AZ-400: Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions

Develop a modern source control strategy :

• integrate/migrate disparate source control systems (e.g. GitHub, Azure Repos)

• design authentication strategies

• design approach for managing large binary files (e.g. Git LFS)

• design approach for cross repository sharing (e.g. Git sub-modules, packages)

• implement workflow hooks

Plan and implement branching strategies for the source code :

• define Pull Requests (PR) guidelines to enforce work item correlation

• implement branch merging restrictions (e.g. branch policies, branch protections, manual, etc.)

• define branch strategy (e.g. trunk based, feature branch, release branch, GitHub flow)

• design and implement a PR workflow (code reviews, approvals)

• enforce static code analysis for code-quality consistency on PR

Configure repositories :

• configure permissions in the source control repository

• organize the repository with git-tags

• plan for handling oversized repositories

• plan for content recovery in all repository states

• purge data from source control

Integrate source control with tools :

• integrate GitHub with DevOps pipelines

• integrate GitHub with identity management solutions (Azure AD)

• design for GitOps

• design for ChatOps

• integrate source control artifacts for human consumption (e.g. Git changelog)

Communicate deployment and release information with business stakeholders :

• create dashboards combining boards, pipelines (custom dashboards on Azure DevOps)

• design a cost management communication strategy

• integrate release pipeline with work item tracking (e.g. AZ DevOps, Jira)

• integrate GitHub as repository with Azure Boards

• communicate user analytics

Generate DevOps process documentation :

• design onboarding process for new employees

• assess and document external dependencies (e.g. integrations, packages)

• assess and document artifacts (version, release notes)

Automate communication with team members :

• integrate monitoring tools with communication platforms (e.g. Teams, Slack, dashboards)

• notify stakeholders about key metrics, alerts, severity using communication platform (e.g. Email, SMS, Slack, Teams)

• integrate build and release with communication platforms (e.g. build fails, release fails)

What is Continuous Delivery and Continuous Integration, Steps for Continuous Integration

Design a build and learn to automate it

Design build automation :

• integrate the build pipeline with external tools (e.g., Dependency and security scanning, Code coverage)

• implement quality gates (e.g. code coverage, internationalization, peer review)

• design a testing strategy (e.g. integration, load, fuzz, API, chaos)

• integrate multiple tools (e.g. GitHub Actions, Azure Pipeline, Jenkins)

Design an application infrastructure management strategy :

• assess a configuration management mechanism for application infrastructure

• define and enforce desired state configuration for environments

Design a process for standardizing builds across organization :

• manage self-hosted build agents (VM templates, containerization, etc.)

• create reusable build subsystems (YAML templates, Task Groups, Variable Groups, etc.)

Design a Package Management Strategy :

• Introduction to Packet Management

• What is Package management Strategy

• Steps in defining packet management strategy

• Recommend package management tools (e.g. GitHub Packages, Azure Artifacts, Azure Automation Runbooks Gallery, Nuget, Jfrog, Artifactory)

• Design an Azure Artifacts implementation including linked feeds

• Design versioning strategy for code assets (e.g. SemVer, date based)

• Plan for assessing and updating and reporting package dependencies (GitHub Automated Security Updates, NuKeeper, GreenKeeper)

• Design a versioning strategy for packages (e.g. SemVer, date based)

• Design a versioning strategy for deployment artifacts

Implement a build strategy :

• design and implement build agent infrastructure (include cost, tool selection, licenses, maintainability)

• develop and implement build trigger rules

• develop build pipelines

• design build orchestration (products that are composed of multiple builds)

• integrate configuration into build process

• develop complex build scenarios (e.g. containerized agents, hybrid, GPU)

Maintain build strategy :

• monitor pipeline health (failure rate, duration, flaky tests)

• optimize build (cost, time, performance, reliability)

• analyze CI load to determine build agent configuration and capacity

• manage pipeline health

• identify the number of agents and jobs to run in parallel

• investigate test failures

Develop deployment scripts and templates :

• Introduction to Templates

• Deployment Scripts

• Recommend a deployment solution

• Design and implement Infrastructure as code (ARM, Terraform, PowerShell, CLI)

• Develop application deployment process (container, binary, scripts)

• Develop database deployment process (migrations, data movement, ETL)

• Integrate configuration management as part of the release process

• Develop complex deployments

Release Management Strategy :

• Implement an orchestration automation solution

• Combine release targets depending on release deliverable (e.g., Infrastructure, code, assets, etc.)

• Design the release pipeline to ensure reliable order of dependency deployments

• Organize shared release configurations and process (YAML templates, variable groups)

• Design and implement release gates and approval processes

• Plan the deployment environment strategy

• Design a release strategy (blue/green, canary, ring)

• Implement the release strategy (using deployment slots, load balancer configurations, Azure Traffic Manager, feature toggle, etc.)

• Select the appropriate desired state solution for a deployment environment (PowerShell DSC, Chef, Puppet, etc.)

• Plan for minimizing downtime during deployments (VIP Swap, Load balancer, rolling deployments, etc.)

• design a hotfix path plan for responding to high priority code fixes

Placement Guide :

• What is an Interview

• Tips to clear an Interview

• Common Interview questions and answers

• AZ 400 Interview Questions and Answers

• Resume Building Guide

• Attempt for AZ 400 Global Certification Exam

• Start applying for Jobs