Welcome to our Microsoft Azure Architect training. The purpose of this learning path is to prepare you for Microsoft’s AZ-303 exam, which is one of the two exams you need to pass to earn Microsoft’s Azure Architect certification. The AZ-303 exam is focused on how to implement solutions on Azure.

My name’s Guy Hummel and I’m a Microsoft Certified Azure Architect Expert.

The AZ-303 exam tests your knowledge of four subject areas, and that’s how we’ve structured this learning path as well.

We’ll start with Implementing and Monitoring an Azure Infrastructure. This is the biggest section by far, and it covers a wide variety of topics, including monitoring, storage, virtual machines, networking, identities, and more. You have to know these topics in great depth for the exam. For example, in addition to knowing how to create a virtual machine, you also need to know how to make it highly available, and how to automate VM deployment using Azure Resource Manager. In the network area, you need to know how to connect virtual networks together using VNET peering and virtual network gateways. In the identities area, you need to know how to synchronize Azure AD with an on-premises Active Directory server and also enable single sign-on. These are just some of the technical details you need to know in each area.

The next section is on Implementing Management and Security Solutions. First, you’ll learn how to migrate your on-premises servers to the cloud using Azure Migrate. Once you have applications in Azure, you’ll usually want to implement load balancing, which helps improve both performance and availability. You’ll also want to protect your applications using services like Azure Firewall and Network Security Groups. In the governance area, you’ll learn how to limit each user’s access level to only as much as they need by using role-based access control.

The third section, Implementing Solutions for Apps, is one of the shortest. You’ll learn how to deploy apps using a variety of services, including Azure App Service, Azure Logic Apps, Azure Functions, Azure Kubernetes Service, or Azure Container Instances.

Finally, we’ll cover Implementing and Managing Data Platforms. This is another short section. You’ll learn about Microsoft’s groundbreaking NoSQL database called Cosmos DB. You’ll also need to know how to configure Microsoft’s primary relational database service, which is called Azure SQL Database.

That’s a lot of great topics to learn, so let’s get started! To get to the next course in this learning path, click on the Learning Path pullout menu on the left side of the page. But please remember to rate this introduction before you go on to the next course. Thanks!