The cloud industry has been going through major changes. Everyday things are moving so fast and keeping up to date on your area of expertise is important. Earning cloud certification is one way to learn and test your skills. Microsoft Azure developer certification AZ-203 validates the developer’s knowledge about the Microsoft cloud platform. The article intends to provide study guides (books, pdf, links, etc.) of the AZ-203 syllabus. You can also use the practice test to prepare for the real exam. It’s my advice not to rely on the AZ-203 dumps. It might help you to pass the exam but it’s of no use thereafter.

A new version of the exam, AZ-204, became available on February 24, 2020. You’ll have the ability to take this exam before it retires on or about August 31, 2020.

AZ-203 Exam Structure

Microsoft had revamped the certification track to introduce role-based certification. You can become an “Azure Developer Associate” after earning the Azure developer certification AZ-203 exam. To make certification more effective, the exam comes with a new format. It has around 45-55 questions divided into 4 to 5 sections. There are case studies and questions that are scenario-based referring to the case studies. Pay special attention while reading the instruction during the exam. Also, make sure to distribute the allocated 180 minutes to cover all the sections and questions. There could be a section where answers are unchangeable, once given.

AZ-203 Exam Prerequisites

Candidate aspires to take the Azure developer certification AZ-203 exam, should have at least 6 months of hands-on experience of Microsoft Azure. Any prior experience with other cloud platforms like AWS, GCP, etc. helps to get hold of the concepts in Azure. You can refer to the AZ-203 official site, learning paths, and study guides for more details.

AZ-203 Exam Guidance

The AZ-203 syllabus includes six high-level sections such as

I would recommend going through every topic to understand the services in detail. At the same time, I’ve compiled the following list based on my experience while preparing for the exam. It is important to realize that hands-on knowledge is must-have to pass the exam along with the knowledge of the below-mentioned list of topics

Compute Solutions under Azure Infrastructure Service

Compute Solutions under Azure Platform Service

Develop for Azure storage

Implement Azure security

Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize Azure solutions

Connect to and Consume Azure Services and Third-party Services

Winding-up

I have gone through the topics before appearing for the exam. This indeed helped me to pass the exam. To sum up, a few suggestions from my side

Try to understand the above Azure services at a high level (Overview and FAQ section)

Check out the free learning available in the official exam site

Take the course Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure (AZ-203) and it requires Pluralsight subscription. Please note this is optional

A study guide AZ-203-Developing-Solutions-Microsoft-Azure is available

Security and Compliance are of prime importance nowadays. Thereupon the recommendation is to review the security capabilities of the Azure services. Please refer Azure Security center for more details

Go through the Samples section available in Github repository for hands-on implementation

Say NO to AZ-203 dumps for initial preparation. Once you complete preparation, use the AZ-203 dumps as a practice test. There are plenty of AZ-203 dumps available on the internet

Last but not least, there is no alternative to hard work

With these tips, I wish you all the best for your certification journey. Please share your experience and feedback in the comment section to make the blog post more effective and useful to the developer community.