AZ-204
AZ-204
Microsoft Azure
Developer
The AZ-204 course teaches developers to design, build, secure, monitor, and integrate Azure solutions using compute, storage, and service APIs, ensuring production‑ready applications and scalable performance across cloud environments.
120
Minutes
50
Questions
700/1000
Passing Score
$165
Exam Cost
9
Languages
Who Should Take This
Software engineers with one to two years of hands‑on Azure experience who build cloud‑native applications, microservices, or serverless functions should enroll. They aim to validate their ability to implement compute, storage, security, monitoring, and service integration patterns, positioning themselves for Azure Developer Associate certification.
What's Covered
1
Implementing solutions using Azure App Service, Azure Functions, Azure Container Apps, and Azure Container Instances with appropriate SDKs and APIs.
2
Developing solutions using Azure Blob Storage, Azure Cosmos DB, and implementing storage security with SAS tokens and stored access policies.
3
Implementing authentication with Microsoft Identity platform, securing app configuration with Azure Key Vault, and implementing managed identities.
4
Implementing caching with Azure Cache for Redis, integrating Application Insights, and optimizing application performance.
5
Implementing API Management, event-based solutions with Event Grid and Event Hubs, and message-based solutions with Service Bus and Queue Storage.
Exam Structure
Question Types
- Multiple Choice
- Multiple Response
- Case Studies
- Code Scenarios
Scoring Method
Scaled score 100-1000, passing score 700
Delivery Method
Proctored exam, 40-60 questions, 100 minutes
Prerequisites
None required. 2+ years development experience recommended.
Recertification
Renew annually via free Microsoft Learn renewal assessment
What's Included in AccelaStudy® AI
Adaptive Knowledge Graph
Practice Questions
Lesson Modules
Console Simulator Labs
Exam Tips & Strategy
20 Activity Formats
Course Outline
73 learning goals
1
Domain 1: Develop Azure Compute Solutions
3 topics
Implement containerized solutions
- Identify Azure container hosting options including Azure Container Registry, Azure Container Instances, and Azure Container Apps and describe their scaling models, networking capabilities, and workload suitability.
- Implement Azure Container Registry image builds, tagging strategies, geo-replication, and repository-level access control using managed identities and role-based permissions.
- Deploy and configure Azure Container Instances with resource limits, environment variables, volume mounts, restart policies, and container group networking for multi-container sidecar patterns.
- Implement Azure Container Apps with revision management, ingress configuration, Dapr integration, scaling rules based on HTTP traffic and KEDA-supported triggers, and secret references.
- Analyze container deployment scenarios and evaluate the tradeoffs among Azure Container Instances, Container Apps, and App Service containers based on scaling requirements, networking constraints, sidecar needs, and operational complexity.
Implement Azure App Service Web Apps
- Identify Azure App Service hosting tiers, runtime stacks, and deployment options and describe how App Service Plans determine compute resources, scaling limits, and feature availability.
- Describe deployment slot behavior including slot-specific versus sticky settings, traffic routing percentages, and auto-swap rules that enable zero-downtime deployments and progressive rollouts.
- Create and configure Azure App Service Web Apps with application settings, connection strings, custom domains, TLS bindings, and managed identity assignments for secure service integration.
- Implement App Service autoscaling rules using metric-based triggers, schedule-based scaling, and scale-out/scale-in limits with appropriate cooldown periods and instance count thresholds.
- Configure deployment slots for staging and production with slot-specific settings, traffic routing percentages, and swap operations to enable blue-green deployments and A/B testing.
- Implement App Service deployment methods including ZIP deploy, Git-based continuous deployment, container-based deployment from ACR, and ARM template provisioning with configuration management.
- Analyze App Service scaling and deployment strategies to determine optimal hosting tier, autoscaling configuration, and slot swap workflow for a given application workload and release cadence.
Implement Azure Functions
- Function triggers and bindings
- Durable Functions and orchestrations
2
Domain 2: Develop for Azure Storage
2 topics
Develop solutions that use Azure Cosmos DB
- Identify Azure Cosmos DB API options including NoSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Gremlin, and Table and describe how each API maps to different data model requirements and migration scenarios.
- Describe Cosmos DB consistency levels from strong through eventual and explain how each level trades off between read consistency, write latency, throughput, and availability for globally distributed data.
- Describe Cosmos DB partitioning strategies, request unit consumption model, and throughput provisioning modes including autoscale and serverless and explain how partition key selection affects query performance.
- Implement Cosmos DB operations using the SDK with CosmosClient initialization, database and container creation, point reads, queries with partition key targeting, and transactional batch writes.
- Implement Cosmos DB change feed processing using the change feed processor library with lease containers, feed polling intervals, and error handling for real-time event-driven data pipelines.
- Evaluate Cosmos DB consistency level selection and server-side programming tradeoffs including stored procedure transaction scope, trigger execution overhead, and consistency impact on globally distributed read and write operations.
- Analyze Cosmos DB partition key selection, indexing policy configuration, and throughput allocation to optimize query performance, minimize cross-partition queries, and reduce request unit consumption.
Develop solutions that use Azure Blob Storage
- Identify Azure Blob Storage account types, access tiers including hot, cool, cold, and archive, redundancy options, and container access levels and describe how each setting affects durability, availability, and cost.
- Implement Blob Storage operations using the Azure SDK with BlobServiceClient initialization, container creation, block blob uploads, downloads, and snapshot management with lease controls.
- Implement Blob Storage lifecycle management policies with rule-based tier transitions from hot to cool to archive and automatic deletion based on last modified or creation time conditions.
- Implement Blob Storage concurrency control using ETags for optimistic concurrency, lease acquisition for pessimistic locking, and conditional headers to prevent lost updates in multi-client scenarios.
- Analyze Blob Storage access tier selection, lifecycle policy design, and redundancy configuration to optimize cost, durability, and retrieval latency for diverse data retention scenarios.
3
Domain 3: Implement Azure Security
2 topics
Implement user authentication and authorization
- Identify Microsoft Identity Platform components including app registrations, OAuth 2.0 authorization flows, OpenID Connect, and token types and describe how they enable authentication and authorization in Azure applications.
- Describe shared access signature types including account-level, service-level, and user delegation SAS and explain how permissions, expiry times, IP restrictions, and stored access policies govern resource access.
- Implement authentication using MSAL libraries with interactive sign-in flows, silent token acquisition, token caching, and conditional access handling for web, desktop, and mobile application scenarios.
- Configure Microsoft Identity Platform app registrations with redirect URIs, API permissions, app roles, custom scopes, and consent settings for single-tenant and multi-tenant application architectures.
- Implement shared access signatures with appropriate SAS types, permissions, expiry times, and stored access policies for fine-grained Blob Storage and Queue Storage resource access delegation.
- Implement token validation and claims-based authorization in API backends by verifying JWT signatures, audience, issuer, and custom claims to enforce role-based and scope-based access control.
- Analyze authentication and authorization requirements to select the appropriate OAuth 2.0 flow, token type, SAS policy, and permission model for a given multi-service application architecture.
Implement secure Azure solutions
- Identify Azure Key Vault object types including secrets, keys, and certificates and describe how vault access policies and Azure RBAC control access, versioning, and soft-delete recovery behavior.
- Describe managed identity types including system-assigned and user-assigned identities and explain how they eliminate credential storage by providing automatic token acquisition for Azure service authentication.
- Implement Azure managed identities with system-assigned and user-assigned types to authenticate applications to Azure services without storing credentials in code or configuration files.
- Implement Azure Key Vault secret, key, and certificate operations using the Azure SDK with managed identity authentication, secret versioning, rotation triggers, and soft-delete recovery.
- Configure Azure App Configuration with feature flags, key-value pairs, labels for environment separation, Key Vault references, and event-driven configuration refresh using change notifications.
- Implement Key Vault references in Azure App Service and Azure Functions configuration to securely inject secrets at runtime without embedding credentials in deployment artifacts.
- Analyze security architecture decisions to select the appropriate combination of Key Vault, managed identities, App Configuration, and SAS tokens for secrets management across multi-tier Azure applications.
4
Domain 4: Monitor, Troubleshoot, and Optimize Azure Solutions
2 topics
Implement caching for solutions
- Identify Azure Cache for Redis tiers, clustering options, and eviction policies and describe how caching improves application latency, throughput, and database offloading for read-heavy workloads.
- Implement Azure Cache for Redis with cache-aside, write-behind, and session state patterns using StackExchange.Redis client with connection multiplexing, TTL management, and key expiration strategies.
- Configure Azure CDN profiles and endpoints with caching rules, query string handling, geo-filtering, custom domains, and purge operations to optimize global content delivery for static and dynamic assets.
- Analyze caching strategy tradeoffs to determine the optimal cache tier, invalidation policy, TTL configuration, and CDN caching rules for a given application performance and consistency requirement.
Troubleshoot solutions by using Application Insights
- Identify Application Insights telemetry types including requests, dependencies, exceptions, traces, custom events, and metrics and describe how they provide end-to-end observability for Azure applications.
- Implement Application Insights instrumentation using auto-instrumentation and the SDK to capture request telemetry, dependency tracking, exception logging, and custom metrics in web applications and Azure Functions.
- Configure Application Insights alerts, availability tests, and smart detection rules with action groups and notification channels to detect performance degradation and failure conditions.
- Implement custom telemetry using the Application Insights SDK with TelemetryClient to track custom events, metrics, and properties and use telemetry initializers and processors for enrichment and filtering.
- Analyze Application Insights telemetry data using Kusto Query Language to diagnose request performance degradation, dependency failure patterns, exception trends, and user behavior anomalies.
- Analyze Application Insights telemetry including application maps, transaction diagnostics, and failure analysis to identify performance bottlenecks, intermittent failures, and dependency degradation in distributed applications.
- Evaluate Application Insights sampling strategies, data retention policies, and continuous export configurations to balance telemetry completeness against ingestion cost for high-volume production workloads.
5
Domain 5: Connect to and Consume Azure Services
3 topics
Implement API Management
- Identify Azure API Management components including API gateways, developer portals, products, subscriptions, and policies and describe how they enable API lifecycle management and consumption governance.
- Configure API Management policies for inbound, outbound, backend, and on-error processing using rate limiting, IP filtering, header transformation, CORS, caching, and JWT validation policy expressions.
- Implement API Management subscriptions, products, and access control with subscription keys, OAuth 2.0 authorization servers, and managed identity backend authentication for secure API consumption.
- Evaluate API versioning and revision strategies in API Management to determine when to use URL path, query string, or header-based versioning schemes and non-breaking revision workflows for safe API evolution.
- Analyze API Management policy configurations and gateway routing to determine optimal throttling, caching, transformation, and security policy combinations for multi-backend API architectures.
Develop event-based solutions
- Identify Azure Event Grid concepts including system topics, custom topics, event subscriptions, event schemas, and filtering and describe how Event Grid enables reactive event-driven architectures.
- Describe Azure Event Hubs architecture including namespaces, event hubs, partitions, consumer groups, and capture and explain how it supports high-throughput event stream ingestion and processing.
- Implement Azure Event Grid custom topics with event publishing, subscription filtering using subject prefixes and advanced filters, webhook and Azure Function endpoints, and dead-letter configuration.
- Implement Azure Event Hubs event producers and consumers using partition keys, consumer groups, event processor clients, and checkpointing for reliable high-throughput event stream processing.
- Analyze event-driven architecture requirements to select between Event Grid and Event Hubs based on event volume, ordering guarantees, delivery semantics, latency targets, and downstream consumer patterns.
Develop message-based solutions
- Identify Azure messaging services and describe how Azure Service Bus queues, topics, and subscriptions differ from Azure Queue Storage in delivery guarantees, ordering, dead-lettering, and session support.
- Implement Azure Service Bus queue messaging with send, receive, and peek-lock operations, dead-letter queue handling, message deferral, scheduled delivery, and duplicate detection for reliable processing.
- Implement Azure Service Bus topic and subscription messaging with correlation filters, SQL filters, message sessions for ordered processing, and auto-forwarding for fan-out and routing architectures.
- Implement Azure Queue Storage messaging with enqueue, dequeue, peek, and visibility timeout operations using the Azure SDK for lightweight decoupled processing with at-least-once delivery semantics.
- Analyze message-based solution requirements to select between Service Bus and Queue Storage based on message size limits, ordering needs, transaction support, throughput targets, and cost constraints.
- Evaluate the integration of event-based and message-based patterns to determine when to combine Event Grid, Event Hubs, Service Bus, and Queue Storage in a unified decoupled application architecture.
Hands-On Labs
25 labs
~436 min total
Console Simulator
Practice in a simulated cloud console or Python code sandbox — no account needed. Each lab runs entirely in your browser.
Certification Benefits
Salary Impact
$130,000
Average Salary
Related Job Roles
Azure Developer
Cloud Developer
Software Engineer
Full-Stack Developer
Industry Recognition
Microsoft Azure certifications are among the most valued in enterprise IT, with Microsoft holding the second-largest cloud market share globally and serving as the dominant platform in enterprise and hybrid cloud environments.
Scope
Included Topics
- All domains and task statements in the Microsoft Azure Developer Associate (AZ-204) exam guide: Domain 1 Develop Azure compute solutions (25-30%), Domain 2 Develop for Azure storage (15-20%), Domain 3 Implement Azure security (20-25%), Domain 4 Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize Azure solutions (15-20%), Domain 5 Connect to and consume Azure services and third-party services (15-20%).
- Associate-level application development practices on Azure including containerized deployments, serverless functions, web app hosting, Cosmos DB and Blob Storage integration, identity and secrets management, caching and CDN optimization, API management, and event-driven and message-based solution design.
- Scenario-driven development decisions involving Azure SDK usage patterns, Azure Resource Manager deployments, managed identity integration, and production operations readiness for cloud-native applications on Microsoft Azure.
- Key Azure services for developers: Azure Container Registry, Azure Container Instances, Azure Container Apps, Azure App Service, Azure Functions, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Blob Storage, Microsoft Identity Platform, MSAL, Azure Key Vault, Azure App Configuration, Azure Cache for Redis, Azure CDN, Application Insights, Azure API Management, Azure Event Grid, Azure Event Hubs, Azure Service Bus, Azure Queue Storage.
Not Covered
- Azure infrastructure administration and platform engineering responsibilities not centered on application developer workflows including virtual machine management, virtual network design, and Azure AD tenant administration.
- Professional-level solution architecture governance, enterprise operating model design, and Azure landing zone patterns that exceed developer associate objectives.
- Transient service pricing details and short-lived promotional values that are not stable for durable domain specifications.
- Azure DevOps pipeline configuration and GitHub Actions workflow authoring beyond what is directly tested in AZ-204.
- Azure CLI and PowerShell command-level syntax memorization and SDK version-specific API signatures.
Official Exam Page
Learn more at Microsoft Azure
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