u/Unemployed_Lloydd

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share that I recently passed my AZ-305 exam. After passing AZ-104 in mid-August, I started the Microsoft Learn self-paced course for AZ-305 in September. I was not very consistent with daily learning but eventually got through the coursework by 9/18. While I was studying the course I was updating my written notes (a total of about 1200 bullet points) as well as updating a Chat-GPT agenda. Any time that I was curious about how something worked (beyond what was described on Learn) I would ask GPT and then drill in further with examples. I used MeasureUp (subscription) to take 5 practice exams and read every missed question's explanation.

While I did not feel 100% ready, I wanted to at least attempt this exam in September while I still had my student discount. If I had to pay the full price, I would probably be more anxious and procrastinated for several more months.

My exam started immediately with a multiple question case study and then it went into the normal questions. I finished the questions with 15 minutes remaining and I took that time to review 15 marked questions which I only changed maybe 1 or 2.

Glad I spent time to learn about Virtual Wan vs Route Server, ExpressRoute vs VPN, Event Grid vs Event Hub vs Service Queue, App Service vs AKS vs ACI, Front Door vs Traffic Manager.

I am grateful for the community of support and encouragement that I have found here. It is inspiring to see how others have similar challenges and fears about the process.

I finally bit the bullet and took AZ-104 yesterday. Barely passed with 725.

My study approach:

I went through the Microsoft Learn coursework and then took the practice exams until I was hitting a regular 90% or better. I then switched to MeasureUp and practiced the exam quite a few times, taking the time to read through the context explanations and if I didn't fully understand I would put that into ChatGPT and have it explain and quiz me on that topic. I went through quite a few mock exams on MU until I will hitting 90+ in all topic areas. Some of the questions are worded confusingly and some answer sets were wrong, so I kept getting those wrong by answering correctly. When I took the exam I found it very difficult with many multi-part questions with exhibits. A lot of networking questions with exhibit spreadsheets. I marked 2/3 of the questions for review. At around question 45(?) it entered a special question section that is excluded from review and I thought that was the case study section. After finishing the special questions I went back to review but at about 9 minutes remaining I spotted the Case Study 0/4 counter and panicked. I had to drop the review and get to the case studies. I ended up guessing on the case studies because 9 minutes is not enough to even read through all the scenario details and context.

But I'll take the Win, but I really don't feel like I have mastery of the subject matter. Thank you to all of you that helped guide and inspire me to keep working on my IT career knowledge.

I see these posted up from time-to-time and so I thought I would help out with some updated info.

These are some of the available Microsoft Virtual Training Days webinars with their associated 50% exam vouchers. I just copied and pasted one training day each. If you don't see a date/time/language that works for you then you can dig around the training days to find something more appropriate. You must attend all of the scheduled training days (some are 1 day some are 2-3). You just have to log in and stay connected during the pre-recorded videos. There are usually "engineers" attending to the Q&A section so you can ask live questions if you want. From my experience the 50% stacks with any other discounts you get from work, etc. Best of luck!

AZ-900
Microsoft Virtual Training Day: Introduction to Microsoft Azure 

DP-300
Microsoft Virtual Training Day: Build AI Apps with Azure Database for PostgreSQL 

DP-900
Microsoft Virtual Training Day: Introduction to Microsoft Azure Data 

SC-500 (beta)
Microsoft Security Virtual Training Day: Strengthen Cloud Security with Microsoft Defender for Cloud 

SC-900
Microsoft Virtual Training Day: Introduction to Microsoft Security 

SC-401
Microsoft Virtual Training Day: Protect Sensitive Information in the AI Era with Microsoft Purview 

AB-900
Microsoft Virtual Training Day: Secure and administer Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agents 

AI-901
Microsoft Virtual Training Day: Develop Generative AI Apps with Azure AI Foundry 

PL-900
Microsoft Virtual Training Day: Introduction to Microsoft Power Platform 

SC-200
Microsoft Virtual Training Day: Predict and Defend Against Cybersecurity Threats 

Microsoft currently has added Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Apps and Agents Developer Associate to the virtual training day voucher list.

Attend the free virtual training session for Microsoft Virtual Training Day: Build Agentic AI Solutions with Azure AI Foundry and get a 50% off voucher for AI-103 Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Apps and Agents Developer Associate.

Microsoft Virtual Training Day: Build Agentic AI Solutions with Azure AI Foundry - USA Time Zones

Today I passed the AI-102 exam. This was quite possibly the most challenging exam for me, personally. MS Learn was available during the exam but most of the time it was so slow I couldn't use it. There was a lot of questions regarding code either deducing the output or determining the correct class or API format. I am not a programmer and although I did try, I had to guess on most of the those. I completed the 51 questions with 21 marked for review with 20 minutes remaining. I had to forgo the review portion so that I could use the remaining time on the 6-question case study.

I started studying for this exam back in October 2025. I completed the Microsoft Learn courses and did most of the labs (some deployments were blocked by my college - .edu subscription). I stopped studying for Thanksgiving and only picked it back up in April when I read about the retirement. I had a MS virtual training voucher, and it stacked with the .edu discount so it only cost me $45 so I went for it.

I passed with 765, but honestly, I had to guess on so many that I don't feel like I could actually go out and provision anything IRL. I mainly went down this path so I could round out my Azure knowledge and tie in AI for future job prospects.