So I finally cleared the AZ-304 last Tuesday and honestly I'm still a bit shocked. Failed my first attempt back in March by about 8 points — got a 672 when I needed 700 — and that stung pretty bad after six weeks of studying. The first time around I was mostly reading Microsoft docs and watching a couple Udemy courses, which clearly wasn't cutting it.
What turned things around for me was getting serious with an AZ 304 practice test routine. I was doing maybe 40-50 questions every morning before work for about three weeks. The practice exams really exposed my weak spots — I kept tanking on hybrid identity scenarios and Log Analytics workspace design, topics I thought I understood until I saw the actual question formats. I also grabbed a solid AZ 304 study guide focused specifically on architecture patterns rather than just feature lists.
My biggest AZ 304 exam tip: don't just memorize services, understand the tradeoffs. Questions like "customer needs X, Y constraint, which solution" require you to actually reason, not recall. Anyone else retaking this one or studying now? Happy to share which practice banks felt closest to the real thing.