Back in April of this year, I passed Azure exam 70-533: Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions. To be honest, this was actually my second attempt at the exam. I failed on my first try about three weeks earlier. But who’s counting? All that matters is that I persisted and eventually passed. I’m not mentioning this to be discouraging to anyone intending to take the exam. However, my intention is to provide encouragement if you don’t pass the first time around. No one likes seeing the word “Fail” on the exam printout, but it’s not the end of the world. With that being said, I thought I would write an article outlining the methods I employed to prepare for the test.
Practical Experience
First and foremost, you will need hands-on experience to pass this test. Azure exam 70-533 is not easy and cannot be passed solely on reading books or articles. If you do not have access to Azure through your employer or a Visual Studio subscription, Microsoft offers a 30-day free trial, which comes with a $200 credit. The free trial allows you to create resources in Azure such as VM’s, vrtual networks, storage accounts, web apps, containers, etc.
Once you setup your account, it’s important to have a strategy to learning the skills that are needed to pass the exam. Microsoft has a list of objectives and related skills that are covered by the exam. As of this writing, the objectives were last updated on March 29, 2018. Under each category of objectives are a number of relevant tasks or exercises. Go to the exam site and do exercises around all the listed skill areas. Microsoft has excellent documentation that will help you develop the skills measured by exam 70-533. Also, it’s very important to learn how to accomplish tasks using Powershell and ARM templates, instead of only in the Portal. For instance, learn how to deploy VM’s and related resources from a script or template. Perform all of the tasks until you feel you have mastered them.
Training Courses
Pluralsight courses were an asset that proved to be a critical component of my training. This site offers a number courses that cover topics such as Azure infrastructure solutions, storage, networking, application services, ARM templates, Identity management and more. Also, there is a learning path for exam 70-533 that consists of about 7 or 8 course. The training material is excellent, and consists of demos and exercise files that provide some practical training. Pluralsight courses will give you a solid foundation. Additionally, a monthly Pluralsight subscription will cost you $29. The site is more than worth the price. Another site that was helpful is Cloud Ranger. The courses are free but many of them are now outdated since they are designed around the old Classic Model.
Practice Exam
I would advise you to get the official Measureup practice exams from Mindhub. Some of the questions are on the Classic model, however the exam was still very helpful. The real exam is all ARM, nothing on the Classic model. The Measureup practice exam provides the option of taking the test in Practice mode, which is a customizable format. For instance, you can select questions from a particular objective, or only questions that you missed during the last practice exam. A huge benefit with the practice test is that it offers explanations for why an answer is correct and the others are wrong. Also, each answer has links to documents that are relevant to each question. DO NOT memorize the answer; know why an answer is correct. I retook the full Practice exam (nearly 200 questions) until I consistently passed with at least a 95%. At this point, I moved on to taking the practice test in Exam mode. Mindhub currently has a special that offers an exam voucher, the practice test and 2 retakes for $266.00.
Helpful Links
The Exam 70-533 reference book has not been updated for awhile, but this site has tips that were extracted from the book’s content. These bullet points are important facts that you will need to remember for the exam. Also, make sure you know the features and pricing with app service plans and SQL database service tiers.
I hope the information I provided was beneficial and will contribute towards you passing exam 70-533. Good luck!
DaRaw Techie 