AZ-305 Exam Map and Design Decision Playbook
AZ-305
AZ-305 Exam Map and Design Decision Playbook
AZ-305 tests architectural judgement. Most prompts give several workable Azure services; the correct answer best satisfies the stated constraints with the least unjustified complexity. Read every scenario as a set of decisions about requirements, failure modes, security boundaries, data semantics, operations, and cost.
Current blueprint at a glance
- 25–30%
- 20–25%
- 15–20%
- 30–35%
How to read an architecture question
- Underline hard constraints. Compliance, protocol, maximum data loss, outage window, region support, compatibility, and operating ownership eliminate options.
- Name the architecture decision. Is this identity, authorization, governance, storage, integration, recovery, compute, application, migration, or network design?
- Choose the least complex service that meets every hard constraint. Do not optimize a requirement the scenario never states.
- Check the whole workload. A redundant web tier does not compensate for one database, one region, one DNS dependency, or a manual recovery path.
- Explain the trade-off. A strong answer says what the recommendation gains, what it costs, and why the nearest alternative loses.
Text equivalent: classify the decision, extract constraints, compare only viable options, test the complete workload, then state the recommendation and its trade-off.
Blueprint-to-study map
| Domain | Release roadmap | Cram sheets | Design habit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity, governance, monitoring | Unit 1 roadmap | Logging and monitoring; authentication and authorization; governance | Separate identity, permission, policy, evidence, and network controls. |
| Data storage | Unit 2 roadmap | Relational; semi/unstructured; data integration | Begin with data shape, access pattern, consistency, scale, and recovery. |
| Business continuity | Unit 3 roadmap | Backup/DR; high availability | Translate impact into RTO/RPO and explicit failure domains. |
| Infrastructure | Unit 4 roadmap | Compute; application architecture; migrations; networking | Compose services around execution, coupling, dependency, and traffic requirements. |
Blueprint-weighted study cycle
- Spend roughly one third of scenario practice on infrastructure, but interleave it with identity, data, and continuity because real designs cross domains.
- Use topic cram sheets for retrieval, then answer architecture items without notes.
- Keep an error log with four fields: missed requirement, wrong service boundary, misleading distractor, and corrected decision rule.
- Revisit a miss after one day, one week, and before the next mock. Recognition is not mastery; require yourself to explain the rejected alternatives.
- Take unit checkpoints after the corresponding roadmap and cram sheets. Use full mocks only after every unit has evidence of recall and design reasoning.
Whole-architecture checklist
- Identity: tenant, principal type, authentication flow, managed identity, privilege lifecycle.
- Governance: management scope, policy, compliance evidence, resource lifecycle, cost ownership.
- Data: model, query/transaction pattern, partitioning, consistency, protection, residency.
- Continuity: component and workload RTO/RPO, zones/regions, backups, failover, failback, tests.
- Application: synchronous versus asynchronous coupling, APIs, messages, events, cache, configuration.
- Network: flows, private/public entry, DNS, routing, inspection, egress, hybrid redundancy.
- Operations: deployment, monitoring, alert response, capacity, patching, ownership, cost.
Source and freshness
Blueprint ranges follow the Microsoft Learn AZ-305 study guide showing skills measured as of April 17, 2026. The attached books provide teaching depth; current Microsoft Learn documentation controls current product behaviour, availability, limits, and naming. Reviewed 2026-08-02.