AZ-304 study plan - 8 weeks out and not sure I'm covering the right things
I passed AZ-303 about 5 months ago and finally registered for AZ-304. I've been doing about 90 minutes a day for 2 weeks now but I'm already feeling like the design-oriented questions are a different beast than the implementation stuff on 303. The "why" matters a lot more here than the "how."
My biggest concern is the identity and security design section. I'm comfortable with Azure AD and conditional access in practice, but framing it as an architectural decision rather than a config task is harder than I expected. I've been scoring around 68-72% on practice exams, which isn't where I want to be this far out.
I've been using MS Learn as my primary resource and supplementing with Udemy. The MS Learn modules are thorough but sometimes feel disconnected from the scenario-based questions on the actual exam. Anyone have a resource that bridges theory to real design decisions better?
Planning to ramp up to 2 hours daily in week 5 and do nothing but case study practice in the final 2 weeks. If you've taken 304 recently, I'd love to know which domains showed up with the most weight on your version.
I passed 304 in January with an 82%. My honest advice: stop doing mixed practice sets and focus entirely on scenario questions where you have to choose between 2-3 architecturally valid options. That's where the exam lives. Single-answer factual questions are a small minority.
Identity and security design is weighted heavily, probably 20-25% of what I saw. Make sure you understand hybrid identity scenarios specifically - when to use pass-through auth vs password hash sync vs ADFS. Those tradeoff questions come up a lot.
Two hours a day in the final stretch sounds right. I burned out doing 4 hours and ended up rescheduling once. Consistency beats cramming for architect-level exams.
The shift from 303 to 304 is real. Reading through actual Azure Architecture Center case studies helped me more than any practice exam for developing the design mindset. Microsoft publishes reference architectures that show up in disguised form on the test.
I'll be honest, I was ready to bail on this one. Failed my first attempt at 304 by like 40 points and I remember thinking the whole exam was just Microsoft asking "it depends" questions with four right answers. What got me through the retake was forcing myself to stop memorizing services and start asking why you'd pick one over another. Cost vs complexity, managed vs control, that kind of thing. Sounds obvious but it wasn't clicking for me until I drilled scenario questions over and over.
The app architecture stuff was my weakest area by far, so I hammered the az 304/questions/azure application architecture design section until the patterns started repeating. And they do repeat. Once you've seen enough messaging vs event scenarios you start recognizing what they're actually testing. You've got 8 weeks, that's plenty. I almost quit at week 5 and passed with room to spare. Don't overthink it, just do more design questions than you think you need.
I passed this one back in the fall while working full time and doing daycare pickup every day, so I feel this. What worked for me wasn't more hours, it was splitting them. I did 45 minutes early morning on case studies and design docs when my brain was fresh, then used lunch breaks and my commute for lighter stuff like whiteboard videos or reviewing notes on my phone. Weekends I'd do one longer 2 hour block and that was it. Honestly the small daily reps mattered more than the marathon sessions I kept promising myself I'd do.
You're right that the "why" is the whole exam. When I only had 20 spare minutes I'd pick two services that solve similar problems and just argue with myself about when you'd choose each one, cost, SLA, complexity, all of it. You can do that anywhere, no lab needed. It's weirdly effective. Eight weeks at 90 min a day is plenty if you spend most of it on decision making instead of memorizing steps. Don't stress, you've got more runway than you think.