Microsoft AZ-303 Certification: Azure Architect Technologies

Learn the Azure account hierarchy from enterprise enrollment to departments, accounts, and subscriptions; navigate enterprise and accounts portals, set up resource groups with RBAC, and understand management groups.

Explore how to create, tag, and manage resource groups in the Azure portal, applying cost center and maintenance tags, role-based access control (rbac), deployments, policies, and monitoring.

Learn to create an Azure virtual network in the portal, set the address space 10.0.0.0/23, and build subnets such as 10.0.0.0/24 and 10.0.1.0/24 with a default subnet.

Learn how to create and configure VNet peering between two virtual networks in the Azure portal, including resource group setup, IP ranges, and bidirectional connectivity settings.

Explore how virtual networks access the internet by default using SNAT to a public IP. Identify inbound options and DNS choices, including Azure private DNS zones or customer managed DNS.

Explore virtual machines in Azure, covering VM types from A and D series to specialty instances, compute units, and premium storage. Learn OS support, regional availability, and username restrictions.

Deploy a Windows virtual machine from the Azure portal, configuring subscription, resource group, region, image, and size, then enable RDP and set up networking, disks, and backup.

Discover Azure marketplace images with publisher, offer, and skew, and learn how to create custom images; Windows uses Sysprep, Linux uses deprovision plus the user, then generalize and create image.

Explore horizontal scaling with Azure virtual machine scale sets, defining instance counts and sizes. Use auto scaling with min and max limits based on app or infrastructure metrics.

Compare Azure VM storage types from standard HDD to premium and ultra SSD, and note VM limits, managed versus unmanaged disks, and replication options (locally replicated storage, GRS, RA-GRS).

Enable disk caching on a virtual machine using PowerShell, configure the data disk caching to read-write, and verify via the Azure portal.

Learn Azure VM security best practices, including access control with policies, RBAC, and ARM templates. Implement encryption, backups, updates, and JIT VM access to harden and monitor VMs.

Configure Azure security center to manage a virtual machine, set up a log analytics workspace, install the monitoring agent, and connect data for endpoint protection and vulnerability awareness.

Demonstrate creating a storage account in the Azure portal, including resource group setup, storage v2 gp2, geo redundant replication, public and private endpoints, and blob access via SAS keys.

Learn storage permissions in Azure, including container private access, blob and container public access, and how sas tokens grant granular account or service access with permissions and expiry.

Learn to create and manage shared access signatures in the Azure portal, assign blob permissions, set start and expiry times, restrict by IP addresses, and sign with key1 or key2.

Learn how to map custom domains to Azure storage and CDN, using direct DNS records or a verify subdomain to avoid downtime during domain verification.

Explore how to create an Azure storage account and file share, configure replication and tier settings, and connect to the file share using a PowerShell drive.

Understand how Azure Resource Manager constructs work, including resources, resource groups, and resource providers. See how Microsoft Compute serves virtual machines and how rest-based endpoints support ARM templates.

Demonstrates exporting an arm deployment from the Azure portal as a json template, then downloading, editing parameters and scripts, and deploying via the wizard to reuse as a skeleton.

Explore how Azure AD centralizes identity across on-premises and cloud apps, enabling single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, and self-service password reset.

Explore how Azure AD Connect syncs on-premises Active Directory with Azure Active Directory, and monitor health via Azure AD Connect Health. Understand filtering and the three password sync options.

Examine design decisions for hybrid identity and cloud authentication in Azure AD, comparing password hash sync with seamless SSO, pass-through authentication, and federated options.

Explore Azure Network Watcher to monitor VM connections, view topology, run connection monitors, verify IP flow, inspect next hops, and capture packets.

Log analytics centralizes monitoring by collecting data from diverse sources, including virtual machines, Windows event logs, and performance counters, enabling queries, visualizations, and alerts across Azure services.

Explore Azure Security Center, from getting started with agents and pricing to threat protection, endpoint protection, vulnerability assessment, adaptive controls, just-in-time VM access, and regulatory compliance checks.

Create and organize resource groups in the Azure portal, assign subscriptions and regions, and apply mandatory tags as key-value pairs to manage lifecycle and deletions.

Use Azure resource locks to prevent accidental deletion of resource groups or storage accounts, choosing read only or cannot delete locks, with read only being the most restrictive.

Enforce governance in Azure with built-in or custom Azure policies, restricting boundaries in the portal or ARM templates, assignable to subscriptions or resource groups, applied via portal or PowerShell.