AZ-305 study guide: domains, format and a 6-week plan
· 8 min read
AZ-305, Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions, is the exam for the Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification. It tests whether you can turn business requirements into Azure designs across identity, governance, monitoring, data, business continuity, compute, application architecture, migration and networking. You have 100 minutes for 40–60 questions, and the passing score is 700. Almost every task in the skills outline starts with "Recommend", which tells you what the exam is really about: choosing between services under constraints, not configuring them.
AZ-305 at a glance
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Provider | Microsoft Azure |
| Level | Expert |
| Questions | 40–60 |
| Duration | 100 minutes |
| Passing score | 700 out of 1,000 |
| Exam fee (USD) | US$165; the price varies by country or region |
| Languages | English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), Korean, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Traditional), Italian |
| Delivery | Scheduled through Pearson VUE, online proctored or at a test centre |
| Question formats | Single and multiple choice, yes/no, statement sets, drag and drop, hot area, case studies |
Details as of September 2026 — confirm on the official exam page before booking.
Microsoft updated the English version of the exam on 17 April 2026 and says localised versions follow about eight weeks after an English update. No retirement date is listed.
Who this exam is for
Microsoft's audience profile describes a solutions architect who translates business requirements into designs aligned with the Azure Well-Architected Framework and the Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure. You are expected to have advanced knowledge of networking, virtualisation, identity, security, business continuity, disaster recovery, data platforms and governance, plus experience with Azure administration, Azure development and DevOps processes.
There is a formal prerequisite. To be awarded the Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification you must also hold Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate, which you earn by passing AZ-104. If you have not started on that yet, the [AZ-104 study guide](/blog/az-104-study-guide) covers it. The two exams feel different: AZ-104 asks how to configure a service, AZ-305 asks which service to choose and why.
What the exam covers
The AZ-305 study guide lists skills measured as of 17 April 2026 in four domains. Infrastructure is the heaviest, but identity and governance are close behind.
Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions (25–30%)
This domain covers logging and monitoring, authentication and authorisation, and governance. On monitoring, expect to recommend where logs go and how they are routed: Log Analytics workspaces, diagnostic settings, Azure Monitor alerts, and when a workspace per region or per team makes sense. On identity, you choose authentication methods and identity management with Microsoft Entra ID, decide how to grant access to Azure resources (Azure RBAC, managed identities, Privileged Identity Management) and to on-premises resources, and pick a way to manage secrets, certificates and keys, usually Azure Key Vault. Governance questions ask you to design a hierarchy of management groups, subscriptions and resource groups, a tagging strategy, compliance with Azure Policy, and identity governance such as access reviews and entitlement management. The judgement tested is scope: apply a control at the highest level that is correct, and no higher.
Design data storage solutions (20–25%)
Here you choose where data lives. For relational data, compare Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance and SQL Server on virtual machines, then pick service and compute tiers (DTU or vCore, provisioned or serverless, Hyperscale), a scaling approach such as elastic pools or read replicas, and data protection such as Transparent Data Encryption and Always Encrypted. For semi-structured and unstructured data, weigh Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Blob Storage, Azure Files and Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, including access tiers and redundancy options that balance cost, performance and durability. Data integration and analysis round it out: Azure Data Factory for movement and orchestration, and an analytics platform suited to the scenario.
Design business continuity solutions (15–20%)
This domain asks for backup, disaster recovery and high availability designs that meet stated recovery point and recovery time objectives. Know when Azure Backup is enough and when Azure Site Recovery is needed, how backup and recovery differ for virtual machines, databases and blob data, and what soft delete, versioning and immutable storage protect against. For high availability, understand availability sets versus availability zones, zone-redundant and geo-redundant storage, active geo-replication versus failover groups for Azure SQL, and multi-region writes in Cosmos DB.
Design infrastructure solutions (30–35%)
The largest domain has four parts. Compute: specify components from workload requirements and choose between virtual machines, containers (Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure Container Apps, Azure Container Instances), serverless (Azure Functions, Azure App Service) and batch processing (Azure Batch). Application architecture: messaging with Azure Service Bus or Azure Queue Storage, events with Azure Event Grid or Azure Event Hubs, API integration with Azure API Management, caching, configuration management with Azure App Configuration, and automated deployment. Migrations: use the Cloud Adoption Framework, assess servers, data and apps with Azure Migrate, and choose paths for moving workloads to IaaS or PaaS, databases and unstructured data. Networking: internet connectivity, hybrid connectivity with VPN Gateway or ExpressRoute, performance, network security (network security groups, Azure Firewall, Private Link and private endpoints) and load balancing and routing with Azure Load Balancer, Application Gateway, Azure Front Door and Traffic Manager.
A 6-week study plan
This plan assumes you already hold, or are close to, the Azure Administrator Associate. Time follows the weights, with extra weeks for infrastructure.
Week 1: Identity and governance. Draw a management group and subscription hierarchy for an imaginary company and decide where each policy and role assignment belongs. Work through Entra ID authentication options, managed identities and Key Vault. End with a paper on the identity and governance tasks.
Week 2: Monitoring and data storage. Map which logs go to which destination and why. Then build a comparison table of Azure SQL Database, SQL Managed Instance and SQL Server on VMs, and another for Cosmos DB, Blob Storage, Azure Files and Data Lake Storage. Finish with a mixed paper on both domains.
Week 3: Business continuity. For each workload type (VMs, SQL, blob data) write down the backup option, the DR option and the HA option, with the RPO and RTO each can achieve. Take a business continuity paper and read every explanation.
Week 4: Compute and application architecture. Build a decision tree for compute choices and another for messaging: queue or topic, event or message, push or pull. Take a paper on these two areas.
Week 5: Networking and migrations. Compare the four load-balancing services by layer and scope (regional or global, HTTP or not). Study hybrid connectivity and private access, then Azure Migrate and database migration paths. Take a full infrastructure paper at the end of the week.
Week 6: Full mocks and case studies. Sit a full-length mock under exam conditions, review it carefully, and spend two or three days on the weakest domain. Practise case studies so you get used to reading a long scenario once and keeping the requirements in mind. Sit a second mock before exam day.
For a general template you can adapt, see the [cloud certification study plan](/blog/cloud-certification-study-plan-template).
Common traps
- Answering as an administrator. AZ-305 rewards the design that best fits every stated requirement, not the one you have configured most often. Underline requirements such as "minimise cost", "minimise administrative effort" and "must support" before looking at the options.
- Mixing up load-balancing services. Azure Load Balancer works at layer 4 within a region, Application Gateway at layer 7 within a region, Front Door at layer 7 globally, and Traffic Manager routes by DNS. Many distractors are real services at the wrong layer or scope.
- Confusing messaging and eventing. Service Bus carries commands and ordered, transactional messages; Event Grid reacts to discrete events; Event Hubs ingests high-volume telemetry streams. The wording of the scenario usually points to one.
- Over-engineering continuity. A multi-region active-active design meets any objective, but it is rarely the answer when a stated RPO and RTO can be met more cheaply.
- Choosing the wrong SQL option. Instance-level features such as SQL Server Agent or cross-database queries point towards SQL Managed Instance; full operating system access points to SQL Server on a VM.
- Losing time on case studies. They are long, and each has its own set of questions. Read the requirements section first, then the background. Microsoft also lets you open Microsoft Learn during role-based exams, but the clock keeps running, so use it for the odd lookup rather than every question.
How to practise
CertifyCloudx has original AZ-305 practice questions written against the current skills outline and explained option by option. You can take domain papers of up to 25 questions (60 minutes per 25), full-length timed mock exams with the real 100-minute limit, and case studies that mirror the long-scenario format. Every certification also has free practice sets, up to 10 questions a day, with no card needed. Read [how to use practice exams effectively](/blog/how-to-use-practice-exams-effectively) for a review method that turns wrong answers into study topics.
Start with the [AZ-305 practice questions](/certifications/azure-solutions-architect-expert-az-305).
Frequently asked questions
Do I need AZ-104 before AZ-305?
To be awarded the Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification you must also hold the Azure Administrator Associate certification, which is earned by passing AZ-104. AZ-305 also assumes the administration knowledge that AZ-104 covers, so it makes sense to prepare for AZ-104 first.
How difficult is AZ-305?
It is broad rather than deep. You need to know many services well enough to compare them against cost, availability, security and effort, and the case studies test whether you can hold several requirements in mind at once.
How long should I prepare for AZ-305?
With AZ-104 done and some hands-on Azure experience, around six weeks of regular study is a realistic range. Allow longer if data platforms, networking or migration are unfamiliar, since they carry a lot of the weight.
How do I keep the certification current?
Microsoft expert certifications expire annually. You can renew free by passing an unproctored, open-book online assessment on Microsoft Learn during a six-month window before expiry, and passing extends the certification by one year.
Are CertifyCloudx questions real AZ-305 exam questions?
No. Every CertifyCloudx question is original and written against Microsoft's public skills outline. Using real exam content breaks the Microsoft candidate agreement and can cost you the certification, as explained in [why exam dumps put your certification at risk](/blog/why-exam-dumps-put-your-certification-at-risk).
CertifyCloudx is independent and not affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert is a trademark of its owner. All CertifyCloudx practice questions are original.