Yesterday (Saturday 20-03-2016) I passed the Azure 70-533 (Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions) exam. This was the second time that I did the exam and I passed with 747 points. So that’s a close call.
Here are some tips for passing the exam:
- Practice every exam objective in your (Azure) lab. This is very important because you will get some questions in the exam where you need to tell step by step which step you took to install or configure a service. If you don’t have a subscription, you could sign up for the free one-month trial.
- Do the online proctored exam. I absolutely recommend this new way of doing exams. During workdays, It’s annoying to leave a project for a couple of hours to do an exam.
Pro’s:
– Study from home, in your trusted environment. No travel time needed and it took away some stress during the exam.
– Book the exam 10/15 minutes before start time. The first time I did the exam, I postponed it 2 times because at the end of the day, I wasn’t quite ready or fit. Now it’s possible to book the exam when you are ready.
– Book the exam on Saturday.
– You are allowed to have a glass of water on your desk when doing the exam. In the exam conditions, they said that it’s not allowed but my proctor told me that it’s fine.
Cons:
– Bye privacy! The recordings of your webcam session with audio and video footage, are in the hands of Microsoft. During your exam, you don’t have any privacy rights.
– You need to install additional software. I heard some horror stories about the Pearson Vue exam software, but it worked very good on my Dell Latitude E6540 work notebook with Windows 10.
– Taking notes is not allowed during the exam. - Study from multiple resources. As far as I know, there isn’t a course or book that will tell you everything about this exam. I found out that it wasn’t easy to say when you are ready for the exam, because of all those different study resources. That’s why I failed the first time. When I was studying for the exam, I’ve used the following resources:
- Microsoft Virtual Academy
- PluralSight
- Microsoft Press Books
- If you are an MCP, don’t forget to use your MCP Voucher:
Exam Ref 70-533 Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions
- If you are an MCP, don’t forget to use your MCP Voucher:
- CloudThat
- MeasureUp
- My employer has a contract with MeasureUp. We can use the MeasureUp Practice Exams to check if we are ready to take the exam.
- Exam changes as of March 10, 2016
- BuildAzure – overview of all the changes.
- The official Microsoft document with changes.
- Other study resources
- AzureMan (Blog post of Bert Wolters)
- BuildAzure
Good luck! Let me know what you think of the exam in the comments section.
Hi Jean….
Did you do the exam after the update..? right?
Do you know if the new version of exam use new cmdlets like new-azurermwebapp instead of new-azurewebsite ?
I started to studdy but this doubt is killing me…
thanks from Brazil….
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Hi Ícaro,
Yes, I did the exam after the update. I can’t tell you about the exam contents because that’s illegal, but I know the basics about the new cmdlets. Keep your focus on the older cmdlets. 🙂
Yep I had those doubts too. That’s why I failed the first time. You’ll get the basics when you study the books and all the online content, but you need to use the Azure credits to do a deep dive on the exam contents in your lab.
Good luck on your exam Ícaro! Greetings from the Netherlands. 🙂
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Was the measure up practice test updated with ARM content?
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Hi Matt,
That’s a good one. Unfortunately, I don’t remember that anymore. Maybe you could contact MeasureUp about this?
Good luck on your exam!
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Hi Jean,
I want to learn Azure but don’t know where to start. I passed the AWS Solution Architect Associate so i think i have a little experience with Cloud platform. But Azure is way different compared to AWS and i felt confused. Some of the training video from Microsoft was retired, some of the ebook was outdated (for example, they used classical portal or some service changed their name). Would you mind giving me some advice/updated resource to start my journey to Azure certificate?
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Hi Khoi,
I would do the 534 exam first, because I think that’s one is easier. Indeed, a lot of content is outdated and you need to search on Google and through Microsoft Blog Posts a lot to get the content you need for the exams. I had a hard time finding the information for the exam as well.
Hope this helps you out and good luck with your exams!
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Thanks Jean. To be honest, my boss asked me to ramp up my learning about Azure because we’re going to make some plan ( building Azure system for our customer or sth like that). Anyway, i’ll try to find some of the latest article on Microsoft website. Thanks!
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Thanks Jean for your advise. I may be asking the same question too, do we just need to know the basics of ARM commands or should we dive deep inside every command of it. At the moment, I am going through each and every command of ASM and looking for its corresponding ARM commands..its a very tedious process :(. Any help / advise would be appreciated?
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Hi Ren,
As far as I remember I had a basic understanding of the cmdlets and I knew the format of the cmdlets. For example, to start an Azure Resource Manager VM, I knew that it would start with “Start-“, followed with “AzureRm” and should probably end with VM or VirtualMachine. (It’s Start-AzureRmVm) Also I worked with multiple cmdlets in Azure to test my skills and predict the outcome.
So I think you need to understand that structure (Verb and Nouns) and play with the cmdlets for a couple of hours in Azure.
Does that help you out?
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HI,
i came to know azure exam pattern got changed, can you please suggest some inputs thats effect from 22nd nov 2016
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Hi,
No, I’m sorry. I have no idea about what has changed. Can’t find any information on Google about that.
Maybe you can contact Microsoft with your question?
Thanks.
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Hi Jean Paul,
Can you tell us how many questions were on the exam and how long you were allocated to do it?
Thanks,
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Hi Brian,
No, sorry. That is not allowed by exam rules. But a big chance that this has changed.
Good luck!
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That is quiet secret. Neither Microsoft nor Certification center gives any clear answer on that. I test center scheduled time is 150 minutes, but that includes non-test time, break time if you take one etc.. I guess those stuff should not take more than 15 minutes. Microsoft is not revealing the number of questions as it seems that may vary, i guess can go up to 120 questions.
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Hi,
I will be taking up the 70-533 exam next week. Finding real hard without a reference book updated with new exam objectives post Nov , 2016. Can you point to some resources please ?
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Hi Emelda,
Thanks for your comment. I wrote this article after doing my exam and I don’t know anything about new study resources. Sorry for that.
Good luck on your exam!
Regards,
Jean-Paul
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