Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) — the full course

Every lesson and every lab is free to read, mapped one-to-one to the skills measured in Microsoft’s published study guide.

The labs run in your own Azure subscription. The first one creates a budget with an alert before anything else, every lab uses the smallest options it can, and every lab ends by deleting the resource group it made.

Prefer timed practice exams on Udemy? The questions from this course’s bank are there as timed practice tests: see the Udemy course (launch price until 16 Nov 2026).

16written lessons

19hands-on labs

11hours of lab work

Start with lesson 1 — What cloud computing is: the shared responsibility model, and public, private and hybrid clouds Exam simulator

Jump to a skill area: 1. Describe cloud concepts · 2. Describe Azure architecture and services · 3. Describe Azure management and governance

What the exam weighs

Skill area	Share of the exam	Lessons here
1. Describe cloud concepts	25-30%	4
2. Describe Azure architecture and services	35-40%	7
3. Describe Azure management and governance	30-35%	5

The curriculum

1. Describe cloud concepts 25-30% of the exam

01What cloud computing is: the shared responsibility model, and public, private and hybrid cloudsskills measured 1.1
- Set a budget alert first, then see the public cloud's self-service for yourself short · 25 min
02Paying for the cloud: the consumption-based model, pricing models and serverlessskills measured 1.1
- Run code on a consumption plan, and compare how compute is bought short · 30 min
03Why the cloud: availability, scalability, reliability, predictability, security and manageabilityskills measured 1.2
- Make data survive a regional outage, and enforce a location rule short · 30 min
04Cloud service types: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, and when each fitsskills measured 1.3
- Capstone: place three workloads by service type, under a budget and a location rule capstone · 75 min
- Host a web app on a platform you never patch short · 25 min

2. Describe Azure architecture and services 35-40% of the exam

01Azure's physical footprint: regions, region pairs, sovereign regions, availability zones and datacentersskills measured 2.1
- Read Azure's physical footprint, then place a zonal and a zone-redundant resource short · 25 min
02Organising Azure: resources, resource groups, subscriptions and management groupsskills measured 2.1
- Build, move and delete resource groups, and find your subscription in the hierarchy short · 25 min
03Azure compute: containers, virtual machines, functions, and where to host an applicationskills measured 2.2
- Create one small private VM and take apart everything it needs short · 30 min
04Azure networking: virtual networks, subnets, peering, DNS, VPN Gateway, ExpressRoute and endpointsskills measured 2.2
- Segment a virtual network, filter it with NSGs and peer it across regions short · 30 min
05Azure storage: services, tiers, redundancy, account types, and moving data inskills measured 2.3
- Make a private storage account, move blobs between tiers and set a lifecycle rule short · 30 min
06Identity in Azure: Microsoft Entra ID, sign-in methods, external identities and Conditional Accessskills measured 2.4
- Read your own identity, sign-ins and sign-in methods in Microsoft Entra ID short · 20 min
07Access and protection: Azure RBAC, Zero Trust, defense in depth and Microsoft Defender for Cloudskills measured 2.4
- Capstone: build a private, keyless, least-privilege store for a team's monthly reports capstone · 75 min
- Grant one identity Reader on one resource group, and read Defender for Cloud's free posture short · 25 min

3. Describe Azure management and governance 30-35% of the exam

01Azure costs: what drives them, the pricing calculator, Cost Management and tagsskills measured 3.1
- Estimate before you build, then tag what you build so the bill can be split short · 30 min
02Governance and compliance: Microsoft Purview, Azure Policy and resource locksskills measured 3.2
- Make a rule hold: an allowed-locations policy and two resource locks short · 35 min
03Managing Azure: the portal, Cloud Shell, Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell and Azure Arcskills measured 3.3
- Three tools, one Resource Manager: change one resource group from the CLI, PowerShell and the portal short · 25 min
04Deploying Azure as code: infrastructure as code, Azure Resource Manager and ARM templatesskills measured 3.3
- Declare a private storage account in an ARM template and deploy it twice short · 30 min
05Watching Azure: Azure Advisor, Azure Service Health and Azure Monitorskills measured 3.4
- Capstone: deploy a governed, monitored storage account, then audit the subscription clean capstone · 75 min
- Read Advisor and Service Health, then make Azure tell you about its own outages short · 30 min

The exam simulator

Open the simulator See the paid tier

This is an independent study companion for the Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) exam and is not produced by or endorsed by Microsoft. Microsoft, Azure and Microsoft Entra are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.