Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Expert: the honest guide
Everything Microsoft Azure publishes about AZ-305, in one place: what the exam asks, how the domains are weighted, and what it takes to be ready.
This guide page is built from the registry, not written yet.
Everything below comes from Azure Solutions Architect’s published exam data, and every figure links to the vendor page it came from. The researched version, with study plans and the parts nobody publishes, is still being written. This page is not submitted to search engines until it is.
Practise Azure Solutions Architect questions in the meantimeWhat the exam actually asks you to do
Multiple choice and multiple response, plus drag-and-drop ordering, hot area items where you click a region of a screenshot, and case studies that hold one scenario across several linked questions.
- Multiple choice
- Multiple response
- Drag and drop
- Hot area
- Case study
The highlighted formats are the ones you cannot answer from memory alone. Microsoft Learn, exam duration and question types ↗
Domain breakdown and official weightings
From the official Microsoft Learn study guides. Design infrastructure solutions is the heaviest domain at 33 percent, followed by Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions at 28 percent.
- Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions28%
- Design data storage solutions22%
- Design business continuity solutions17%
- Design infrastructure solutions33%
What comes after passing
Role-based certifications last one year and renew free through an online assessment on Microsoft Learn. The only cost is the hour it takes.
Costs across the full renewal cycle are on the Azure Solutions Architect cost page.
Frequently asked questions
How does AZ-305 differ from AZ-104?
AZ-104 configures; AZ-305 recommends. Questions describe requirements and constraints and ask which design you would propose: which storage tier, which identity topology, which failover approach. You are marked as an architect, not an operator.
Does AZ-305 alone grant the Expert certification?
No. The Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification requires passing AZ-305 and holding the Azure Administrator Associate certification from AZ-104, so the two exams together earn the credential.
Note on domain weightings
Microsoft publishes weightings as ranges. The figures here use midpoints of the official ranges from the current AZ-305 study guide.
Keep reading
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Practise Azure Solutions Architect for free while you decide
Original questions written from the published objectives, with the concept, the reasoning, and a note on every wrong option. No account needed to start.
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