Last night I passed the AZ-103 to get the Azure Administrator Associate certification.  You can view my badge here:  https://www.youracclaim.com/badges/7970a8bd-4984-4f5e-8a6f-847534b1e239/public_url

I took the exam for free as I had a voucher from Microsoft.  Right now the vouchers are easy to get, you just have to sign up for a webinar (like this one) and they’ll give you a voucher that you can use for any exam.

It was also my first time taking a Pearson Certification Exam Online, so I thought I would make this post detailing my thoughts on the exam, how I prepared, and my thoughts about taking online exams.

Resources Used

For me, I studied for about 2 weeks in order to pass.  I have experience with Azure networking for my day job and considering the current COVID situation I just crammed for a few days and was able to pass.  Here is what I used:

  • Udemy course from Scott Duffy
    • I thought this course was pretty good.  Not enough to pass the exam by itself, but I got a good understanding of all of the technologies and it was nice to go through the labs at least once with him.
  • Microsoft Learn
    • This is free from Microsoft and it’s actually a pretty great resource.
  • Practice Tests from Pearson (through Safari)
  • Microsoft Docs
    • I’m actually impressed how much better Microsoft’s documentation has gotten.  A few years ago when I did my MCSA I thought the documentation was lacking, but I found tons of useful documentation for Azure.
  • Free Azure Account
    • Sign up and you get a $200 credit for 30 days, which is plenty to do these labs.

That’s it.  You don’t need any books for this exam.  You just need to lab, lab, lab.  Also, these resources can be used for the AZ-104 since the 104 is just the updated version of the test.

Thoughts on the Exam

I thought this exam was very fair and this surprised me.  When I took my MCSA for server 2012, I thought the exams were awful.  Loaded with trivia and memorization of random powershell commands.

This exam was very different from those MCSA exams.  I felt each question was very fair and any question that pertained to commands could be reasoned out by just understand how the commands work.  No memorization needed.

If you have experience with Azure this exam will be very easy for you.  If you don’t have a ton, I would just lab the exam topics like crazy and you’ll find that it’s an fair exam.

Online Exam Process

This was something that I was very impressed with.  I might continue to take exams from home even after testing centers start to open.

First, scheduling was great because you have so many more options.  In my case, I took the exam at 6PM.  None of the testing centers near me are open that late.  Second, since my wife is working from home and my lab environment is a bit of a mess, I took the exam from the comforts of my bed.  I just sat in it with my laptop in my lap and there were no issues.

The process is pretty seamless.  You download the onVUE software and open it about 15 minutes before your exam.  They send a link to your phone so you can take a bunch of pictures.  You need a selfie, pictures of your ID, then a picture of your “desk” from 4 different angles.  Once that is done you wait for Pearson to verify and then they start your exam.

The only negative to me is that you don’t get that nice print out of your score report, instead you have to wait for it to be emailed to you, but that’s not a big deal at all.  In a lot of ways the process is smoother than going to a testing center all together.

Anyways, now that this is done I can get back to the CCIE grind.  It was nice to take a weekend to study something different and get a free certification out of it.