Exam AZ-400: Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions
Proctored Microsoft certification exam focused on DevOps process design, source control, pipelines, compliance, and instrumentation.
- Type
- Written
Passing score: 700 Scaled score
Exam sections
Design and implement processes and communications
Define work-flow structures, feedback loops, and traceability; create dashboards and metric queries covering the entire lifecycle; and configure wikis, release docs, automation, webhooks, and Teams integration to keep teams aligned.
Preparation tips
Focus on work-flow structures like GitHub Flow, feedback cycles, and integration with tracking tools like GitHub Projects and Azure Boards.
Design and implement a source control strategy
Select appropriate branching models and enforce pull-request policies; manage large files, repository scaling, permissions, tagging, and data recovery; and ensure secure, performant source control aligned with delivery needs.
Preparation tips
Review branching strategies (trunk-based, feature-branch) and pull-request workflows including branch policies and protection rules.
Design and implement build and release pipelines
Create end-to-end CI/CD: choose package feeds and versioning; set testing gates and suites; build YAML pipelines with runners, triggers, parallelism, templates, and approvals; design deployment patterns and resiliency; and implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
Preparation tips
Practice authoring complex YAML pipelines and implementing IaC with Azure Bicep, ARM templates, and desired-state configuration (DSC).
Develop a security and compliance plan
Establish identity and access controls across Azure and GitHub/Azure DevOps; protect secrets with Key Vault, OIDC, and secure files; and automate comprehensive scanning (code, dependencies, containers, licensing) using Microsoft Defender and GitHub Advanced Security.
Preparation tips
Understand identity methods (service principals, managed identities) and automated security scanning tools like Dependabot and CodeQL.
Implement an instrumentation strategy
Set up Azure and GitHub monitoring, gathering telemetry from apps, VMs, containers, storage, and networks; create alerts and visualizations; and assess performance, usage, and traces using Application Insights and KQL log queries.
Preparation tips
Learn to integrate Azure Monitor and Application Insights with DevOps tools and practice querying telemetry data using KQL.