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AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals Certification Course

bolt Everything you need to pass : in one free course.

51 expert modules derived from 50+ exam-style questions. Covers every domain and scenario : organized by blueprint weight so you study what matters most.

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About This Course

AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals · 51 modules

This course covers every domain tested on the AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals exam. Based on our 50+ real practice questions and prepared by certification experts.

info What you'll learn:

Every exam domain with detailed explanations
Common exam traps that catch unprepared candidates
Key concepts, syntax, and configurations
Real-world scenarios aligned with exam objectives
Quick-reference cheat sheets for last-minute review

Your AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals Roadmap

AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals certification preparation infographic

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The remaining 39 modules cover advanced topics, exam traps, and scenarios that appear on the certification exam.

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What the exam is testing

AZ-900 tests whether you can recognize foundational cloud concepts and choose the most appropriate Azure concept, service, or management tool for a short scenario.

You are not expected to design complex enterprise systems or configure services from memory. You are expected to answer questions such as:

Is this public, private, or hybrid cloud?
Is the best fit IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, or serverless?
Does the scenario need a virtual machine, a container, a web app, or a function?
Does the network requirement call for VNet peering, VPN Gateway, ExpressRoute, a public endpoint, or a private endpoint?
Is the question about governance, cost, monitoring, security, or deployment?
Which Azure tool solves the stated problem most directly?

The official passing score is 700 or greater. Treat every question as a decision problem: identify the requirement, eliminate unrelated service categories, and select the option that most directly solves the problem.

How to think like the exam

Most AZ-900 questions use a simple pattern:

A company has a requirement.
Several answers are real Azure concepts or services.
Only one answer matches the primary requirement.
The strongest distractor often solves a nearby but different problem.

Use this mental sequence:

Identify the category: cloud concept, architecture, compute, network, storage, identity, cost, governance, deployment, or monitoring.
Highlight the decisive words: private, over the public internet, without managing servers, prevent deletion, estimate cost before deployment, service incident, or application telemetry.
Eliminate services from the wrong category.
Choose the simplest Azure option that directly satisfies the requirement.
Do not add complexity unless the scenario requires it.

How to use this course

Use the guide in four passes:

Pass 1: Learn the maps and comparison tables.
Pass 2: Practice service selection by covering the answer column and choosing from the scenario alone.
Pass 3: Review the traps and explain why the best wrong answer fails.
Pass 4: Use the rapid-review section and exam-day checklist.

2. Exam Domains

Domain list and priorities

Official domain	Official weight	Study priority	Why it matters
Describe cloud concepts	25–30%	High	Establishes the vocabulary used in every other domain
Describe Azure architecture and services	35–40%	Very high	Largest domain; contains the most service-selection questions
Describe Azure management and governance	30–35%	Very high	Frequently tests tools that sound similar but solve different problems

Priority notes

Spend the most time on:

Azure architecture, compute, networking, storage, and identity.
Governance, cost management, deployment tools, and monitoring.
Cloud models, service models, shared responsibility, and cloud benefits.

What matters most

The exam repeatedly rewards accurate mapping:

Requirement signal	Likely answer
Control the guest operating system	Azure Virtual Machines / IaaS
Host a web application without patching the OS	Azure App Service / PaaS
Run event-driven code without managing servers	Azure Functions / serverless
Encrypted connection over the public internet	Azure VPN Gateway
Private connectivity that avoids the public internet	ExpressRoute
Private IP access to an Azure service	Private endpoint
Apply standards across resources	Azure Policy
Prevent accidental deletion	Resource lock
Estimate cost before deployment	Azure pricing calculator
Analyze current spending and set budgets	Microsoft Cost Management
Platform incident or planned maintenance	Azure Service Health
Telemetry, logs, metrics, alerts	Azure Monitor
Application performance and failures	Application Insights
Personalized optimization recommendations	Azure Advisor

3. Start-to-Finish Study Path

Foundation

Learn these first:

Public, private, and hybrid cloud.
Consumption-based pricing, CapEx, and OpEx.
Shared responsibility.
High availability, scalability, elasticity, reliability, predictability, governance, and manageability.
IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and serverless.

Checkpoint: you should be able to explain why a VM is usually IaaS, why App Service is PaaS, and why Microsoft 365 is SaaS.

Intermediate

Move to Azure architecture and core services:

Regions, datacenters, availability zones, region pairs, and sovereign regions.
Management groups, subscriptions, resource groups, and resources.
Virtual machines, scale sets, availability sets, Azure Virtual Desktop, containers, Functions, and web apps.
VNets, subnets, peering, Azure DNS, VPN Gateway, ExpressRoute, public endpoints, and private endpoints.
Blob, Files, Queue, Table, managed disks, storage tiers, and redundancy.
Microsoft Entra ID, Entra Domain Services, SSO, MFA, passwordless, external identities, Conditional Access, RBAC, Zero Trust, defense in depth, and Defender for Cloud.

Checkpoint: for each scenario, identify the service category before selecting a product.

Advanced

Focus on confusing pairs and multi-constraint questions:

Availability zone versus availability set versus region pair.
VPN Gateway versus ExpressRoute.
Public endpoint versus private endpoint.
Blob versus Files versus Queue versus Table versus managed disks.
Microsoft Entra ID versus Entra Domain Services.
SSO versus MFA versus passwordless versus Conditional Access.
Azure Policy versus resource locks versus tags versus RBAC.
Advisor versus Service Health versus Monitor versus Log Analytics versus Application Insights.
Pricing calculator versus Cost Management.
Portal versus Cloud Shell versus CLI versus PowerShell versus ARM templates.

Checkpoint: explain why the most tempting distractor is wrong.

Final review

Use the last-day method:

Read the quick memory rules.
Review the service-selection tables.
Rehearse the architecture hierarchy.
Revisit storage redundancy and monitoring tools.
Answer a mixed set of questions without notes.
Review only the concepts you missed.

4. Core Concepts by Domain

Domain 1 : Describe Cloud Concepts

4.1 Cloud computing

Cloud computing delivers computing services over the internet or through a cloud environment. Instead of buying and operating every server yourself, you use resources as needed.

Cloud models

Model	Meaning	Best fit	Common trap
Public cloud	Provider-owned cloud resources shared across customers with logical isolation	Fast deployment, broad cloud services, consumption-based usage	“Public” does not mean your data is automatically public
Private cloud	Cloud environment dedicated to one organization	Dedicated control or specialized internal requirements	Private cloud is not the same as a single private endpoint
Hybrid cloud	Combines on-premises or private-cloud resources with public-cloud services	Gradual migration, legacy dependencies, mixed environments	If any required workload remains on-premises while Azure is also used, consider hybrid

Consumption-based model

You use resources when needed and generally pay according to usage. The key advantage is avoiding unnecessary upfront hardware purchases.

Term	Meaning	Exam clue
Capital expenditure (CapEx)	Upfront purchase of assets such as physical servers	“Buy hardware before deployment”
Operational expenditure (OpEx)	Ongoing spending such as a variable cloud bill	“Monthly bill changes with usage”
Consumption-based pricing	Charges align with resource usage	“Stop paying after deleting or stopping resources”

Shared responsibility model

Cloud adoption changes who manages each layer.

Layer	On-premises	IaaS	PaaS	SaaS
Physical datacenter	Customer	Microsoft	Microsoft	Microsoft
Physical network and hosts	Customer	Microsoft	Microsoft	Microsoft
Guest OS	Customer	Customer	Microsoft	Microsoft
Runtime and middleware	Customer	Customer	Microsoft	Microsoft
Application	Customer	Customer	Customer	Mostly Microsoft
Data, identities, and access decisions	Customer	Customer	Customer	Customer

Rule: the more managed the service, the less infrastructure the customer manages. The customer still remains responsible for data governance, identity choices, and access decisions.

Serverless

Serverless computing lets you run code without managing servers. The cloud provider handles infrastructure management and scaling details.

Exam clue: event-driven code, short execution, trigger-based processing, no server management → Azure Functions.

4.2 Benefits of cloud services

Benefit	Meaning	Scenario clue	Do not confuse with
High availability	Keep a service accessible when failures occur	“Remain available if a component fails”	Scalability
Scalability	Adjust capacity to handle demand	“Increase capacity”	High availability
Horizontal scaling	Add or remove instances	“Add more VMs behind a load balancer”	Vertical scaling
Vertical scaling	Increase or decrease capacity of one resource	“Increase CPU and memory on a VM”	Horizontal scaling
Elasticity	Scale dynamically as demand rises and falls	“Seasonal spike; add and remove resources automatically”	Static scaling
Reliability	Recover from failures and continue operating	“Reduce effect of failures; recover”	Cost optimization
Predictability	Improve confidence in cost or performance planning	“Forecast expected usage or cost”	Guaranteed zero variation
Security	Use cloud controls and provider capabilities to protect resources	“Protect workloads and identities”	Governance
Governance	Enforce standards and organizational rules	“Approved regions and required tags”	Monitoring
Manageability	Deploy and operate resources using portals, CLI, APIs, templates, and automation	“Provision through automation”	Manual administration only

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4.3 Cloud service types

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