Microsoft learning pathways for Admins (2020)
Hello!
My name is Jack and I help lead the Microsoft practice at Servian. A big part of my role is helping grow the skills and capabilities of our consultants in Azure and other technologies. I often get asked what Azure learning pathways people should consider studying, based on their specific background and experience. Whilst I am always happy to spend the time with people discussing their goals, I thought it would be good to capture and publish some of the more common guidance that I give to our consultants and our clients. I hope that this guide will be helpful to others when they are starting their journey into Microsoft and Azure, specifically as an Administrator.
If you are an infrastructure admin, network engineer, service delivery tech or other front-line IT systems administrator, this guide should help you navigate the various Microsoft learning pathways currently available to you. If you’re the kind of person who understands VMs, containers, hypervisors and probably sheds a sympathetic tear while reading the Phoenix Project, read on.
If you’re looking for developer, data or DevOps pathways instead, I’ll be adding these over the next few weeks, so stay tuned. In the meantime, Microsoft has this high-level guide of the available certifications.
As an aside, the administrator learning pathway is fantastic for anybody who wants a deeper understanding of the core technologies that underpin many of the Azure PaaS services and will help you in resolving some of the trickier integration challenges that you can come across while working with them.
TL;DR: AZ-900 (5 days) -> AZ-104 (6 weeks) -> AZ-400 / AZ-500 (optional)
How to study
In our experience, the easiest way has been to combine the practical, modular content from Microsoft Learn and some more conceptual, lecture-style content from a platform such as Udemy or Coursera. Finally, practice exams offered through Microsoft or third-party providers can help you gain confidence before you schedule your certification exam.
We generally find that you can keep up the momentum with as little as two hours dedicated study time per week. Any less makes it difficult to context switch and cover enough content during study sessions.
That being said, different people have different study habits and styles of learning — it’s okay if you find another way that works for you!
Start with your AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals
Within Servian and to our clients, I’ve always recommended that anyone new to Azure, for all learning pathways, should probably start with the Azure Fundamentals AZ-900.
The AZ-900 is not a pre-requisite, and those with previous cloud experience could skip it, but I recommend you do it anyway. It covers a broad range of core, underlying cloud knowledge, and maps it back to Azure concepts at a high level. It helps you orient yourself not only to Azure but to the Microsoft Learn platform and the often-tricky Pearson-provided online proctored exams too.
Fellow Servianite Perth Ngarmtrakulchol has written a fantastic guide that can help you pass your AZ-900 in as little as three days — check it out!
Next, study the AZ-104 Azure Administrator
Next up is the big one — The AZ-104 Azure Administrator. This certificate covers the core underpinning technologies that make up any public cloud: identity, governance, storage, compute, and virtual networks.
While the AZ-900 can be completed in a weekend, the AZ-104 is a much longer exam that covers a lot more content. We find that with a few hours per week of study, people can usually knock this over in 4 to 6 weeks. Practice exams are almost required for this certification, as many of the questions will require you to remember specific CLI or PowerShell commands, and does cover some specifics of Windows system administration too, which may be new to some.
At this point, you’re a certified Azure Administrator! Well done! But you might be curious where you could go from here?
Finally, consider the AZ-400 or AZ-500
By now, you know how to deploy, manage and secure most of anything on Azure. However, you might want to automate that a bit or get a little more proactive in your security posture. For those respective itches, there is the AZ-400 DevOps Engineer Expert pathway and the AZ-500 Security Engineer Associate.
Both security and automation are two skills that are in very high demand, and with more and more people working remotely, this demand is likely to continue. Taking the next step now from administration into one of these pathways could be a proactive next step in your career, offer a leg-up in a tough labour market, or bring much-needed relief to an under-resourced team or project.
