So I took the plunge early this morning and took part in completing the Beta for the AZ-800 Exam: Administering Windows Server Hybrid Core Infrastructure (beta). It has been a while since taking a Windows Server Exam, the last being my MCSA in Windows Server 2016. Although I have been working in Windows Server Hybrid environments for years, this certainly was a new challenge.
As mentioned I completed this exam while it is in beta and the day after it was released. I did study hard for this as the skills outline is posted well in advance. But by completing the beta I snagged 80% of the full cost. However, I also had the option to take the exam for free with my Free Microsoft Exam voucher, but I will be saving that for a full-cost exam.
AZ-800 Exam Info
Exam description snippet from: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/az-800
Candidates for this exam administer core Windows Server workloads using on-premises, hybrid, and cloud technologies. These professionals should have expertise in implementing and managing on-premises and hybrid solutions, such as identity, management, compute, networking, and storage. They use administrative tools and technologies, such as Windows Admin Center, PowerShell, Azure Arc, and IaaS virtual machine administration.
A candidate for this exam should have extensive experience working with Windows Server operating systems.
My AZ-800 Exam Feedback
To start there was no change in structure for this exam, the AZ-800 exam follows the same principles as you would expect from an Azure Exam. As expected I cannot go into detail on the exam structure, but if you have taken any other Azure exam (other than the fundamentals), you can expect to see a similar structure.
For me, I have 120 minutes to complete 54 questions, which was more than enough time. I think I completed it in just under 1 hour and provided some feedback, being a beta exam and all.
As for the actual content that was covered, as you know I likely was only given a handful of questions out of a larger pool, but referring to the AZ-800 Exam skills outline, I would probably have focused more revision time on the following:
- Deploying and managing domain controllers on-premise and Azure
- Configuring and managing forest and domain trusts on-premise
- Managing users and groups in multi-domain and multi-forest scenarios
- Implementing group managed service accounts
- Managing Azure AD Connect and Authentication in on-premise and hybrid environments
- A little bit about Group Policy
- A lot about Azure Arc!
- Some Hyper-V and NIC management
- Creating and managing Windows Server container images
- Configuring connections to VM
- Integrating Windows Server DNS with Azure Private DNS zones
- On-premise DHCP
- Azure AD Application Proxy
- Implementing and configuring Distributed file system
- Configuring disk, volumes and data de-duplication
- Azure File and Azure File Sync Service
AZ-800 Study
Prior to taking this exam, I had already completed my MCSA in Windows Server 2016 a couple of years ago and have only built on top of that knowledge during my day job, delivering server projects with a managed IT, service provider. And although I do have experience with Azure and specifically hybrid server administration and management there is certainly a large gap in my knowledge that needed to be filled.
On September 16th Sandra Marin post the Microsoft Learn Blog to announce the release of this new exam. I took that an opportunity to review the Microsoft Skills outline focus my training on areas that needed it. As although I do wake up at 4 am to take these exams, I am quite lazy. So 2 months later I am now somewhat comfortable in taking the exam.
There is a lot of study material out there, but these being new exams, no real deep dives into the course material, just a lot of articles claiming to be ‘study guides’, shameless plug.. (AZ-800 Study Guide). But what helped me is actually searching for this material myself, rather than someone doing it for me. So if there is not already some good deep dive YouTube videos on the AZ-800 (which there may now be at the time of you reading this). Make sure you view the skills outline and use Microsoft Docs to help you practically study the material for this exam.
Summary
To summarise my experience taking the AZ-800 exam. I took this at 80% off the full price, and in turn, sacrificed having to wait for my results for up to 8 weeks and have to answer some potentially inaccurate questions. I do get a 25% off courtesy voucher for completing the beta through!
I could probably have studied more, but taking these notes 10 minutes after completing the exam has been very helpful to me and I hope so for you also! Good luck in becoming a certified Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate!
