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AZ-204 Overview — Format, What’s Tested & How to Prepare

Everything you need to know before taking AZ-204: exam format and scoring, who it’s for, domain weightings, what’s actually hard, and a blueprint-aligned study plan.

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Exam snapshot

  • Exam: AZ-204 — Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure
  • Certification: Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate
  • Format: scenario-heavy multiple choice/multiple response, plus case sets and drag‑and‑drop
  • Passing: scaled score 700 (0–1000)
  • Core focus: App Service + Functions, containers, storage (Cosmos/Blob), security (Entra ID, Key Vault), messaging/eventing, API Management, and Application Insights

How to use this hub: pick a timeline in the 30/60/90-day Study Plan →, then work the Syllabus objective-by-objective. Keep the Cheatsheet open for rapid recall, and validate with Practice under timed conditions.

Skills measured (by domain)

Microsoft’s published weighting (subject to change):

DomainWeight
Develop Azure compute solutions25–30%
Develop for Azure storage15–20%
Implement Azure security15–20%
Monitor and troubleshoot Azure solutions5–10%
Connect to and consume Azure services and third-party services20–25%

What’s actually hard on AZ-204

  • Identity + auth nuance: picking the right auth flow, validating tokens, and choosing managed identity vs app secrets.
  • Secure access patterns: Key Vault vs App Configuration, SAS vs RBAC, and least‑privilege reasoning.
  • Messaging/event selection: Event Grid vs Event Hubs vs Service Bus vs Storage Queues (and why).
  • Compute trade-offs: App Service vs Functions vs Container Apps vs ACI (scale, cold start, ops, cost).
  • Operational thinking: Application Insights signals, alerts, and troubleshooting “why is this failing?” scenarios.

Readiness checklist

  • I can deploy a web API to App Service, set app settings, enable diagnostics, and use slots safely.
  • I can build/push an image to ACR and run it on Container Apps or ACI.
  • I can implement Functions triggers and bindings and handle retries + poison messages.
  • I can do CRUD and queries with Cosmos DB SDK, choose consistency, and use change feed.
  • I can use Blob SDK, metadata/properties, and lifecycle policies.
  • I can implement Microsoft Identity platform auth and call Microsoft Graph.
  • I can secure secrets with Key Vault and use managed identity in code.
  • I can instrument apps with Application Insights and build basic alerts.
  • I can publish and protect APIs with API Management and policies.

Study plan (efficient)

  1. Pick a timeline: 30/60/90-day Study Plan →
  2. Work the Syllabus task-by-task; drill immediately after each task.
  3. Keep a miss log: convert misses into one-liner rules (“Event Grid routes events; Event Hubs ingests streams”, “Prefer managed identity over client secrets”).
  4. Final 10–14 days: mixed sets + at least a couple timed runs; review every miss.

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Study Plan