Struggling for 70-532/3/4 study materials
UncleB
Senior MemberMember Posts: 417
I wondered what study materials people here have used recently for the Azure cloud exams from Microsoft, namely 70-532/533/534.
I have the official Microsoft book for the exams (70-532 and 533) but I'm finding they are almost useless as the information is very out of date in spite of being less than a year old. I tried to buy the 70-534 book this week but it has been discontinued and I cannot even buy it as an ebook from Amazon, with physical copies at crazy money (over £200 for some of the 2015 versions although the 2016 version is a tenth of that).
The issue seems to be that the course material had a major revision a few months ago to catch up with the constantly evolving Azure environment but Microsoft don't even stock the books themselves so it is hard to find a good place to start.
I have the CBT Nuggets courses for these and the Microsoft official training course material (courtesy of a trainer) so between the blueprint and these I hope to get through.
For those who completed this recently, what have you used to get through the exam?
Thanks.
I have the official Microsoft book for the exams (70-532 and 533) but I'm finding they are almost useless as the information is very out of date in spite of being less than a year old. I tried to buy the 70-534 book this week but it has been discontinued and I cannot even buy it as an ebook from Amazon, with physical copies at crazy money (over £200 for some of the 2015 versions although the 2016 version is a tenth of that).
The issue seems to be that the course material had a major revision a few months ago to catch up with the constantly evolving Azure environment but Microsoft don't even stock the books themselves so it is hard to find a good place to start.
I have the CBT Nuggets courses for these and the Microsoft official training course material (courtesy of a trainer) so between the blueprint and these I hope to get through.
For those who completed this recently, what have you used to get through the exam?
Thanks.
Comments
I'm currently working through this free e-book, which seems relevant:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/microsoft_press/2016/09/01/free-ebook-microsoft-azure-essentials-fundamentals-of-azure-second-edition/
70-533
Gareth Jones has a great article which links the blueprint with the current Azure documentation and related articles - I used this to bring my studies up to the current level and passed the exam based on it.
FREE Azure Exam 70-533 – Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions – Exam Prep–ARM Refresh Edition November 2016 (Updated 22/11/2016) – Gareth's Blog
70-534
Gareth did the same as for the 533 exam and it looks like it is on target.
FREE Azure Exam 70-534 – Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions – Exam Prep – Gareth's Blog
I also found a lab book from this year that has a lot of related labs with detailed instructions using the new portal and current exam objectives. I have put the exam off as several others are being pushed up the priority but I'll report back on this when I sit the exam.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1544160623/
If anyone finds 70-532 material of this nature I would be very interested.
Again for anyone reading this - forget the Microsoft study guides as they are so far out of date as to be a risk to passing the exam by teaching obsolete technologies and naming conventions - burn, compost or turn them into building material, just don't waste time reading them.
https://www.slideshare.net/Vijaymohire/study-guide-70532-new-syllabus
The same sort of layout using the blueprint and links to Azure documentation. Note that it does assume a degree of developer experience so if you are not familiar with coding, some parts of this course will be hard going (it was for me).
Hopefully this thread gives a list of links that will be more than enough for people to study with on the current syllabus and have a decent chance of passing.
"I PLAN to fail!" - No One Ever
I reckon about 20% of the questions were on topics that the first edition of the 70-532 book doesn't cover at all, and I was convinced throughout the exam that I would be lucky to score 500. Then I passed with a score of 844, I'm not sure how that happened. I did give a pretzel to a hungry seagull just before entering the test centre, so maybe I gained some kind of karma from that.
The second edition of Microsoft's 70-532 book is due to be published in September, if I had failed the exam I would probably have waited for that before attempting a re-take.
Anyone been able to do this?
The offer expires at the end of the month so its now or never really.
I've only done 532, but if the other 2 are similar, then I would say yes. It would depend on what zero means, 532 would be tricky without pre-existing programming experience for example. I estimate I spent between 50 and 100 hours studying for 532, and probably about $150 worth of Azure services (which I got for free via my employer's MSDN subscription).
I did 461, 462 and 463 within 4 months with little help from my employer, once some "studying momentum" has been built up it gets easier.
It really depends on how much other IT experience you have. If it is not a lot then you will really struggle and you would be better off doing them one at a time at your own pace rather than trying to save a few $ and failing.
There is a lot of overlap between the exams (I've done 532 and 533) - about 30% I would say, but without understanding a lot of the concepts underpinning how it is used I think it will be too big an ask unless you are doing only this pretty much full time.
I have decided to give this a go though. The 6 months deadline should help focus the mind.
Did you have to learn much coding for the 70-532?
No, but you need to be able to read coding and understand how it interacts with the rest of the environment. Have a look through the blueprint to get a taste for it then have a look at CBT Nuggets or similar to get more of an idea what is asked for - you shouldn't have any issue with your background.
Mainly used Pluralsight (Azure Iaas, Architect, Admin and 70-354 paths) and Linuxacademy. These are free with a visual studio dev essential account.
Also read the Azure Essential guide mentioned above, did all the free labs, the measureup tests and used the one month free trial.
One thing I would suggest is to watch the training videos and do the free labs before signing up for the trial to get the most out of the free month. Also I was not able to use the free 12 months $300 dev essentials credit on the same account as the free trial.
I only attempted them because I had the free re-takes and found both quite hard. Both times I thought I had failed but both times I nearly got 800. The funny thing even looking at the score sheet I cant see how they added up to a pass.
Anyway onto the next exam...
https://borntolearn.mslearn.net/b/weblog/posts/announcing-three-new-azure-exams
https://borntolearn.mslearn.net/b/weblog/posts/exam-retirement-update-for-october-2017