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AZ-900 study guide: a two-week plan for Azure Fundamentals
Updated · 7 min read
You booked the date, opened the AZ-900 page and found a skills list that looks like a glossary of cloud words. Where do you start, and how much of it do you really need to know? This guide turns Microsoft's official outline into a two-week plan built around practice: you learn a topic, then test it on the AZ-900 questions on ExamCup, and you finish by sitting a timed practice exam that feels like the real thing.
What the exam covers
Microsoft groups AZ-900 into three skill areas, with a weight for each. These are the figures in its study guide for the skills measured as of July 20, 2026. Check the current version before you start, because Microsoft updates it.
| Skill area | Weight | Study time in our plan |
|---|---|---|
| Describe cloud concepts | 25–30% | About 3 days |
| Describe Azure architecture and services | 35–40% | About 5 days |
| Describe Azure management and governance | 30–35% | About 4 days |
A weight tells you how much of the exam an area makes up, so it should also tell you how much of your study time it gets. The biggest area, architecture and services, is also the one with the most separate topics: regions, compute, networking, storage and identity.
The pass mark is 700 or greater, according to Microsoft. Read the official AZ-900 study guide for the full list of skills and for the exam price in your country, which varies.
A two-week plan (about one hour a day)
Week 1: concepts and architecture
- Days 1–2: cloud concepts. Cloud models (public, private, hybrid), the shared responsibility model, the consumption-based model, and IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.
- Day 3: Azure structure. Regions, region pairs, availability zones, datacenters, resource groups, subscriptions and management groups.
- Day 4: compute and networking. Virtual machines, scale sets, containers, functions, virtual networks, VPN Gateway, ExpressRoute and endpoints.
- Day 5: storage and migration. Storage services, tiers, redundancy options, AzCopy, Azure Migrate and Data Box.
- Days 6–7: practice. Open the AZ-900 questions and work through the ones on the topics you studied. Choose your answer first, use Check answer, read every explanation, and write down what you missed.
Week 2: security, governance and practice
- Day 8: identity and security. Microsoft Entra ID, single sign-on, multifactor authentication, Conditional Access, role-based access control, Zero Trust, defence in depth and Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
- Days 9–10: cost and governance. What affects cost, the pricing calculator, cost management, tags, Azure Policy, resource locks and Microsoft Purview.
- Day 11: tools and monitoring. The Azure portal, Cloud Shell, CLI, PowerShell, Azure Arc, ARM templates, Azure Advisor, Service Health and Azure Monitor.
- Day 12: weak spots. Go back to the topics on your miss list, read the Microsoft Learn pages for them, then answer the matching questions again.
- Day 13: the timed practice exam. Take the ExamCup timed practice exam in one sitting, with the clock running and no notes, then review every wrong answer.
- Day 14: light review and rest. Skim your notes. Do not start new topics.
Pairs of ideas people mix up
- Region vs availability zone vs region pair. A region is a geographic area. Availability zones are separate datacenter groups inside a region, for resilience against a datacenter failure. A region pair links two regions for recovery from a regional disaster.
- Resource group vs subscription vs management group. Resources live in resource groups, resource groups live in subscriptions, and management groups organise several subscriptions.
- IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS. The more you move from IaaS toward SaaS, the more the provider manages and the less you do. Learn which layers each model leaves to you.
- Azure Policy vs role-based access control vs resource locks. Policy checks whether resources follow your rules, RBAC decides who can do what, and locks stop a resource from being changed or deleted.
- Authentication vs authorisation. Authentication proves who you are. Authorisation decides what you may do.
- Azure Monitor vs Service Health vs Azure Advisor. Monitor collects data from your resources, Service Health reports problems with Azure itself, and Advisor recommends improvements.
- Capital vs operational expenditure. The cloud mostly turns up-front equipment spending into pay-as-you-go spending.
- Storage redundancy options. Learn what locally redundant, zone-redundant and geo-redundant storage each protect against.
Practise on the AZ-900 questions
Reading explains a topic, but practice shows whether you can use it. Every AZ-900 question on ExamCup has an answer and a written explanation of why it is right and why the other options are wrong, so a miss teaches you something. Use them like this:
- Learn a topic first, then test yourself on it.
- Choose your answer before you reveal the explanation, and read the explanation even when you were right.
- Keep a list of the topics you miss and return to them a few days later.
- Finish with the timed practice exam. See how to know you are ready and how to use practice questions without memorising.
Rehearse the exam with the timed practice exam
Knowing the material and sitting an exam are different skills. The timed practice exam puts you in the exam's conditions: one sitting, a running clock, and no looking things up. It shows how your pace holds when it counts, which topics you still lose marks on, and how you handle a question you are unsure about. Do it near the end of your plan, review every wrong answer, and go back to those topics before your exam date.
You can try the free AZ-900 questions without an account, and a free account adds 50% more and lets you take the timed practice exam on them. Full access to the whole AZ-900 bank, the full timed practice exam and the PDF is $19.99 for 3 months, paid once, which covers a two-week plan with room to repeat the weak spots. See what is included, and the pass guarantee in the refund policy.
Add some hands-on time
Fundamentals exams are theory, but a little practice makes the ideas stick. Create a free Azure account if you are eligible, make a resource group, deploy a small storage account and look at its redundancy options, then open Azure Advisor and Cost Management in the portal. Delete what you create so it does not cost anything.
Frequently asked questions
What is the passing score for AZ-900?
Microsoft states that a score of 700 or greater is required to pass. Exam scores are reported on a scale, so 700 is not the same as answering 70% of the questions correctly.
How long should I study for AZ-900?
It depends on your background. With about an hour a day, a two-week plan is realistic for many people who already know basic IT or cloud ideas, and beginners often prefer three to four weeks. Pick an exam date you can keep and work back from it.
Do I need experience before taking AZ-900?
No. It is a fundamentals exam and a common starting point for an Azure career. Experience in an area of IT such as infrastructure, databases or software development helps, but it is not required.
Are practice questions enough to pass AZ-900?
They are best for finding what you do not know yet. Learn each topic from Microsoft Learn first, then use practice questions to test yourself and review every explanation.
How can I rehearse the exam before the real day?
Take a timed practice exam in one sitting, with the clock running and no notes. ExamCup includes one with full access, and Microsoft also offers a free practice assessment and an exam sandbox that shows how the exam environment works, both linked from its study guide.
ExamCup is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft. Exam names and codes are trademarks of their owners. Skill areas, weights and the passing score are taken from Microsoft's published AZ-900 study guide, checked on November 2, 2026, and may have changed since.
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