Microsoft Azure Fundamentals: AZ-900 Course + Practice Tests

Explore cloud computing concepts, including on-demand services and pay-as-you-go pricing. Learn core traits like high availability, scalability, elasticity with auto-scaling, reliability, and global reach to prepare for AZ-900.

Define cloud deployment models and compare public, private, and hybrid clouds, highlighting how each affects control, security, cost, and compliance in Azure environments.

Explore cloud service types—IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS—and the shared responsibility model across Azure. Learn when to use each for control, development, and productivity.

Understand the shared responsibility model in Azure, detailing which security, data, and access duties you own versus Microsoft across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

Master Azure consumption-based pricing, CapEx to OpEx shift, pay-as-you-go metering, and cost control with reserved instances, Spot VMs, tagging, and the cost management tools.

Understand service level agreements as Microsoft's uptime guarantees for Azure services, interpret 99.9% to 99.99% availability, and learn how composite SLAs multiply and improve through redundancy across availability zones.

Explore serverless computing and containers on Azure, including Functions, Logic Apps, container instances, and AKS, with consumption-based pricing and code-first versus workflow-first approaches.

Discover how cloud computing delivers high availability, scalability, elasticity, reliability, predictability, agility, security and governance, global reach, and manageability with Azure for the AZ-900 exam.

Explore Azure regions, availability zones, and region pairs to optimize resilience, performance, and cost. Learn how data residency, cross-region transfers, and service availability shape architecture.

Learn how Azure datacenters and sovereign regions provide physical and logical isolation, separate portals and compliance for Azure government, Azure China, and sensitive workloads, and how to plan cross-cloud deployments.

Learn how Azure resources fit into resource groups, logical containers used to manage cost, security, and automation, with RBAC, policies, and tags not automatically inherited at the group level.

Explore how Azure subscriptions define billing and access, and how management groups govern subscriptions from root to resources with inherited policies and RBAC.

Discover how Azure Resource Manager centralizes deployments, ensures consistency and security with RBAC and tagging, and enables automation through ARM templates and infrastructure as code.

Explore Azure virtual machines from size and image to region and pricing, focusing on uptime with availability sets and zones, plus spot VMs and VMSS for scalable workloads.

Explore the three Azure compute types—VMs, containers, and functions—and learn when to choose each for event-driven, scalable deployments using ACI, AKS, and serverless functions.

Explore how VMSS automatically scales identical VMs for reliable, scalable workloads, while availability sets provide redundancy, and Azure Virtual Desktop supports remote work from any device.

Discover Azure App Service as a platform for hosting web apps and APIs, compare it with VMs, containers, and functions, and learn about deployment slots and autoscale.

Select the right VM size, storage type, and cost model based on CPU, memory, and storage needs to optimize performance and cost in Azure.

Explore Azure virtual networks and subnets, CIDR addressing, and VNet peering over Azure's private backbone to enable private, secure communication and hybrid connectivity across regions.

Explore Azure DNS and private DNS zones to enable internal name resolution across VNets, with record types A, CNAME, MX, and TXT, plus VNet linking and auto-registration.

Explore public, private, and service endpoints in Azure, and learn how private endpoints use Azure Private Link with a private IP, while service endpoints extend VNet identity using public IP.

Explore Azure hybrid connectivity with VPN gateway, Azure Bastion, and ExpressRoute; compare site-to-site and point-to-site VPNs and learn secure VM management without public IPs.

Explore Azure load balancing services to ensure high availability and responsive apps. Identify when to use load balancer, application gateway, Traffic Manager, and Front Door, plus health checks and WAF.

Learn how NSGs and ASGs secure Azure traffic with priority-based rules and scalable grouping. Compare NSGs with Azure Firewall and use Network Watcher to test and apply defense in depth.

Explore Azure storage account types and services, including blob, files, queue, and table storage, disc storage for VMs, performance tiers standard and premium, and Data Lake storage Gen2.

Explore Azure blob storage tiers: hot, cool, and archive, and learn how to choose the right tier, optimize costs with lifecycle management policies, and understand rehydration times.

Explore Azure storage redundancy options to keep data available during hardware failures and regional outages. Understand LRS, ZRS, GRS, RA-GRS, GZRS, and RA-GZRS for different durability and region pair scenarios.

Explore securing storage access in Azure with keys, SAS, and Microsoft Entra ID RBAC; learn encryption in rest and in transit, firewalls, private endpoints, and Defender for storage.

Explore Azure file transfer tools: AzCopy for automated bulk transfers, Storage Explorer for management, Portal for quick uploads, File Sync for on-prem to Azure synchronization, and Databox for offline migrations.

Assess, plan, and migrate on-prem workloads to Azure using Azure Migrate, Data Box, Azure File Sync, and Azure Import/Export, with dependency mapping and offline transfer options.

Discover Microsoft Entra ID, a cloud-based identity and access manager with single sign-on for users, groups, devices, and apps, and Entra Domain Services for legacy LDAP/NTLM in the cloud.

Explore Azure authentication methods, including SSO, MFA, and passwordless, using SAML and OIDC to secure sign-ins across Microsoft apps and thousands of third-party SaaS platforms.

Explore how azure external identities enable secure collaboration with partners and customers using b2b and b2c. Learn when to use each, how guest access works, and how conditional access applies.

Learn how Azure RBAC governs what users can do across management group to resource scopes, using owner, contributor, reader, and user access administrator roles with inheritance and least privilege.

Explore zero trust and conditional access in Azure, where every access request is verified, MFA is enforced, and device compliance is checked by Intune and Entra ID protection.

Explore defense in depth in Azure, the seven layers—physical, identity, perimeter, network, compute, application, data—and how Defender for Cloud, secure score, and the compliance dashboard monitor and improve security.

Explore how Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a centralized view of security across Azure, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments, using security posture management, threat protection, and compliance tracking to protect resources.

Explore how to monitor and optimize Azure costs with cost management and billing, cost analysis, budgets, and Azure Advisor to reduce always-on resources, over provisioning, and data egress.

Estimate Azure costs before deployment with the pricing calculator and compare on-prem costs using the TCO calculator to plan migrations. Track spending with Azure Cost Management, budgets, and alerts.

Choose the right Azure support plan from basic to premier to balance cost, 24/7 response times, and architecture guidance within your Azure budget.

Apply Azure resource tags to organize resources for cost attribution and governance, and use read-only and delete locks to protect resources from changes or deletions.

Azure policy acts as the governance engine that automatically enforces compliance rules across your environment, using definitions and assignments to apply effects like audit, deny, or deployIfNotExists.

Discover Microsoft Purview, Azure's unified data governance solution, to discover, catalog, classify, and track data across Azure, Microsoft 365, and on-premises for compliance and governance.

Explore the Azure portal, a browser-based graphical user interface for managing Azure resources with dashboards, Cloud Shell, activity log, and quick-start templates, while noting its automation limitations.

Explore Azure Cloud Shell to automate resources using CLI and PowerShell, compare tools, and leverage persistent storage and built-in editor for repeatable tasks.

Explore how Azure Arc extends Azure governance to on-prem and multi-cloud environments, providing a single control plane for Arc enabled servers, Kubernetes, SQL, and data services.

Define, deploy, and manage Azure infrastructure with infrastructure as code powered by Azure Resource Manager, using ARM templates, Bicep, and Terraform for automated, idempotent deployments and DevOps pipelines.

Discover how Azure Advisor acts as your built-in Azure consultant, analyzing telemetry to deliver personalized recommendations across performance, security, reliability, cost, and operational excellence, all free in the portal.

Understand Azure service health, resource health, and the Azure status page to monitor outages, diagnose issues, and trigger proactive alerts and automated responses across your environment.

Discover how Azure Monitor collects, analyzes, and automates responses and alerts to telemetry across Azure, on-prem, and multi-cloud environments, using metrics, logs, activity log, log analytics, and application insights.

Review the three core domains of the AZ-900 exam—cloud concepts, Azure architecture and services, and Azure management and governance—and prepare with diagnostic practice tests to achieve a passing score.