Free study guide · Azure
How to pass the Exam AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals
What the exam covers, how to plan your study, and how to read its questions. From the CertLumen course for this exam, kept up to date with the official exam guide.
- Questions
- 45
- Time
- 45 minutes
- Passing score
- 700 on a scale of 1 to 1000
- Exam fee
- USD 99 (US price; varies by country or region)
- Valid for
- Does not expire (Fundamentals certifications do not expire; no renewal needed)
- Delivery
- Proctored, online (Pearson VUE) or at a test center; Certiport for students and educators
What the exam covers
A study plan that works
The default path for anyone new to Azure. It covers all 16 lessons and all six labs in order, with a section drill after each of the three exam domains and daily flashcards. Section 2 (Azure architecture and services) carries 35–40% of the exam and has seven lessons, so it gets the most days. All four mock exams sit on days 11–14, one per day on the last three days plus a first one to calibrate. Book the exam for day 15 or later. Plan on about 1–2 hours a day.
| Day | Focus | Time |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | What the cloud is and who is responsible for what | 75 min |
| 2 | Consumption pricing, pricing models and serverless | 100 min |
| 3 | Benefits of the cloud and the IaaS / PaaS / SaaS spectrum, then the section 1 drill | 120 min |
| 4 | Regions, region pairs, zones and sovereign clouds | 80 min |
| 5 | Resource hierarchy and compute | 100 min |
| 6 | Virtual networking and endpoints | 90 min |
| 7 | Azure Storage | 90 min |
| 8 | Identity, RBAC, Zero Trust and Defender for Cloud, then the section 2 drill | 130 min |
| 9 | Section 2 review and cost management | 90 min |
| 10 | Governance, management tools and infrastructure as code | 130 min |
| 11 | Monitoring, the section 3 drill and Mock Exam 1 | 150 min |
| 12 | Weak spots and Mock Exam 2 | 110 min |
| 13 | Mock Exam 3 | 100 min |
| 14 | Mock Exam 4 and the final review | 110 min |
Exam strategy
How the exam works
Exam AZ-900 (Microsoft Azure Fundamentals) is the entry-level Azure exam. It measures whether you can describe cloud concepts, Azure's architecture and core services, and Azure's management and governance tools. It is a vocabulary-and-decision exam, not a build-it exam: you recognise the right service for a short scenario, you do not configure anything.
| Fact | Detail (from the Microsoft Learn exam, study guide and exam-experience pages) |
|---|---|
| Exam name | Exam AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals; the certification is Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals |
| Skills measured | As of July 20, 2026. Describe cloud concepts (25–30%), Describe Azure architecture and services (35–40%), Describe Azure management and governance (30–35%) |
| Exam time | 45 minutes for fundamentals exams, with a seat time of 65 minutes that includes the instructions, the candidate agreement and the optional comments at the end |
| Questions | Microsoft does not publish the number or the types. Most Microsoft exams have 40–60 questions; this course assumes about 45. The exam page says it may have interactive components, and some items are unscored |
| Passing score | 700 on a scale of 1 to 1000. It is a scaled score, not a percentage |
| Delivery | Proctored. Online with Pearson VUE (OnVUE) or at a Pearson VUE test center. Students and educators can schedule through Certiport |
| Languages | English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), Korean, Spanish, German, French, Indonesian (Indonesia), Arabic (Saudi Arabia), Chinese (Traditional), Italian, Portuguese (Brazil) and Russian. If your language is not offered you can request an extra 30 minutes |
| Aids | None. Microsoft Learn is not available during Fundamentals exams, and there are no notes, phones or second screens |
| Retakes | 24 hours after the first failed attempt, then 14 days between later attempts, with at most five attempts in 12 months |
| Prerequisite | None. Foundational knowledge of IT (infrastructure, databases or software development) helps |
The study guide says most questions cover features that are generally available (GA), and the exam may include Preview features if they are commonly used. When a lesson in this course says a feature is Preview, treat it as unlikely to be tested.
This course mixes single-answer and multiple-select questions (the stem ends with Choose two or Choose three). The real exam also uses other formats such as drag and drop, hot area and build list; the exam sandbox at aka.ms/examdemo lets you try each one before the exam day. Practise the multiple-select habit: judge each option true or false on its own.
The three sections and where the points are
| Section | Weight (midpoint) | What it contains | How to study it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Describe cloud concepts | 25–30% (28 in this course) | Cloud models, shared responsibility, consumption pricing, serverless, benefits, IaaS/PaaS/SaaS | Short and mostly definitions. Learn the shared responsibility table, the pricing options and the SLA arithmetic cold; it is the easiest 25–30% |
| 2. Describe Azure architecture and services | 35–40% (38) | Regions and zones, resource hierarchy, compute, networking, storage, identity, RBAC, Zero Trust, Defender for Cloud | The biggest section and the widest. Split it into four sets of tables: hierarchy, compute and network, storage, identity and security |
| 3. Describe Azure management and governance | 30–35% (33) | Cost management, tags, Purview, Policy, locks, portal, Cloud Shell, CLI, PowerShell, Arc, IaC, ARM, Advisor, Service Health, Monitor | Pairs of look-alike tools. Learn the question each tool answers (estimate versus actual spend, rules versus permissions, recommendations versus outages) |
Domain 2 is the biggest and the one where partial knowledge hurts, because many answers are a service name. Domain 3 is where candidates lose points on look-alike tools. Domain 1 is where candidates lose the points they should not: the shared responsibility table, SLA and pricing model questions.
Pacing
45 minutes for roughly 45 items is about one minute per question, and this is a recognition exam, so most items take 30 to 45 seconds. Use that to build a buffer for the few longer scenario items.
- Pass 1: answer every question you know in under 40 seconds. Mark anything you would have to compute or compare for review.
- Pass 2: spend the saved time on the marked questions. Eliminate options, then pick the best fit.
- Never leave a question blank. An unanswered question earns nothing.
- Keep 3–5 minutes for a final review of the marked questions. You can only review before you take a break; once a break is launched you cannot go back to earlier questions.
Microsoft builds 5 minutes of break time into the exam time, but the exam clock keeps running while you are on break, and you cannot return to the questions you saw before the break. Answer and review first, then start the break only if you must.
How to read a question
- Find the verb in the requirement. Estimate, enforce, recommend, notify, monitor, restrict, migrate and protect each point to a different service.
- Find the scope word. Management group, subscription, resource group and resource decide RBAC, Policy and locks questions.
- Find the cost words. Pay only for what you use, up front, predictable for three years, interruptible and existing license each point to one pricing option.
- Find the negation. Questions about what a service does not do (region pairs, budgets, tags, Azure DNS) are common.
- Look for the responsibility cue. Does the team want to patch the operating system? That excludes IaaS.
Wrong options are almost always genuine Azure services that solve a neighbouring problem. Azure Advisor, Defender for Cloud, Azure Policy and Cost Management all sound plausible for a governance question. Decide the exact job before looking at the options.
Traps that cost the most points
| Trap | What the exam does | The rule |
|---|---|---|
| Data and identity stay with the customer | Offers 'Microsoft is responsible for the customer's data' for SaaS | Customer data, identities and configuration are the customer's in every model; physical hosts, network and datacenter are Microsoft's in every model |
| Stopped is not free | Describes a VM shut down from inside the OS or stopped without deallocating | Only Stopped (deallocated) ends the compute charge. Disks, snapshots and public IPs still bill |
| Region pair is not failover | Says Azure automatically fails a VM over to the paired region | Pairs give staggered updates, prioritized recovery and a GRS target. You design your own disaster recovery |
| Tags are not inherited | Says resources inherit the resource group's tags | Tags on a group or subscription are not copied to resources unless Policy or Cost Management tag inheritance does it |
| Archive is offline | Asks for millisecond access to rarely used data | Cool or cold is online. Archive needs rehydration (up to about 15 hours) and is unavailable on ZRS, GZRS and RA-GZRS accounts |
| Peering is not transitive | A to B and B to C, then A talks to C | A and C need their own peering or a routing appliance |
| Budgets do not stop anything | Says a budget shuts resources down | A budget alerts; an action group can trigger automation you build |
| Policy is not RBAC | Mixes 'who can' with 'what is allowed' | RBAC grants permissions to identities; Policy evaluates resource properties; a lock stops delete or change even for an Owner |
| Reservation is not a savings plan | Offers a flexible-across-sizes answer for a fixed-size need and vice versa | Reservation = specific resource, biggest discount; savings plan = hourly compute spend, flexible |
| Azure DNS is not a registrar | Says you buy a domain name in Azure DNS | You buy the domain from a registrar and host the zone in Azure DNS |
| Old names | Uses Azure AD, Azure Security Center, Azure Defender, Azure Stack HCI | They are Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Azure Local; see the Renamed features page |
| Advisor vs Service Health vs Monitor | Describes an outage and offers Advisor | Advisor recommends, Service Health reports Azure's problems, Monitor observes your own resources |
Using the course
- Read the lesson once, answer its check questions from memory, then do the flashcards the same day.
- Do a section drill after each domain. 80% or better means move on; below 80%, re-read the lesson for the topics you missed.
- Keep an error log: topic, why you missed it, the rule you will use next time. Reread it before every mock.
- Take the four mock exams in a single sitting with a 45-minute timer and no notes. They draw 13, 17 and 15 questions from sections 1, 2 and 3.
- Do the labs on an Azure free account if you want hands-on practice. Delete the resource group afterwards and set a budget alert. The labs cost real money if you leave gateways, VMs or public IPs running.
The last week
| Days before | Do this |
|---|---|
| 7 | Take Mock Exam 1 under exam conditions and sort the misses by section. Focus on the section where you are under 80% |
| 5 | Reread the Keyword cues, Renamed features and Cheat sheet pages. Redo the flashcards you missed |
| 3 | Take Mock Exam 3. Review every question, including the right answers you guessed |
| 2 | Take Mock Exam 4. Run the Pearson VUE system test on the exact computer and network you will use (online exam) |
| 1 | Light review of the traps table only. Check your ID, the name on your Microsoft certification profile and the appointment time. Sleep |
Book the exam when your last two mock exams are at 80% or more on the first attempt. 700 of 1000 is the pass mark, and a margin of about 10 points covers the unscored items and the question types you cannot rehearse.
Words that point to the answer
Phrases in a question that usually point to one answer. The course has the full list.
| When the question says | Think of |
|---|---|
| The team does not want to patch operating systems | PaaS (App Service, Azure SQL Database) or SaaS, not IaaS |
| Needs admin access to the OS or a custom driver / lift and shift of an existing server | IaaS: Azure Virtual Machines |
| Combination of on-premises and cloud, burst to the cloud at peaks, some data must stay on-premises | Hybrid cloud |
| No up-front hardware purchase, pay only for what you use | Public cloud, consumption-based model (OpEx) |
| Predictable workload, 24/7 for one or three years, biggest discount for a specific VM size | Azure reservation |
| Commit to an hourly spend, flexible across VM families and regions | Azure savings plan for compute |
| Interruptible batch job, cheapest compute, can be evicted | Azure Spot virtual machines |
| Existing Windows Server or SQL Server licenses with Software Assurance | Azure Hybrid Benefit |
| Run code on an event or a schedule, scale to zero, pay per execution | Azure Functions (Flex Consumption plan) |
| Stays online during a datacenter failure; uptime percentage | High availability: availability zones, SLA |
Revise from the cheat sheet
The course's cheat sheet has a page for each of these:
- Cloud concepts: responsibility, pricing, benefits and service types
- Azure architecture and services: hierarchy, compute, network, storage, identity and security
- Management and governance: cost, governance, tools, IaC and monitoring
Practise with the real exam's mix
281 exam-style questions, 4 timed practice exams, flashcards and an AI tutor.