AZ-305 study plan

Your step-by-step plan

1. Map the blueprint and book a date

   Day 1

   Read Microsoft's skills-measured outline and the four design areas with their weights. Book a provisional date now: a fixed date turns open-ended study into a plan and is the strongest predictor of actually sitting. Note that Infrastructure and Identity, Governance, and Monitoring are roughly two thirds of the exam between them, so weight your time accordingly.

2. Build the design-decision maps

   Week 1

   Before drilling any domain, build the decision trees the whole exam rests on: identity and governance (system versus user-assigned identity, RBAC versus Policy, Log Analytics workspace design) and compute (VMs versus AKS versus Container Apps and ACI versus Functions plans). Use the recall prompts in this guide: cover the answer, choose from the constraint, then reveal. If you cannot pick from the requirement alone, you do not own it yet.

3. Go deep on Infrastructure (Domain 4)

   Weeks 1 to 3

   This is the largest domain, so it gets the most time. Drill the compute decision tree, Functions plan timeouts, API Management tier differences, CQRS and other application patterns, and hub-and-spoke networking. Practise on scenario questions and read the worked explanation on every one, including the ones you got right, watching for the named constraint that picks the answer.

4. Lock Identity, Governance, and Monitoring (Domain 1)

   Weeks 3 to 4

   These are reliable marks if you separate the layers cleanly: RBAC for who can act, Policy and management groups for what is allowed, diagnostic settings and Log Analytics design for observability. Do the managed-identity and workspace-design calls by hand until the requirement alone decides them, and learn the diagnostic-setting destination limit.

5. Cover Data Storage and Business Continuity (Domains 2 and 3)

   Week 4

   Storage rewards a clean selection tree (Managed Instance versus SQL Database, Cosmos DB API and consistency rules) plus a few configuration traps. Continuity ties straight to RPO and RTO: the zone-versus-region split, the synchronous-across-zones and asynchronous-across-regions pattern, and the documented limits like the 500-vault cap and fixed ASR cadence. Both are learnable and dependable.

6. Drill weak domains, then space the review

   Week 5

   Use your per-domain accuracy to attack the two domains dragging you down, not to re-read what you already know. Then space it: revisit each domain's recall prompts after a few days and again a week later. Spacing roughly doubles what sticks compared with cramming.

7. Sit timed mocks and rehearse case studies

   Weeks 5 to 6

   Take at least one full timed mock under exam conditions to rehearse pacing and the flag-and-return habit, and practise reading a case study once to extract every requirement before answering its question cluster. Treat the score as a per-domain readiness signal, not a single number, and review every missed question, naming the constraint you misread, before you book or sit.

Frequently asked questions