AZ-305 cheat sheet
Last-minute reference for AZ-305. Infrastructure is the largest domain; business continuity is the smallest. Everything below is a decision shortcut, so check the requirement before using one.
Exam facts
| Passing score | 700 / 1000 |
| Number of questions | Not published |
| Duration | Not published on the exam page; confirm when booking |
| Price | Set per country or region; shown at booking |
| Languages | 10 |
| Renewal | Free, annually |
| Prerequisite for the certification | Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104) |
Domains
| Area | Weight |
|---|---|
| Design infrastructure solutions | 30–35% |
| Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions | 25–30% |
| Design data storage solutions | 20–25% |
| Design business continuity solutions | 15–20% |
Identity, governance and monitoring
| Requirement | Answer |
|---|---|
| Workload needs Azure access, no secret to manage | Managed identity |
| Store secrets, keys, certificates | Key Vault |
| Partners sign in with their own accounts | B2B guests |
| Customers sign up with social accounts | External identity service for customers |
| Publish an on-premises web app without a VPN | Entra application proxy |
| Just-in-time admin rights | Privileged Identity Management |
| Periodic recertification of access | Access reviews |
| Controls inherited by many subscriptions | Management group + Azure Policy |
| Block non-compliant deployments | Policy, Deny effect |
| Query logs across resources | Log Analytics workspace |
| Stream logs to a SIEM | Diagnostic setting to Event Hubs |
Data
| Requirement | Answer |
|---|---|
| SQL Server lift and shift, full compatibility | SQL Managed Instance |
| New app, managed relational | Azure SQL Database |
| Many databases, uneven peaks | Elastic pool |
| Intermittent load, pay less | Serverless compute tier |
| Global, low-latency NoSQL | Cosmos DB |
| Raw analytics data with folders | Data Lake Storage Gen2 |
| Hybrid file server | Azure Files + Azure File Sync |
| Rarely read, long retention | Archive tier + immutability policy |
| Scheduled data movement | Data Factory |
| Streaming ingestion | Event Hubs |
Redundancy and recovery
| Failure to survive | Choice |
|---|---|
| Disk or rack | LRS |
| Datacenter | ZRS or availability zones |
| Region | GRS or GZRS |
| Read secondary during outage | RA-GRS or RA-GZRS |
| Regional SQL failover, same endpoint | Failover group |
| VM regional DR | Site Recovery |
| Restore points for VMs and files | Recovery Services vault |
| Restore points for disks and blobs | Backup vault |
| Accidental deletion or overwrite | Soft delete, versioning, backup |
Replication copies mistakes too. Backup is what saves you from deletion and corruption.
Compute and application
| Requirement | Answer |
|---|---|
| Full OS control, lift and shift | VMs / scale sets |
| Web app, managed | App Service |
| Containers, scale to zero, no Kubernetes admin | Container Apps |
| Full Kubernetes control | AKS |
| Event-triggered code, pay per run | Functions |
| Many independent tasks, cheap | Batch (Spot VMs) |
| Ordered, reliable messages, dead-letter | Service Bus |
| React to events | Event Grid |
| High-volume streams | Event Hubs |
| Publish and throttle APIs | API Management |
| Reduce read latency and DB load | Cache for Redis |
| Central settings and feature flags | App Configuration |
Migration and network
| Requirement | Answer |
|---|---|
| Discover and assess servers | Azure Migrate |
| Database migration, low downtime | Database Migration Service (online) |
| Huge offline data transfer | Data Box |
| Encrypted tunnel over internet | VPN Gateway |
| Private dedicated link | ExpressRoute |
| Many branches, transitive routing | Virtual WAN |
| Private IP to a PaaS service | Private endpoint |
| Regional layer 7 + WAF | Application Gateway |
| Global layer 7 + WAF | Front Door |
| DNS-based global routing | Traffic Manager |
| Regional layer 4 | Load Balancer |
Common traps
- Peering is not transitive.
- Service endpoint is not private endpoint.
- Traffic Manager has no WAF and no TLS offload.
- Availability set protects inside one datacenter; zones protect across datacenters.
- Geo-replication is not backup.
- “Minimal management” moves you toward PaaS; “OS access” moves you toward VMs.
Next: the practice test and the exam tips.