Microsoft Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions (AZ-400) Exam

Microsoft Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions Exam Objectives

1. 1

   1.0 Design and implement processes and communications (10-15%)

   • 1.1Design and implement traceability and flow of work
   • 1.2Design and implement a structure for the flow of work, including GitHub Flow
   • 1.3Design and implement a strategy for feedback cycles, including notifications and GitHub issues
   • 1.4Design and implement integration for tracking work, including GitHub projects, Azure Boards, and repositories
   • 1.5Design and implement source, bug, and quality traceability
   • 1.6Design and implement appropriate metrics and queries for DevOps
   • 1.7Design and implement a dashboard, including flow of work, such as cycle times, time to recovery, and lead time
   • 1.8Design and implement appropriate metrics and queries for project planning
   • 1.9Design and implement appropriate metrics and queries for development
   • 1.10Design and implement appropriate metrics and queries for testing
   • 1.11Design and implement appropriate metrics and queries for security
   • 1.12Design and implement appropriate metrics and queries for delivery
   • 1.13Design and implement appropriate metrics and queries for operations
   • 1.14Configure collaboration and communication
   • 1.15Document a project by configuring wikis and process diagrams, including Markdown and Mermaid syntax
   • 1.16Configure release documentation, including release notes and API documentation
   • 1.17Automate creation of documentation from Git history
   • 1.18Configure integration by using webhooks
   • 1.19Configure integration between Azure Boards and GitHub repositories
   • 1.20Configure integration between GitHub or Azure DevOps and Microsoft Teams
2. 2

   2.0 Design and implement a source control strategy (10-15%)

   • 2.1Design and implement branching strategies for the source code
   • 2.2Design a branch strategy, including trunk-based, feature branch, and release branch
   • 2.3Design and implement a pull request workflow by using branch policies and branch protection rules
   • 2.4Implement branch merging restrictions by using branch policies and branch protection rules
   • 2.5Configure and manage repositories
   • 2.6Design and implement a strategy for managing large files, including Git Large File Storage (LFS) and git-fat
   • 2.7Design a strategy for scaling and optimizing a Git repository, including Scalar and cross-repository sharing
   • 2.8Configure permissions in the source control repository
   • 2.9Configure tags to organize the source control repository
   • 2.10Recover specific data by using Git commands
   • 2.11Remove specific data from source control
3. 3

   3.0 Design and implement build and release pipelines (50-55%)

   • Task 3.1: groups, variables, and variable groups Design and implement checks and approvals by using YAML-based environments Design and implement deployments Design a deployment strategy, including blue-green, canary, ring, progressive exposure, feature flags, and A/B testing Design a pipeline to ensure that dependency deployments are reliably ordered Plan for minimizing downtime during deployments by using load balancing, rolling deployments, and deployment slot usage and swap Design a hotfix path plan for responding to high-priority code fixes Design and implement a resiliency strategy for deployment Implement feature flags by using Azure App Configuration Feature Manager Implement application deployment by using containers, binaries, and scripts Implement a deployment that includes database tasks Design and implement infrastructure as code (IaC) Recommend a configuration management technology for application infrastructure Implement a configuration management strategy for application infrastructure Define an IaC strategy, including source control and automation of testing and deployment Design and implement desired state configuration for environments, including Azure Automation State Configuration, Azure Resource Manager, Bicep, and Azure Machine Configuration Design and implement Azure Deployment Environments for on-demand self-deployment Maintain pipelines Monitor pipeline health, including failure rate, duration, and flaky tests Optimize a pipeline for cost, time, performance, and reliability Optimize pipeline concurrency for performance and cost Design and implement a retention strategy for pipeline artifacts and dependencies Migrate a pipeline from classic to YAML in Azure Pipelines
4. 4

   4.0 Develop a security and compliance plan (10-15%)

   • 4.1Design and implement authentication and authorization methods
   • 4.2Choose between Microsoft Entra service principals and managed identities for Azure resources (system-assigned and user-assigned)
   • 4.3Implement and manage GitHub authentication, including GitHub Apps, GITHUB_TOKEN, and personal access tokens
   • 4.4Implement and manage Azure DevOps service connections and personal access tokens
   • 4.5Design and implement permissions and roles in GitHub
   • 4.6Design and implement permissions and security groups in Azure DevOps
   • 4.7Recommend appropriate access levels, including stakeholder access in Azure DevOps and outside collaborator access in GitHub
   • 4.8Configure projects and teams in Azure DevOps
   • 4.9Design and implement a strategy for managing sensitive information in automation
   • 4.10Implement and manage secrets, keys, and certificates by using Azure Key Vault
   • 4.11Implement and manage secrets and secretless authentication (for example, workload identity federation/OpenID Connect) in GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines
   • 4.12Design and implement a strategy for managing sensitive files during deployment, including Azure Pipelines secure files
   • 4.13Design pipelines to prevent leakage of sensitive information
   • 4.14Automate security and compliance scanning
   • 4.15Design a strategy for security and compliance scanning, including dependency, code, secret, and licensing scanning
   • 4.16Configure Microsoft Defender for Cloud DevOps Security
   • 4.17Configure GitHub Advanced Security for both GitHub and Azure DevOps
   • 4.18Integrate GitHub Advanced Security with Microsoft Defender for Cloud
   • 4.19Automate container scanning, including scanning container images and configuring an action to run CodeQL analysis in a container
   • 4.20Automate analysis of licensing, vulnerabilities, and versioning of open-source components by using Dependabot alerts
5. 5

   5.0 Implement an instrumentation strategy (5-10%)

   • 5.1Configure monitoring for a DevOps environment
   • 5.2Configure Azure Monitor and Azure Monitor Logs to integrate with DevOps tools
   • 5.3Configure collection of telemetry by using Application Insights, VM Insights, Container Insights, Azure Monitor for Storage, and Azure Monitor for Networks
   • 5.4Configure monitoring in GitHub, including enabling insights and creating and configuring charts
   • 5.5Configure alerts for events in GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines
   • 5.6Analyze metrics from instrumentation
   • 5.7Inspect infrastructure performance indicators, including CPU, memory, disk, and network
   • 5.8Analyze metrics by using collected telemetry, including usage and application performance
   • 5.9Inspect distributed tracing by using Application Insights
   • 5.10Interrogate logs using basic Kusto Query Language (KQL) queries