Passed AZ-305 yesterday with an 847. I'm a solutions architect with about 4 years of Azure experience, but I still put in a serious 8 weeks of prep. Don't let the Azure background fool you into thinking you can coast — the exam tests design decisions in ways that go beyond just knowing what services exist.
My breakdown: weeks 1-2 were compute and networking architecture, weeks 3-4 were storage, databases, and identity, weeks 5-6 were monitoring, business continuity, and migration, weeks 7-8 were full practice exams and targeted review. I did 4 full 60-question practice exams in the final two weeks and averaged 78% going in. The real exam felt slightly harder than the practice material, which is pretty typical for Microsoft certs.
The case study sections at the beginning caught a few people in my study group off guard — they're not individual questions, they're scenario blocks where you answer 6-8 questions about a single architecture. You can't go back once you move on from the section. Read the requirements carefully and identify the constraints before even looking at the questions.
Landing zones, Azure Policy, and cost optimization came up more than I expected. The networking sections — hub-and-spoke, Azure Virtual WAN, ExpressRoute vs. VPN tradeoffs — were heavy. Make sure you can articulate when you'd choose one over the other and why, not just what they are.
The ExpressRoute vs VPN distinction showed up 3-4 times in my exam across different scenario contexts. It's not enough to memorize the difference — you need to understand the cost, latency, and redundancy tradeoffs for each specific scenario type.
847 is a great score. I passed last month with a 782 and the case studies are exactly what I'd warn people about too. The time management on those sections is completely different from the regular question format.
How did you find the practice exam difficulty compared to the real thing? I've been using one platform and finding it significantly easier than what others describe on the actual exam. Worried I'm not getting accurate signal on my readiness.
The landing zone questions were a gap for me even though I work with them daily. The exam asks about them in a very framework-specific way. Microsoft's Cloud Adoption Framework docs are worth reading through if you haven't already.
Congrats on the score! I'm a working dad with two kids and a full-time dev job, so I know how hard it is to carve out study time. I didn't have long stretches available, just 45-60 minutes most weekday mornings before anyone else was up, and then a longer session on Sunday afternoons when things were quiet. It wasn't glamorous but it added up. The hardest part wasn't the material, it was staying consistent when work got crazy and I hadn't touched a practice question in three days.
Honestly the biggest thing that helped me was treating the exam like a design review, not a knowledge test. I'd read a scenario and force myself to think about why one option was better, not just which one to pick. That shift in mindset took a few weeks to click. If you're studying part-time, don't stress about covering everything every week. Some weeks you'll barely touch it and that's fine. Just don't quit entirely and you'll get there.
Congrats on the 847, that's a solid score. I work full-time and have two kids, so "8 weeks of structured study" for me meant 45 minutes before work and whatever I could squeeze out on Sunday mornings. It wasn't pretty but it worked. The monitoring and logging design questions are where I almost ran out of time, so I made sure to drill those specifically — this practice set on az 305/questions/azure monitoring and logging design helped me get the patterns down before I felt confident on that domain.
The biggest thing I'd tell working adults is don't try to cram scenarios in big weekend sessions. Fifteen to twenty minutes of a real case study during lunch sticks way better than a three-hour grind when you're exhausted. I didn't touch flashcards much — I focused almost entirely on why one architecture beats another, not just what the services do. That mindset shift is what got me through the tricky design decision questions.
Congrats on the 847! As someone who passed last month while juggling a full-time job and two kids, I totally get the schedule struggle. I carved out 45 minutes every morning before anyone woke up and did a longer session on Sunday afternoons. Honestly that consistency mattered more than any single study resource. The monitoring and logging design questions were the ones that tripped me up early on — I spent a good chunk of time on az 305/questions/azure monitoring and logging design practice questions before things finally clicked.
The thing I didn't expect was how much the exam cares about the "why" behind your choices, not just what service to pick. It's one thing to know Azure Monitor exists, it's another to defend a design decision under constraints. If you're short on time, don't try to memorize everything — focus on trade-offs. That's where the points are.