Recently I had the pleasure of taking part in the 2024 Festive Tech Calendar, an awesome community initiative that shares loads of great content throughout December. This year I took part alongside Steve Brown, who like myself works with Azure on a daily basis, and has lots of Azure exam experience.
Please do check out all of the awesome Festive Tech Calendar Sessions over at https://festivetechcalendar.com/
Download the slides: If you would like a copy of our slides – please click here.
You can watch our session below:
Resources:
I also wanted to share a number of resources that were discussed in the video which can be a huge help if you are preparing for Azure exams soon!
Microsoft Resources:
- Microsoft Learn – this is the key resource when studying for any Microsoft exam, and provides a wealth of information, training, labs, practice questions and more. For anyone studying for an Azure exam, this is exactly where I would recommend starting your journey.
- GitHub Repos – these are another hugely valuable resource, that provides guidance, labs, and course materials. These are often used alongside instructor-led Microsoft courses, but are also a great reference point for those wanting to recap or run through a course in their own time. I’ve shared a few links to course that may be of interest below:
- Microsoft Virtual Training Days – these are free to attend training days, that provide detailed training on a number of topics. You can browse all of the available days and sign up. There are days across a range of subjects, languages, and time zones. These are a great way to help prep for an exam!
- Microsoft Events – Like the training days site, Microsoft events provides a list of events taking place globally, where you can register and attend. These are invaluable for cementing knowledge and gaining insights.
Community Resources:
This section of my post could easily be huge – thanks to the range of community Azure resources available. In our session we highlighted a handful that we’ve used and interacted with recently – as they’ve helped us with exams!
- John Savill – it’s likely if you’ve ever studied any Azure or Microsoft topic, you’ve heard of John Savill and seen his awesome videos. John’s channel is well worth a visit and he has a huge range of content available to help with your study. https://www.youtube.com/@ntfaqguy
- User Groups and Meetups – there are hundreds of Microsoft user groups and meetups globally, and these are a great way to connect with others, find new content, and many also archive their sessions to YouTube, so content can be accessed afterwards and on-demand. I’ve called out a few User Groups below – but there are loads more out there!
- Welsh Azure User Group – https://www.meetup.com/MSFT-Stack/
- Microsoft Cloud (South Coast) User Group – https://www.meetup.com/mcscug/
- Microsoft Azure Community User Group – https://www.meetup.com/microsoft-azure-community/
- Cloud Family – Azure Blogs – a great list of Azure Blogs with a huge range of content and learning material – https://cloudfamily.info/blogs/azure_blogs/
Exam Guidance:
During the session we also shared a number of links to resources to help with exam guidance. Please note – this guidance changes from time to time, please refer to any official documentation you have been sent when booking an exam. The links below are provided for information and guidance only – but do check official links/docs etc!
- Guidance for Test Takers – https://www.pearsonvue.com/us/en/test-takers/resources.html
- Microsoft Online Testing Guidance – https://www.pearsonvue.com/us/en/microsoft/onvue.html
- Online Testing (Home Proctored) – System test before the exam day: https://www.pearsonvue.com/us/en/microsoft/onvue.html#b4ExamDay
Thanks for reading – until next time!