Get Azure Fundamentals exam practice with this quick quiz

Microsoft Azure Fundamentals is a foundational certification for understanding and demonstrating basic competence in working with the core Azure stack. The actual certificate, AZ-900, validates foundational knowledge of cloud services and how those services work together as part of the Microsoft Azure platform. This quiz provides some great diagnostic Azure Fundamentals exam practice so you can be sure you're ready to pass the test.

Familiarity with the core platform can be covered in short order by building familiarity with Microsoft's stack and testing process, before moving onto more specialized certifications. It can also provide a foundation for the more comprehensive Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification. It's a good starting point if you are interested in later exploring security, cognitive services, AI, analytics or running enterprise software such as SAP on Azure. However, it is not required for more advanced certification.

Certification can also raise your earning prospects. A 2020 Global Knowledge survey reported that an Azure Fundamentals certification helped people earn an average salary of $126,653.

It is also a good certification to have, even if you are not a technical expert, as it can help managers, sales professionals, procurement teams and business users communicate about and collaborate more effectively about Azure. Microsoft has a free Azure Fundamentals training program available, and there are plenty of paid options that can help accelerate your progress.

There are six key areas to master to achieve the certification. The first, core concepts, describes the underlying Azure paradigm. This covers basics like high availability, scalability, elasticity, agility and disaster recovery. It also addresses economic factors like the difference between Capex and Opex and how it ties into the consumption-based model.

The second key area, on Azure Services, is all about how the basic components work. This includes things like how to work with regions, availability zones, resource groups and management groups. It also covers working with Azure Resource Manager and Azure resources.

Core solutions and management tools on Azure, the third key area, looks at some of the higher level components such as working with IoT tools like IoT Hub; analytics tools like Azure Synapse Analytics; and AI services such as Azure Machine Learning, Cognitive Services and Bot Service. It also requires understanding Azure's serverless computing paradigm and when to use Azure Functions or Logic Apps.

The fourth area, Azure security features, requires understanding the basic security paradigm and how to ensure policy compliance, manage security alerts and enforce resource hygiene. It also helps to understand the different security layers such as network security groups, Azure Firewall and Azure distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection.

Next, is a section on identity, governance, privacy and compliance can help ensure an implementation addresses new privacy regulations like GDPR in Europe and the CCPA in California. This includes elements like the difference between authentication and authorization, different approaches to authentication and how Azure Blueprints can help communicate about and enforce governance.

Finally, the sixth area concerns understanding the key tradeoffs between cost management and performance. This includes working with the cloud cost calculator, learning techniques to reduce costs and understanding actions that can impact service-level agreements.

Below are examples of the kinds of questions you are likely to encounter on your certification journey. This Azure fundamentals exam practice can help you see if you're ready for the exam itself. Good luck!