Azure DevOps Engineer: AZ 900 → AZ 204 → AZ 400

AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals 

Module 1: Cloud Concepts

Cloud Models

• Public, Private, and Hybrid Cloud
• Compare Cloud Models

Cloud Benefits and Considerations

• Benefits of Cloud
• Cloud Consideration

Cloud Services

• IaaS, PaaS, SaaS
• Sharing responsibility

Module 2: Core Azure Services

Azure Architectural Components

• Regions and Availability Zones
• Subscriptions and Resource Groups

Core Azure Resources

• Compute
• Networking
• Storage
• Databases

Module 3: Core Solutions

Core Azure Solutions

• IoT to Azure Sphere
• Synapse Analytics to Databricks
• AI/ML

Azure Management Tools

• Portal, Powershell, CLI, and Others
• Advisor, Monitor, and Service Health

Module 4: Security

Azure Security Features

• Security Center and Resource Hygiene
• Key Vault, Sentinel, and Dedicated Hosts

Azure Network Security

• Defense in Depth
• Network Security Groups and Firewalls
• DDoS Protection

Module 5: Identity, Governance, Privacy, and Compliance

 Azure Identity Services

• Authentication Verses Authorization
• Azure AD, MFA, SSO, and Conditional Access

Azure Governance Features

• RBAC
• Resource locks and Tags
• Policy, Blueprints, and CAF

Azure Privacy and Compliance

• Privacy statements and Online Services Terms
• Trust Center and Compliance Documentation
• Azure sovereign Regions

Module 6: Azure Pricing and Lifecycle

Methods of Managing Costs

• Factors Affecting Costs
• Options to Reduce and Control costs
• Azure Cost Management

Service Level Agreements and Lifecycles

• Azure Service Level Agreement (SLA)
• Factors Impacting SLAs
• Azure Product and Feature Lifecycle

AZ-204: Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure

Module 1: Creating Azure App Service Web Apps

Azure App Service core concepts

• Azure shared responsibility model
• App Service
• Web Apps
• Key features of App Service Web Apps
• App Service plans
• Authentication and authorization
• Azure App Service Hybrid Connections
• Azure App Service Local Cache
• App Service environments (ASEs)

Creating an Azure App Service Web App

• Create and deploy a web app with Azure command-line interface (CLI)
• Creating a Web App with Azure PowerShell
• Creating an App Service plan with Azure PowerShell
• App Service on Linux
• Docker in App Service on Linux
• Web apps for Linux containers

Configuring and Monitoring App Service apps

• App Service settings
• Path mappings
• Updating app runtimes
• CORS
• OS and runtime patching
• Inbound and outbound IP addresses

Inbound and outbound IP addresses

•  Autoscale
• Autoscale metrics
• Autoscale patterns
• Scale based on CPU
• Autoscale setting schema
• Autoscale concepts

Azure App Service staging environments

• Deployment slots
• Modern deployment workflow
• Auto swap
• Route traffic between slots
• Automate slot management - Azure PowerShell
• Automate slot management - Azure CLI

Lab: Building a web application on Azure platform as a service offerings

Module 2: Implement Azure Functions

Azure Functions overview

• Azure Functions
• Function integrations
• Azure Function (Java program – Function.java)
• Azure Function (Python script – __init__.py)
• Scale and hosting
• Azure Functions hosting
• Triggers
• Trigger types
• Input and Output Bindings
• Bindings
• Integrating with Azure Virtual Network

Developing Azure Functions

• Azure Functions in Visual Studio Code
• Function code
• Binding configuration
• Binding-based code
• Function folder structure
• Function App settings

Implement Durable Functions

• Durable Functions
• Durable Functions types
• Durable Function scenario – Chaining
• Durable Function scenario - Fan-out/fan-in
• Durable Function scenario - Async HTTP APIs
• Durable Function scenario – Monitoring
• Durable Function scenario - Human interaction

Lab: Implement task processing logic by using Azure Functions

Module 3: Develop solutions that use blob storage

Azure Blob storage core concepts

• Azure Storage overview
• Azure Blob storage
• Azure Blob storage resource hierarchy
• Blob types
• Block blobs
• Append blobs
• Page blobs
• Blob events
• Storage durability options

Managing the Azure Blob storage lifecycle

• Storage tiers
• Storage tier pricing
• Lifecycle management

Working with Azure Blob storage

• Managing blob properties and metadata
• Blob container properties
• Exclusive access for modifying a blob
• Lease Blob operation

Lab: Retrieving Azure Storage resources and metadata by using the Azure Storage SDK for .NET

Module 4: Develop solutions that use Cosmos DB storage

Azure Cosmos DB overview

• Azure Cosmos DB
• Core functionality
• Global Replication
• Consistency levels
• APIs
• Migrating from NoSQL
• Cosmos DB throughput

Azure Cosmos DB data structure

• Resource hierarchy
• Containers
• Partitioning
• Partitioning implementation

Create and update documents by using code

• Manage collections and documents
• Creating a CosmosClient instance by using .NET
• Accessing a database by using .NET
• Accessing a container by using .NET
• JavaScript and Azure Cosmos DB
• Stored procedures
• Bounded execution
• Transaction continuation
• Optimistic concurrency

Lab: Constructing a polyglot data solution

Module 5: Implement IaaS solutions

Provisioning VMs in Azure

• Azure virtual machine creation checklist
• Naming a VM
• VM pricing models
• VM storage options
• Managed and unmanaged disks
• Azure virtual machine creation and management
• Accessing an Azure VM by using PowerShell
• Capturing performance diagnostics for a VM
• Recovering a failed VM by using a rescue VM
• Sizing a VM
• VM configuration options
• VM categories
• Manage the availability of your Azure VMs
• High availability and disaster recovery
• Availability sets, Fault domains, Update domains
• Image in Azure Marketplace
• Image Uniform Resource Name (URN)
• Azure Shared Image Gallery
• VM Serial Console

Create and deploy Azure Resource Manager templates

• Azure Resource Manager overview
• Terminology
• Resource Manager template deployment
• Three-tier Azure Resource Manager template
• Nested Resource Manager template
• Create Resource Manager templates by using the Azure portal

Create container images for solutions

• Virtualization and containers
• Container Images
• Docker
• Retrieving a new container image from Docker Hub
• Creating a container image specification with a Dockerfile
• Building the container image
• Running the custom container image as a container

Publish a container image to Azure Container Registry

• Azure Container Registry (ACR)
• Docker containers and registries
• Container Registry SKUs
• Azure Container Registry Build (ACR Build)
• Building images in Container Registry
• Trigger ACR Build by using Azure CLI

Create and run container images in Azure Container Instances

• Azure Container Instances (ACI)
• Container groups
• Container Instances features
• Deploy a container to Container Instances

Lab: Deploying compute workloads by using images and containers

Module 6: Implement user authentication and authorization

Microsoft identity platform

• Identity as the control plane
• Azure Active Directory
• Azure AD evolution
• Microsoft identity platform
• Azure AD evolution
• Microsoft identity platform overview
• Objects in Azure AD
• Application registration
• Authentication endpoints
• Authorize access to web applications by using OAuth
• service-to-service calls using client credentials
• Common authentication flows
• Interactive authentication flow
• On-Behalf-Of authentication flow
• Client credentials authentication flow
• Device code authentication flow
• Certificate-based authentication

Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL)

• Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL)
• Creating an authentication context by using MSAL
• Acquiring a token interactively using MSAL
• Get user profile using MSAL

Microsoft Graph

• Microsoft 365 platform
• Microsoft Graph data and services
• Graph data
• Graph explorer
• Microsoft Graph SDK
• Microsoft Graph authentication SDK
• Creating an authentication provider
• Microsoft Graph SDK Fluent API
• Using Graph Service client

Authorizing data operations in Azure Storage

• Container permissions
• CORS support for the Azure Storage services
• Authorization
• Shared Access Signatures
• Establishing a stored access policy
• Shared Access Signatures (SASs)
• Valet key pattern by using Shared Access Signatures
• Stored access policies
• SAS token generation from a stored access policy

Lab: Authenticating to and querying Microsoft Graph by using MSAL and .NET SDKs

Module 7: Implement secure cloud solutions

Manage keys, secrets, and certificates by using the KeyVault API

• Azure Key Vault
• Key Vault concepts
• Key Vault authentication
• Key Vault secret types
• Create Key Vault secret by using Azure CLI

Implement Managed Identities for Azure resources

• Azure AD–managed identity
• Managed identities implementation
• System-assigned managed identity
• User-assigned managed identity
• Types of managed identities
• Managed identities use cases
• Configure managed identities for Web Apps by using Azure CLI

Secure app configuration data by using Azure App Configuration

• Azure App Configuration
• Keys and values
• Azure App Configuration
• Labels
• Feature Management

Lab: Access resource secrets more securely across services

Module 8: Implement API Management

API Management overview

• API Management (APIM)
• Terminology, Products
• Products and APIs
• APIs and operations
• Back-end and front-end APIs

Working with APIs in APIM

• API Management instance overview
• Manage using Git
• Service hierarchy
• Policies, Policy scopes
• Advanced policy scenarios

Configure authentication for APIs

• Subscriptions
• Client certificates

Lab: Creating a multi-tier solution by using services in Azure

Module 9: Develop event-based solutions

Azure Event Grid

• Event-driven architecture
• Azure Event Grid
• Sources and handlers
• Event Grid concepts
• Schema, Security, Filtering
• Authoring custom events
• Event domains

Azure Event Hubs

• Publishing events
• Partitions, Consumer groups, Capture
• Integration with Kafka
• Event Hubs and Apache Kafka mapping
• Security model
• Creating a namespace manager by using the root key
• Creating a SAS key

Lab: Publishing and subscribing to Event Grid events

Module 10: Develop message-based solutions

Azure Service Bus

• Comparing cloud messaging options
• Azure Service Bus
• Events vs. messaging services
• Queues
• Queue-based load leveling
• Topics and subscriptions
• Messages, payloads, and serialization

Azure Queue Storage

• Components
• Code examples

Lab: Asynchronously processing messages by using Azure Queue Storage

Module 11: Instrument solutions to support monitoring and logging

Overview of monitoring in Azure

• Azure Monitor
• Monitoring data platform
• Alerts
• Alerts workflow
• Alert state
• Application Insights
• Application Insights architecture

Configure instrumentation in an app or service

• Application Insights for webpages
• Application Insights for console applications
• Application Insights for desktop apps
• Application Insights platforms
• Other monitoring tools

Analyzing and troubleshooting apps

• What data does Azure Monitor collect?
• Data source
• Azure Monitor sources
• Application Insights overview
• Monitored metrics, Application Map
• Components
• View activity logs to audit actions on resources
• Auditing in Azure PowerShell
• Monitor the availability and responsiveness of a website

Implement code that handles transient faults

• Transient errors
• Handling transient errors
• Retrying after a transient error
• Detecting if an error is transient

Lab: Monitoring services that are deployed to Azure

Module 12: Integrate caching and content delivery within solutions

Azure Cache for Redis

• Redis
• Redis data types
• Redis operations
• Azure Cache for Redis
• Azure Cache for Redis usage
• Configuration
• Accessing a Redis cache from a client

Develop for storage on CDNs

• Content delivery networks (CDNs)
• Improving the client experience by using a CDN
• CDN uses
• Azure CDN, Azure CDN platform, and usage
• Manage Azure CDN profiles by using Azure CLI
• Cache expiration in Azure CDN
• Purging and preloading assets by using Azure CLI

Lab: Enhancing a web application by using the Azure Content Delivery Network

AZ-400: Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions

Module 1: Planning for DevOps

Transformation Planning

• What is DevOps?
• The DevOps journey
• Separating transformation teams
• Defining shared goals
• Setting timelines for goals

Project selection

• Greenfield and brownfield projects defined
• Choosing greenfield and brownfield projects     
• Choosing systems of record versus systems of engagement
• Selecting groups to minimize initial resistance
• Identifying project metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Team structures

• Agile development practices defined
• Principles of agile development
• Creating organizational structures for agile practices
• Ideal DevOps team members
• Mentoring team members on agile practices
• Enabling in-team and cross-team collaboration
• Selecting tools and processes for agile practices

Migrating to DevOps

• What can Azure DevOps do?
• What can GitHub do?
• Designing an authorization and access strategy for Azure DevOps
• Migrating or integrating existing work management tools
• Migrating or integrating existing test management tools
• Designing a license management strategy

Lab: Agile planning and portfolio management with Azure Boards

Module 2: Getting Started with Source Control

Source control

• Introduction to source control
• Foundational practices of DevOps
• Best practices for source control

Types of source control systems

• Centralized source control
• Distributed source control
• Git and TFVC

Lab: Working with Git Locally

Introduction to Azure Repos

• Azure Repos

Introduction to GitHub

• What is GitHub?
• Linking GitHub to Azure Boards

Lab: Version controlling with Git in Azure Repos

Module 3: Managing Technical Debt

Identifying technical debt

•  Code quality defined
• Complexity metrics
• Measuring and managing quality metrics
• Technical debt defined
• Sources and impacts of technical debt
• Using automated testing to measure technical debt
• Measuring and managing technical debt
• Integrating other code quality tools

Knowledge sharing within teams

• Sharing acquired knowledge within development teams
• Azure DevOps project wikis
• Wiki contents

Modernizing development environments with GitHub Codespaces

• Developing online with GitHub Codespaces

Lab: Sharing team knowledge using Azure project wikis

Module 4: Working with Git for Enterprise DevOps

Git branching workflows

• Branching workflow types
• Feature branch workflow
• GitFlow branch workflow
• Forking workflow

Collaborating with pull requests

• Git Hub mobile for pull request approvals
• Fostering inner source
• Implementing the forking workflow

Managing Git Repositories

• Working with large repositories
• Purging repository data

Lab: Version controlling with Git in Azure Repos

Module 5: Configuring Azure Pipelines

The concept of pipelines in DevOps

• The concept of pipelines in DevOps
• Azure Pipelines
• Azure Pipelines key terms

Evaluate the use of Microsoft-hosted vs self-hosted agents

• Microsoft-hosted versus self-hosted agents
• Job types

Agent pools

• Agent pools
• Predefined agent pool – Azure pipelines
• Typical situations for agent pools
• Security of agent pools

Pipelines and concurrency

• Parallel jobs
• Estimating parallel jobs

Azure Pipelines YAML versus Visual Designer

• Azure Pipelines and Visual Designer
• Azure Pipelines and YAML

Lab: Configuring Agent Pools and Understanding Pipeline Styles

Module 6: Implementing Continuous Integration using Azure Pipelines

Continuous integration overview

• Introduction to continuous integration
• The four pillars of continuous integration
• Benefits of continuous integration
• Build number formatting and build status
• Authorization and timeouts, and badges

Implementing a build strategy

• Configuring agent demands
• Implementing multi-agent builds
• Discussion: build-related tooling

Integrate with Azure Pipelines

• Anatomy of a pipeline
• Pipeline structure
• Templates
• YAML resources
• Using multiple repositories in your pipeline
• Source control types supported by Azure Pipelines

Set up self-hosted agents

• Communication with Azure Pipelines
• Communication to deploy to target servers

Lab: 1. Enabling continuous integration with Azure Pipelines

        2. Integrating external source control with Azure Pipelines

Module 7: Managing Application Configuration and Secrets

Security

• Introduction to Security
• SQL injection attack

Implement a secure development process

• Threat modeling
• Key validation points
• Continuous integration

Rethinking application configuration data

• Rethinking application config data
• Separation of concerns
• External configuration store patterns
• Integrating Azure Key Vault with Azure Pipeline

Manage secrets, tokens, and certificates

• Manage secrets, tokens, and certificates
• DevOps inner and outer loop

Integrating with identity management systems

• Integrating GitHub with single sign-on (SSO)
• Service principals
• Managed service identities

Implementing application configuration

• Azure App configuration service
• Key-value pairs
• App configuration feature management

Lab: Integrating Azure Key Vault with Azure DevOps

Module 8: Implementing Continuous Integration with GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions

• Actions
• Actions flow
• Workflows
• Standard workflow syntax elements
• Events, Jobs, Runners
• Console output from actions
• Release management for actions
• Testing an action

Continuous integration with GitHub Actions

• Continuous integration with actions
• Environment variables
• Passing artifacts between jobs
• Workflow badges
• Marking releases with Git tags

Securing secrets for GitHub Actions

• Creating encrypted secrets
• Using secrets in a workflow

Lab: Implementing GitHub Actions by using DevOps Starter

Module 9: Designing and Implementing a Dependency Management Strategy

Packaging dependencies

• Dependency management
• Elements of a dependency management strategy
• Identifying dependencies
• Source and package componentization
• Decompose your system
• Scanning your codebase for dependencies

Package management

• Packages
• Package feeds
• Package feed managers
• Common public package sources
• Self-hosted and SaaS-based package sources
• Consuming packages
• Azure Artifacts
• Publishing packages

Migrating and consolidating artifacts

• Identifying existing artifact repositories

Package security

• Securing access to package feeds
• Roles, Permissions, Authentication

Implement a versioning strategy

• Introduction to versioning
• Versioning of artifacts
• Semantic versioning
• Release views
• Promoting packages

Lab: Package management with Azure Artifacts

Module 10: Designing a Release Strategy

Introduction to continuous delivery

• Traditional IT development cycle
• Moving to continuous delivery
• Continuous delivery
• Releases and deployments

Release strategy recommendations

• Release pipelines
• Artifact sources
• Considerations for choosing the appropriate artifact source
• Considerations for deployment to stages
• Delivery cadence – three types of triggers
• Release approvals

Building a high-quality release pipeline

• Release process versus release 
• How to measure the quality of your release process
• Using release gates to protect the quality
• Release notes and documentation 

Choosing the right release management tool

• Considerations for choosing release management tools
• Common release management tools 

Lab: 1. Controlling deployments using Release Gates

2. Creating a release dashboard

Module 11: Implementing Continuous Deployment using Azure Pipelines

Create a release pipeline

• Azure DevOps release pipelines
• Build and release tasks
• Release jobs
• Multi-configuration and multi-agent

Provision and configure environments

• Provision and configure target environments

Manage and modularize tasks and templates

• Task groups
• Variables in release pipelines
• Variable groups
• Custom build/release tasks

Configure automated integration and functional test automation

• Configure automated integration and functional test automation
• Setting up test infrastructure
• Setting up and running availability tests

Automate inspection of health

• Automate inspection of health
• Events, subscriptions, and notifications
• Service hooks

Lab: 1. Configuring pipelines as code with YAML

2.   Setting up and running functional tests

Module 12: Implementing an Appropriate Deployment Pattern

Deployment patterns

• Introduction to continuous delivery and continuous deployment
• Microservices architecture
• Classical deployment patterns
• Modern deployment patterns

Implement blue-green deployment

• Blue-green deployment
• Deployment slots    

Feature toggles

• Introduction to feature toggles
• Feature toggle maintenance

Canary releases

• Canary releases
• Traffic manager
• Dark launching
• A/B testing

Progressive exposure deployment

• CI/CD with deployment rings

Lab: Feature flag management with Launch Darkly and Azure DevOps

Module 13: Managing Infrastructure and Configuration using Azure Tools

Infrastructure as code and configuration management

• Environment deployment
• Environment configuration
• Imperative versus declarative configuration
• Idempotent configuration

Create Azure resources using ARM templates

• Use ARM templates
• Template components
• Manage dependencies
• Modularize templates
• Managing secrets in templates

Create Azure resources using Azure CLI

• Azure CLI
• Working with Azure CLI

Azure Automation with DevOps

• Azure Automation
• Automation accounts
• Runbook
• Automation shared resources
• Runbook Gallery, Webhooks
• Source control integration
• Creating a workflow
• Checkpoint and parallel processing

Desired State Configuration (DSC)

• Configuration drift
• Desired State Configuration (DSC)
• Azure Automation State Configuration
• DSC configuration file
• Hybrid management
• DSC and Linux Automation on Azure

Lab: Deployments using Azure Resource Manager templates

Module 14: Third-party Infrastructure as Code Tools Available with Azure

Chef

• Chef Automate
• Chef Cookbooks
• Chef Knife Command

Puppet

• Deploying Puppet in Azure
• Manifest files

Ansible

• Ansible workflow
• Ansible components
• Installing Ansible
• Ansible on Azure
• Playbook structure

Terraform

• Terraform components
• Terraform on Azure
• Installing Terraform
• Terraform config file structure

Lab: 1. Ansible with Azure

2. Automating infrastructure deployments in the cloud with Terraform and Azure Pipelines

Module 15: Managing Containers using Docker

Implementing a container build strategy

• Containers
• Structure of containers
• Docker containers and development
• Working with Docker containers
• Microservices and containers
• Docker container registries
• Dockerfile core concepts

Implementing Docker multi-stage builds

• Multiple stages builds
• Multi-stage Dockerfiles     
• Considerations for multiple stages builds

Lab: Deploying Docker containers to Azure App Service web apps

Module 16: Creating and Managing Kubernetes Service Infrastructure

Azure Kubernetes Service

• Kubernetes overview
• Azure Kubernetes Service
• AKS architectural components
• Kubernetes networking
• Ingress controllers
• Deployment units
• Continuous deployment

Kubernetes tooling

• Kubectl
• Helm
• Kubernetes extension for Visual Studio Code

Integrating AKS with pipelines

• Kubernetes and Azure Key Vault
• Readiness, startup, and liveness probes

Lab: Deploying a multi-container application to Azure Kubernetes Services

Module 17: Implementing Feedback for Development Teams

Implement tools to track system usage, feature usage, and flow

• Introduction to continuous monitoring
• Azure Log Analytics
• Kusto Query Language (KQL)
• Application Insights

Implement routing for mobile application crash report data

• App Center Diagnostics
• Configure alerts
• Create a bug tracker

Develop monitoring and status dashboards

• Power BI
• Grafana
• IT Service Management Connector

Lab: Monitoring application performance with Application Insights

Module 18: Implementing System Feedback Mechanisms

Site reliability engineering

• site reliability engineering

Design practices to measure end-user satisfaction

• Capturing end-user satisfaction
• Capturing feedback in product
• Feedback from product roadmap
• Twitter sentiment release gate

Design processes to automate application analytics

• Rapid responses and augmented search
• Integrating telemetry
• Recommending monitoring tools and technologies

Managing alerts

• When would I get a notification?
• How do I fix it?
• Smart detection notifications
• How can I improve performance?
• Reducing meaningless and non-actionable alerts

Lab: Integration between Azure DevOps and Microsoft Teams

Module 19: Implementing Security in DevOps Projects

Security in the pipeline

• rugged DevOps
• Rugged DevOps pipeline
• Software composition analysis (SCA)
• WhiteSource integration with Azure DevOps pipeline
• Micro Focus Fortify integration with Azure Pipelines
• Checkmarx integration with Azure DevOps
• Veracode integration with Azure DevOps
• Implementing pipeline security
• Secure DevOps Kit for Azure (AzSK)

Azure Security Center

• Azure Security Center usage scenarios
• Azure Policy
• Resource locks
• Azure Blueprints
• Azure Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

Lab: Implement security and compliance in Azure DevOps Pipelines

Module 20: Validating Code Bases for Compliance

Open-source software

• How software is built
• open-source software
• Corporate concerns with open-source software components
• Open-source licenses
• License implications and ratings

Managing security and compliance policies

• Inspecting and validating code bases for compliance
• Planning to implement OWASP Secure Coding Practices

Integrating license and vulnerability scans

• Implement continuous security validation
• OWASP ZAP penetration testing
• OWASP ZAP results and bugs
• Tools for assessing package security and license rating
• SonarCloud
• Interpret alerts from scanning tools
• CodeQL in GitHub
• GitHub Dependabot alerts and security updates

Lab: Managing technical debt with SonarQube and Azure DevOps