u/ApplicationAlarming7

I failed AZ-104 back in January 2025 with a score around 660-670 (can't remember now!). But today, I slayed that dragon finally! I had planned to study and review a lot over the weekend, but I was exhausted of test questions and also busy doing an Azure security assessment for work. My Azure background is mostly with Azure security (networks and Entra/RBAC) and Azure web apps.

Preparations? Honestly, nothing really helped in the end, this test is just a beast and is one big trivia game. It felt just as hard as it did the first time, and even after using Azure full-time for more than two years, nearly nothing I use day to day in Azure is tested on the exam. In fact, I did evern *worse* in the Backup/Monitoring category this time. But I did improve on Storage, which is what got me over the line I suppose. Frankly, I think it was just luck that I got enough points today. I was also a little better at using MS Learn to verify some things, which maybe helped on 4 or 5 questions?

What did I use to prep?
- MS Learn AZ-104 Training: useless and way too general, but everyone should do it still
- AZ-104 Github labs: OK, but not nearly specific enough. You need to go way deeper!
- MeasureUp: This was good, it helped me get in the right mindset for the test question styles, but still I don't think it was all that helpful other than getting the mindset
- CloudLee AZ-104 Course: Great course for learning Azure fundamentals
- CloudLee AZ-500 Course: Great for zeroing in on network and RBAC/Entra
- Work experience: two years of mainly Azure networking/VPNs and Azure Web Apps

What's next? Probably AZ-305. I had originally planned for AZ-400. Not sure though if that's the goal anymore. But I would like to get smarter at Azure DevOps pipelines. I suppose the replacement for AZ-500 would be interesting and useful for learning more about Azure and AI. But it's not ready yet. For now I've created a monthly calendar reminder to remind me about re-certification, even if it is still 6 months from today!

Don't give up, AZ-104 candidates! Just don't give up!

I find myself working Azure more and more these days, and I'm interested in learning modern web development (mostly backend) with .NET due to the native support for Azure WebApps and Azure Functions (as well as AWS Elastic Beanstalk and AWS Lambdas). My experience in the backend is mostly with PHP/PostgreSQL, and on the front-end it's with Vue.JS.

I've been *overwhelmed* with the size of the .NET ecosystem, as well as with terminology like MVVM and MVC and so on. I'd like to continue developing on Linux just do to the ease of server licensing compared to Windows/IIS, and I'm not interested in desktop, just web APIs and web back-ends. This leads me to .NET core I think.

Is there a well-known or solid starting place I can start learning? I tend to learn best from books where I can build up based on small pieces (rather than watching videos of people code). Is there a "tome of knowledge" when it comes to .NET core?