If you decided in Chapter 3 that Microsoft Azure is your chosen battlefield, welcome! The Azure ecosystem is massive, deeply integrated with enterprise IT, and boasts one of the best CI/CD platforms on the market: Azure DevOps.
However, Microsoft approaches their certification hierarchy a bit differently than AWS or Google Cloud.
To earn the ultimate prize—the Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert badge—you cannot just pass the DevOps exam (AZ-400). Microsoft actively gatekeeps the Expert badge. You are required to prove your foundational knowledge by passing one of two Associate-level exams first.
(Technically, you can take the AZ-400 exam whenever you want, but Microsoft will withhold the actual certification and badge until you complete the prerequisite. So, sequence matters!)
You have a choice to make. You must become either an Administrator or a Developer.
Option 1: Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104)
This is the "Ops" path. If you come from a background in IT support, system administration, or networking, this will feel like home.
The AZ-104 is the Azure equivalent of the AWS Solutions Architect / SysOps exams. It focuses heavily on infrastructure, governance, and keeping the lights on.
- What It Covers:
- Compute: Managing Virtual Machines (VMs), creating VM Scale Sets, and basic container deployment (Azure Kubernetes Service and Container Instances).
- Networking: Virtual Networks (VNets), peering, load balancers, and network security groups (NSGs).
- Storage: Managing Azure Storage accounts, blob storage, and file shares.
- Identity & Governance: This is a massive part of Azure. You must intimately understand Microsoft Entra ID (formerly known as Azure Active Directory or Azure AD), Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), and Azure Policies.
- Why It Matters for DevOps:
- A DevOps pipeline doesn't deploy code into a vacuum; it deploys it into infrastructure. The AZ-104 ensures you know how to build, secure, and monitor that infrastructure. If a deployment fails because of a subnet routing issue or an RBAC permission error, this certification gives you the knowledge to fix it.
- The Vibe: "I build the house and make sure the plumbing works."
Option 2: Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate (AZ-204)
This is the "Dev" path. If you spend your days writing C#, Python, or JavaScript, and you view infrastructure as just a place to run your code, this is your starting point.
The AZ-204 focuses much less on configuring virtual networks and much more on Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings and cloud-native application design.
- What It Covers:
- Azure Compute Solutions: Deep dives into Azure App Service, Azure Functions (Serverless), and deploying containerized apps.
- Cloud Storage: Interacting with Cosmos DB (Azure's flagship NoSQL database) and Azure Blob Storage via code.
- Azure Security: Implementing secure cloud solutions using Key Vault and managed identities.
- Connecting Services: Using API Management, Azure Event Grid, and Azure Service Bus to build decoupled, microservice architectures.
- Why It Matters for DevOps:
- Modern DevOps is increasingly developer-centric. Knowing how cloud-native applications are constructed makes it significantly easier to design the CI/CD pipelines that build and test them.
- The Vibe: "I write the app and integrate it with cloud services."
The Choice: Which One Should You Take?
Because you only need one of these to qualify for the DevOps Expert badge, you shouldn't waste time taking both unless you simply love taking exams.
Here is the decision matrix:
- Choose AZ-104 (Administrator) if your goal is a traditional DevOps/SRE role focused on infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, Kubernetes, and Terraform. In the current job market, the AZ-104 is generally the safer, more well-rounded bet for a DevOps career. It teaches you the core networking and identity primitives that everything else relies on.
- Choose AZ-204 (Developer) if your primary role is Software Engineering, and you are acting as the "DevOps Champion" for your development team. If your daily life is spent in Visual Studio writing code that runs on Azure App Service, stick to the Developer path.
Once you have secured either the AZ-104 or the AZ-204, you have unlocked the door. You have proven you know how to use Azure. Now, it's time to prove you know how to automate it.
Next stop: The AZ-400 DevOps Engineer Expert exam.
This book is write-in-progress.
Visit next week to read the next chapter.