Back in October 2022, Microsoft has launched an Ignite Learn Cloud Skills Challenge .
They challenged you to pass all the learning cloud modules proposed by the challenge.
Once passed, Microsoft gave us a free exam! Knowing that the exams are rather expensive (165 euros as I said in my previous article), it’s a good thing that Microsoft offers challenges that allow you to pass exams without having to pay.

So I kept this coupon to take a free AZ-400 certification exam a few week after the AZ-204, and I passed it ! ❤️‍🔥

devopsengineerexpertcertification

Here’s a little article on how Microsoft certifications work, and what courses I used to review.

The mandatory path to earn the Devops Engineer Expert certification

Understanding path and levels

So basically, Microsoft Expert certifications needs you to path pre-requisite exams before trying to earn an actual Expert certification. To pass an Expert certification, you need to pass the associate level exam linked to this expert certification. For example, here are the prerequisities for earning the DevOps Engineer Expert certification:

certificationpath

  • Fundamentals level is not necessary to earn the Expert badge, but it is clearly recommended if you are not used to Azure. But if you have worked with Azure for several years, you can try to pass an Associate level exam directly. Here it can be Azure Administrator (AZ-104) or Azure Developer exam (AZ-204).
  • You just need one of the associate level to earn the expert badge. You don’t need to pass both Administrator and Developer exam.
  • One you got your Associate level certification (In my case it was the Azure Developer Associate certification), you can try to pass the AZ-400 Expert Exam. If you pass it successfully, you’ll earn your Devops Engineer expert certification !

Basically every Microsoft certification works like that:

  • Fundamentals (not needed) => Associate => Expert.

Learning materials

I strongly suggests you to complete the AZ-400 Microsoft Learn path . To practice your skills, you should also complete the AZ-400 official MS Labs I also used Whizlabs materials for both video courses (which are great and well explained), and practice exams. MeasureUp was too expensive, and Whizlabs questions completely do the job.😉

The exam day

I also passed this exam at home using Pearson Vue. So same tips as for AZ-204 ! 😁 This time I decided to pass the Exam in French to see if there was a big difference between French and English versions, as I passed AZ-204 in English. But those are litterally the same exams, same questions, translated word by word 😅
There even is a little button on bottom left corner of the screen where you can instantly change the exam language form French to English and rollback. So don’t worry if you choose another language than English during your exam booking, English will always be available even during your proctored session ! 🚀

Summary of the training materials

Conclusion

Passing those exams was quite a road ! But I’m finally happy to validate all the knowledge I earned on Azure during those years.
Once you’ll get those certifications, don’t forget to pass the Microsoft annual renewals to expand their validity date to one more year.
Those exams are completely free and unproctored so it’ll be a shame to miss it 👌😊

Good luck & happy learning 👨‍💻❤️