% - 30%)
• Storage solutions (15% - 20%)
• Implementing security (20% -25%)
• Monitor, Troubleshoot and Monitor (15% - 20%)
• Connect and consume services (15% - 20%)

The exam is a mix of multiple-choice questions, drag-and-drop questions, and case studies. The questions are designed to test your knowledge and understanding of the Azure services and how to implement them in real-world scenarios.

What to watch out for

The exam covers different topics and there are specific subjects that are worth double-checking before taking the exam. In this section, there are four: Azure CLI, Azure Graph API and Templates ARM and Powershell.

Request Unit

Azure request unit (RU) is a measure of throughput for Azure services, particularly for Azure Cosmos DB. It represents the amount of resources consumed by a request, such as read and write operations, queries, and indexing. RUs is used for optimizing performance and cost in Azure services. Typical values for RUs are 400, 1000, 2000, 4000, and so on. The higher the RU value, the more resources are allocated to the request, resulting in faster response times and better performance.

Azure CLI

• Commands that are executed to create virtual machines, webapps, and service plans, you can do the same steps that you would’ve done in the web interface.
• The CLI has an az find an AI service that offers advice based on the official documentation

Azure Graph API

• query user data

Templates ARM

ARM (Azure Resource Manager) templates are declarative files that allow the automation of resources management in Azure (it can be creation, deletion, update or whatever). According to Azure docs, any feature available in the portal is also available through ARM templates (missing reference).

There are questions related to the ARM itself, so knowing what it is and how to use it is helpful to score a few questions.

Powershell

Some of the questions are based on Powershell commands, as I am a Linux-based developer I wasn’t familiar with Powershell the book “PowerShell 101 The No-Nonsense Beginner’s Guide to PowerShell” by Mike F Robbins (Robbins, 2018) also helped me to get a basic understanding (it is also recommended under the official Microsoft documentation).

• Full reference on Azure PowerShell commands

Are you on linux? Microsoft has powershell for linux as well, the installation instructions are split by distro

Powershell is always required in the exam, so understanding and knowing how to handle that is also useful.

Contoso?

According to Quora assistant contoso is a made-up company name used by Microsoft to keep the content focused in their training and certifications. It was a made-up name.

Other sources

• #1 How to pass Exam AZ-204 Microsoft Azure Developer Associate Certificate in 15 hours Part 1/2
• Azure - my personal playlist
• Demystifying the Azure Well-Architected Framework: Guiding Principles and Design Best Practices for Azure Workloads

Renewing process

The AZ-204 certification is under the renewal program that Microsoft has for its certifications. Each year a set of 25 questions is asked for the certification holder to reevaluate their certification. The certified developer receives an automated email alerting that the renewal process has started and a link to get through the questions. The questions vary across the subjects presented in the certification.

A total of 45 minutes is given to answer the questions and it is allowed one attempt every 24 hours. A minimum of 52% of correct questions is required for candidates to keep their certification. I shared the detailed process in a post.

Badge

Once the certification is passed, a badge is issued by Microsoft and can be shared on social media or on your resume. The badge is issued by Microsoft and can be found on your profile at Microsoft Learning.

Previously, the badge was issued by Credly. Since the end of 2023, Microsoft has moved the certification badges to their own platform, so the badge is now issued by Microsoft Learning. However, the badge can still be found on Credly, but marked as expired. To the best of my knowledge, there is not way to remove the badge from Credly, so it will remain there as a historical record.

References

1. Robbins, M. F. (2018). PowerShell 101 - The No-Nonsense Beginner’s Guide to PowerShell. Leanpub.

Changelog

• Jun 26, 2025 - Updated information about the badge
• Jan 19, 2025 - Updated content with quiz