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Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305)

10 tests · 100 questions
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Full practice exams

Full practice exam 150 questions · 100 min · pass 700 / 1000 (scaled)
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Study guides

Azure certification path 2026: AZ-900, AZ-104, AZ-305The Azure certification path for 2026 - AZ-900, AZ-104 and AZ-305 in order, what each covers, the AZ-305 prerequisite, renewal and what to skip.
Azure RBAC vs Azure Policy vs Entra roles vs resource locksHow Azure RBAC, Azure Policy, Microsoft Entra roles and resource locks differ, how scope inheritance works, and when deny beats audit.
Azure Storage redundancy - LRS, ZRS, GRS, GZRS and failoverHow LRS, ZRS, GRS, RA-GRS, GZRS and RA-GZRS differ, what failover does to your account, and how access tiers interact with redundancy.

About the AZ-305 exam

Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions is the exam behind the Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification. To hold that certification you also need the Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104), so most people take AZ-305 after they already know how to build things in Azure. This exam moves one level up: given a business's requirements, what should it build, and why that rather than the alternatives?

Nearly every question starts with "recommend". You're given requirements for identity, data, availability, cost or compliance, and asked to pick the service, tier or pattern that meets all of them with the least complexity. Wrong options tend to be real services that solve a neighbouring problem, or a design that works but costs more or needs more management than the scenario allows. Knowing the Azure Well-Architected Framework and the Cloud Adoption Framework helps, because the exam assumes their way of reasoning.

Exam format

  • Questions: Microsoft doesn't publish an exact count; it says most of its exams have between 40 and 60. It can include case studies with several questions about one company, plus multiple choice, yes/no statement series, drag-and-drop and hot-area items.
  • Time: 100 minutes, the standard for associate and expert exams without labs. You can open Microsoft Learn in a side panel during the exam, but the clock keeps running.
  • Passing score: 700 on a scaled score out of 1,000.
  • Cost: set by the country or region where you take the exam, booked through Pearson VUE.
  • Validity: the certification lasts 12 months and is renewed for free with an online assessment on Microsoft Learn.

What the exam covers

The English exam was last updated on April 17, 2026. Its four skill areas are:

  • Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions (25-30%). Logging and monitoring with Azure Monitor and Log Analytics workspaces; authentication and authorisation with Microsoft Entra ID, Conditional Access and managed identities; secrets, keys and certificates in Key Vault; management group and subscription structure, tagging, Azure Policy and identity governance.
  • Design data storage solutions (20-25%). Relational options from Azure SQL Database and Managed Instance to SQL on a VM, with service and compute tiers and scaling; Cosmos DB and Blob Storage for semi-structured and unstructured data; and data integration and analysis.
  • Design business continuity solutions (15-20%). Backup and disaster recovery that meet a stated RTO and RPO with Azure Backup and Site Recovery, and high availability for compute, relational databases and storage.
  • Design infrastructure solutions (30-35%). Choosing VMs, containers, serverless or batch compute; messaging, events, API Management and caching; migrations planned with Azure Migrate; and networking: hybrid connectivity, network security and load balancing and routing.

How the practice questions here are organised

There are 10 practice tests of 10 questions each, and each test covers all four skill areas. The questions are design scenarios rather than how-to steps: choosing storage redundancy for a stated recovery target, deciding between Front Door, Application Gateway and Load Balancer, picking a SQL tier, or structuring Log Analytics workspaces when data residency matters. Each explanation says why the recommended design fits the requirements and what each other option gets wrong, with a link to Microsoft's documentation.

The full practice exam has 50 questions in 100 minutes, weighted to match the four skill areas, with answers hidden until you submit. It passes you at 70%, since Microsoft doesn't publish how its scaled score maps to correct answers. The real exam's case studies and drag-and-drop items are asked here as standalone multiple choice or "choose two" and "choose three".

A study plan that works

  • Pass AZ-104 first, or at least be comfortable with its content. AZ-305 assumes you already know what each service does.
  • Take Test 1 cold, then for each miss write down which requirement in the question decided the answer, such as "RPO under 15 minutes" or "no public endpoint".
  • Build comparison notes for the choices the exam keeps asking about: load balancing services, SQL deployment options and tiers, storage redundancy, and messaging services (Service Bus, Event Grid, Event Hubs).
  • Read the Azure Architecture Center's reference architectures for the workload types you know least. They show the reasoning the exam expects.
  • When the tests pass comfortably, sit the full practice exam timed, and practise reading a long scenario once and keeping its constraints in mind.

These questions are original, written from the public Microsoft Learn documentation and the official study guide. They are not real exam questions, and this site is not affiliated with Microsoft.