Microsoft · AZ-305
Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305) Practice Tests
Measures your ability to design cloud and hybrid solutions on Azure, including identity, governance, monitoring, data storage, business continuity, and infrastructure solutions.
Exam Details
Practice Questions
530
≈ 10 practice exams
Duration
120 minutes
Passing Score
700/1000
Difficulty
ExpertLast Updated
Jan 2026
Topics Covered
Identity, governance, and monitoring solutionsData storage solutionsBusiness continuity solutionsInfrastructure solutions
Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305) Practice Exam Preparation
Use this AZ-305 practice exam to prepare for Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305) with realistic questions, detailed explanations, and focused study modes. The practice bank includes 530 questions for Microsoft AZ-305, so you can review the exam steadily instead of relying on one long cram session.
As you practice, pay extra attention to recurring topics such as Identity, governance, and monitoring solutions, Data storage solutions, Business continuity solutions, and Infrastructure solutions. Start with short sessions to identify weak areas, then move into timed quizzes once your accuracy is consistent.
The explanations are especially useful when you want to connect exam wording to the responsibilities and scenarios described in the official certification guidance. Use the free preview first, then unlock the full question bank when you are ready to build a complete study routine.
Exam Domain Breakdown
Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions28%
Design data storage solutions23%
Design business continuity solutions18%
Design infrastructure solutions33%
Exam Overview
The AZ-305 exam, titled 'Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions,' validates expert-level competency in architecting cloud and hybrid solutions on Microsoft Azure. Candidates demonstrate mastery across compute, networking, storage, monitoring, and security design — translating complex business requirements into Azure solutions that conform to the Azure Well-Architected Framework and Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure. The exam was significantly updated on October 18, 2024, and was reviewed for technical accuracy as recently as January 14, 2026, making it reflective of current Azure capabilities and architectural best practices.
Passing this exam, in combination with the prerequisite AZ-104 Azure Administrator Associate certification, earns the Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert credential. This expert-level designation signals that a professional can operate at the intersection of business strategy and technical implementation — advising stakeholders, evaluating trade-offs across solution domains, and collaborating with developers, security engineers, administrators, and data engineers to deliver end-to-end Azure architectures.
Who Should Take This Exam
This certification is designed for senior IT professionals who function in an architecture or lead technical role, such as Azure Solutions Architect, Cloud Architect, Senior Cloud Engineer, or Technical Architect. Ideal candidates have advanced experience across IT operations domains including networking, virtualization, identity management, security, disaster recovery, data platforms, and governance — and understand how architectural decisions in one domain affect the overall solution.
Candidates typically have hands-on background in Azure administration (AZ-104 level), Azure development, and DevOps practices. Professionals transitioning from on-premises infrastructure architecture, senior cloud engineers looking to move into design-focused roles, and consultants advising enterprises on Azure adoption strategies are well-suited for this certification.
Prerequisites
There are no formal exam prerequisites for sitting the AZ-305 exam itself, but earning the Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification requires holding an active Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104) certification. Candidates may take AZ-305 before AZ-104, but the Expert credential will not be awarded until both are satisfied.
In terms of recommended experience, Microsoft advises that candidates have strong conceptual and practical knowledge of Azure compute technologies (VMs, containers, serverless), Azure Virtual Networking including load balancers, Azure Storage technologies (unstructured and database), and general application design concepts such as messaging and high availability. Prior experience with DevOps processes and Azure development workflows also helps candidates contextualize the architecture design scenarios presented on the exam.
Exam Format
The AZ-305 exam is delivered through Pearson VUE and is available both online (proctored) and at testing centers. The exam includes approximately 40–60 questions, which may include multiple-choice, multi-select, drag-and-drop, case study scenarios, and short-answer formats. Case studies present a business scenario requiring candidates to recommend architectural solutions aligned with stated requirements. The time limit is 120 minutes.
The passing score is 700 out of 1000 on Microsoft's scaled scoring system, where raw scores are converted and do not correspond to a simple percentage of correct answers. The exam is available in English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), Korean, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Traditional), and Italian. Candidates taking a localized version may request an additional 30 minutes if their preferred language version is not yet updated to match the current English version. The exam has no scheduled retirement date.
Skills Measured
- 1.Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions (25–30%): Covers designing logging and monitoring solutions (recommending log routing, monitoring tools), authentication and authorization solutions (identity management, access to Azure and on-premises resources, secrets/certificates/keys management via Azure Key Vault), and governance (management group and subscription structure, resource tagging, compliance solutions using Azure Policy, and identity governance).
- 2.Design data storage solutions (20–25%): Covers relational data storage (selecting the right Azure SQL service tier, scalability, and data protection strategies), semi-structured and unstructured data storage (Cosmos DB, Azure Blob, Azure Data Lake), balancing features/performance/cost trade-offs, and data integration and analysis solutions using services like Azure Data Factory and Azure Synapse Analytics.
- 3.Design business continuity solutions (15–20%): Covers backup and disaster recovery for Azure and hybrid workloads — including compute (VMs, containers), databases (Azure SQL, managed instances), and unstructured data — meeting defined RPO/RTO objectives using Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery. Also includes high availability design for compute, relational data, and semi-structured/unstructured data.
- 4.Design infrastructure solutions (30–35%): The largest domain, covering compute solution design (VMs, containers via AKS, serverless via Azure Functions/Logic Apps, batch processing), application architecture (messaging with Service Bus/Event Hubs, event-driven patterns, API Management, caching with Azure Cache for Redis, automated deployment), migration strategies using the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (evaluating on-premises servers, databases, and unstructured data for IaaS/PaaS migration), and network solutions (internet connectivity, hybrid connectivity via VPN/ExpressRoute, network performance, security with Azure Firewall/NSGs, and load balancing/routing with Azure Load Balancer/Traffic Manager/Front Door).
Study Tips
- Use the official AZ-305 Study Guide on Microsoft Learn (aka.ms/AZ305-StudyGuide) as your syllabus backbone — it lists every objective domain, subtopic, and links to relevant Microsoft documentation, ensuring you cover the exact skills measured as of October 18, 2024.
- Watch the official 'Exam Readiness Zone' AZ-305 video series on Microsoft Learn, which covers each of the four domains in dedicated episodes and explains how Microsoft frames architectural decision-making questions on the exam.
- Take the free Official Practice Assessment for AZ-305 available directly on the Microsoft Learn exam page — these questions are authored by Microsoft and closely reflect the format and phrasing of real exam scenarios, making them the most reliable indicator of readiness.
- Enroll in the instructor-led course AZ-305T00: Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions, which uses case studies to practice translating business requirements into architecture designs — the exact skill tested in AZ-305 scenario and case study questions.
- Practice hands-on architecture design by working through the Azure Architecture Center (learn.microsoft.com/azure/architecture) and studying reference architectures for common patterns like hub-and-spoke networking, multi-region high availability, and data lake analytics — these scenarios frequently appear in case study questions.
- Use the Azure Sandbox and exam sandbox (go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2226877) to familiarize yourself with the exam interface and question types before exam day, particularly the drag-and-drop and case study formats that can be time-consuming if encountered unexpectedly.
- After completing your studies, attempt the MindHub Microsoft Official Practice Test for AZ-305 to simulate full exam conditions and identify any remaining knowledge gaps across the four domains before your scheduled exam date.
Career Benefits
The Azure Solutions Architect Expert is consistently ranked among the highest-paying Microsoft certifications. In the United States, certified professionals typically earn between $130,000 and $200,000+ annually, with ZipRecruiter reporting an average of approximately $146,601 and Glassdoor showing median total compensation exceeding $228,000 for Azure Architect roles as of early 2026. Top earners in senior principal and enterprise architect roles can command $215,000 or more. This premium reflects the seniority of the role — architects directly influence infrastructure spend, security posture, and business continuity across entire organizations.
Job titles unlocked include Azure Solutions Architect, Cloud Architect, Senior Cloud Engineer, Principal Cloud Architect, and Technical/Pre-sales Consultant. Compared to the associate-level AZ-104, this expert credential signals readiness for design-leadership roles rather than administrative execution, and it is often a prerequisite for senior or staff-level cloud positions at large enterprises and consulting firms. Organizations heavily invested in Azure — including financial services, healthcare, and government sectors — show consistent demand for this credential. The certification renews annually for free via an online assessment on Microsoft Learn, keeping the credential current without requiring a full re-examination.
Sample Questions
5 sample questions with answers and explanations. The full bank has 530 questions, enough for 10 full-length practice exams.
Preview — answers shown1. A pharmaceutical company needs to run a large-scale computational chemistry simulation. The job consists of 100,000 independent, parallel tasks, each taking about 30 minutes to complete. They need a managed service that can provision a pool of compute nodes, efficiently schedule the tasks across these nodes, and then automatically scale down the pool once the job is complete to minimize costs. Which Azure compute service is the best fit?
AAzure Functions with a Durable Functions orchestrator
BAzure Batch
CAn Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set (VMSS)
DAzure Kubernetes Service (AKS) with a Job object
Explanation
Azure Batch is the service specifically designed for this type of large-scale, parallel batch processing. Azure Batch excels at managing a pool of compute nodes and provides rich job scheduling and task management capabilities. You can submit your 100,000 tasks as a single job, and Azure Batch will handle distributing them across the nodes, managing retries, and tracking progress. Its auto-scale feature can automatically shrink the compute pool as tasks complete, ensuring you only pay for the resources you need. While a VMSS or AKS could be used, you would have to build the complex job scheduling and queueing logic yourself. Durable Functions are for orchestrating stateful workflows, not typically for HPC-scale batch jobs.
2. Given that 'MegaCart' has chosen Azure SQL Database for its 75 TB product catalog, which specific service tier must they select to accommodate this massive database size?
AGeneral Purpose
BHyperscale
CStandard
DBusiness Critical
Explanation
They must select the Hyperscale service tier. Hyperscale is a unique architecture within Azure SQL Database designed specifically for very large databases (VLDBs). It is the only service tier that supports databases up to 100 TB in size. It also provides rapid scaling, fast database restores, and high performance regardless of the data volume. The other tiers, like Business Critical and General Purpose, have much lower size limits and would not be able to host a 75 TB database.
3. A financial firm, FinSecure, directs diagnostic logs from several Azure SQL databases in a resource group named 'Prod-Fin-Apps' to a central Log Analytics workspace. The workspace is configured with resource-context access control. A junior database administrator, Priya, needs permission to view the logs for the databases in 'Prod-Fin-Apps' only. She must not be able to see logs from any other resources reporting to the same workspace. Following the principle of least privilege, what role should you assign to Priya?
AReader role on the 'Prod-Fin-Apps' resource group.
BReader role on the Log Analytics workspace.
CLog Analytics Reader role on the Log Analytics workspace.
DContributor role on the 'Prod-Fin-Apps' resource group.
Explanation
The correct answer is to assign the Reader role on the resource group. When a Log Analytics workspace uses resource-context access mode, a user's permission to view logs is determined by their permissions on the resource that generated the logs. By giving Priya the Reader role on the 'Prod-Fin-Apps' resource group, she inherits read access to all resources within it, which in turn grants her permission to read the logs from those specific databases, and nothing else. This perfectly adheres to the principle of least privilege. A & D. Assigning any reader role directly on the workspace would grant Priya access to all logs from all resources in that workspace, which is more permission than she needs. C. The Contributor role would allow Priya to modify or delete the databases, which is far too much permission for someone who only needs to review logs.
4. The security team at 'Matrix Data Solutions' has deployed a custom application to an Azure VM. This application needs to access secrets stored in an Azure Key Vault. The application is registered in Azure AD and has a service principal. To follow security best practices, what is the recommended way for the application running on the Azure VM to authenticate to the Key Vault to retrieve the secrets?
AEmbed the Key Vault access keys directly in the application's source code.
BCreate a user account in Azure AD, give it access to the Key Vault, and store its credentials on the VM.
CAssign a system-assigned Managed Identity to the Azure VM and grant that identity access to the Key Vault.
DStore the application's client ID and client secret in a configuration file on the VM.
Explanation
This scenario is about the most secure, modern way for an Azure resource to authenticate to another Azure resource without managing credentials like secrets or keys. **Managed Identity is the correct answer.** Managed Identity is the gold standard for this use case. When you enable a system-assigned managed identity on a VM, Azure creates a service principal for that VM in Azure AD automatically. You can then grant this identity permissions (e.g., 'Get Secrets') on the Key Vault. The application code on the VM can then request an access token from a local endpoint without having any credentials stored in its code or configuration files. This eliminates the risk of credential leakage. Let's review the incorrect approaches: - **Storing the application's client ID and client secret in a configuration file** is a common but less secure method. Storing secrets in a config file means you have to manage the rotation of that secret and protect the file itself from being compromised. - **Embedding the Key Vault access keys directly in the application's source code** is a major security vulnerability. Embedding secrets in code is a very bad practice. - **Creating a user account in Azure AD and storing its credentials on the VM** is also insecure as it involves storing user credentials on a VM, which should be avoided.
5. A financial company is migrating a line-of-business application, 'App1', to Azure dedicated hosts to meet strict compliance requirements for physical hardware isolation. The company has an existing Enterprise Agreement with Software Assurance for their on-premises Windows Server licenses. What tool should they use to estimate the migration costs, and what licensing benefit should they leverage to minimize those costs?
ATool: Azure Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator, Benefit: Azure Hybrid Benefit
BTool: Azure Cost Management Power BI app, Benefit: Azure Spot Virtual Machines
CTool: Azure Cost Management Power BI app, Benefit: Azure Reservations
DTool: Azure Pricing Calculator, Benefit: Azure Spot Virtual Machines
Explanation
The correct combination is the Azure Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator and the Azure Hybrid Benefit. The TCO Calculator is designed to help you estimate the cost savings you can realize by migrating your on-premises workloads to Azure, comparing your on-prem costs to the equivalent Azure services. The Azure Hybrid Benefit is a key cost-saving measure that allows customers with active Software Assurance to use their existing on-premises Windows Server and SQL Server licenses on Azure, effectively paying only for the base compute infrastructure cost and not for the OS license again. A, C, & D: Spot VMs are for interruptible workloads and not suitable for a line-of-business app. Azure Reservations are another cost-saving method, but Hybrid Benefit is the specific program for leveraging existing licenses.
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