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AZ-305: Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions

Turn business requirements into defensible Azure designs and prepare for the AZ-305 Solutions Architect Expert exam.

  • 32 hours of live, scenario-led sessions
  • Design workshops built around realistic case studies
  • Covers all four AZ-305 design areas
  • Trade-off discussions on cost, resilience and security
  • Case-study practice with full answer review
Aligned to Microsoft exam AZ-305
Duration
4 Days | 32 Hrs
Next batch
Batches on request
Delivery
Live Online · Onsite · Corporate
Level
Advanced
Exam
AZ-305
Language
English

Why learn AZ-305 with Ace Skills

  • Design judgement, not memorisation

    Every module ends with a requirement set you must solve and defend, which mirrors how the exam’s case studies are written.

  • Trade-offs made explicit

    You compare options on cost, resilience, security and operations, so you can justify a design to stakeholders as well as examiners.

  • Resilience you can prove

    Short labs demonstrate zone redundancy, geo-replication and Site Recovery, so RTO and RPO stop being abstract numbers.

  • A clear route to expert level

    Paired with AZ-104, this course completes the preparation for the Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification.

Course overview

An Azure architect is rarely asked how to create a resource. The real questions are which combination of services meets a set of requirements, what it will cost, how it fails and how it will be governed in two years. This four-day course develops that design judgement through structured case studies rather than click-through demonstrations.

Day one covers identity, governance and monitoring design: management group hierarchies, landing zones, policy strategy, Microsoft Entra ID integration and a logging approach that serves both operations and security. Day two focuses on data — choosing between relational, non-relational and analytical stores, and designing storage and integration patterns that hold up under growth.

Day three addresses business continuity: backup strategy, disaster recovery, high availability, and how to translate recovery time and recovery point objectives into concrete designs. Day four brings it together with compute, application architecture, networking and migration, before a dedicated session on case-study technique.

Each design topic ends with a workshop where you work through requirements, sketch a solution and defend it against the trainer’s questions. Short validation labs let you confirm key behaviours, such as failover or policy enforcement, in a real subscription.

The course is aligned to the AZ-305 exam. The Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification also requires an associate-level prerequisite (currently AZ-104); confirm the latest requirements on Microsoft Learn before booking.

Key features

  • Design workshops based on realistic business scenarios
  • Reference architectures discussed and critiqued in class
  • Validation labs for failover, policy and networking behaviour
  • Well-Architected Framework used as a review lens
  • Cost estimation exercises for each design
  • Case-study strategy session with practice questions
  • 30 days of post-training doubt support

Who should attend

  • Azure administrators moving into architecture roles
  • Solution and cloud architects designing Azure workloads
  • Senior engineers who lead migration projects
  • Pre-sales consultants producing Azure proposals
  • AZ-104 holders working towards an expert certification

Prerequisites

  • Hands-on Azure administration experience (AZ-104 level)
  • Understanding of networking, identity, storage and virtualisation
  • Familiarity with high availability and disaster recovery concepts

Curriculum

4 Days · 32 Hours · 13 Modules · 9 Labs

  1. Governance design

    • Management group and subscription strategy
    • Azure landing zones
    • Policy and initiative design
    • Tagging and cost allocation
    • Compliance reporting
    • Lab: Build a management group hierarchy with policy assignments · 45 min

    Identity and access design

    • Microsoft Entra ID tenancy and B2B/B2C scenarios
    • Conditional Access and privileged identity design
    • Managed identities and workload identities
    • Secrets management with Key Vault
    • Lab: Design workshop: identity for a merged organisation · 50 min

    Logging and monitoring design

    • Log Analytics workspace topology
    • Azure Monitor and alerting strategy
    • Routing logs to Microsoft Sentinel and storage

  2. Relational data

    • Azure SQL Database, Managed Instance and SQL on VMs
    • Service tiers, scaling and elastic pools
    • Data protection and encryption options
    • Read scale-out and geo-replication
    • Lab: Configure an auto-failover group for Azure SQL · 45 min

    Non-relational and unstructured data

    • Storage account design and redundancy
    • Azure Cosmos DB APIs and consistency
    • Data lake design for analytics
    • Choosing a data store from requirements
    • Lab: Design workshop: data platform for a retail chain · 50 min

    Data integration

    • Azure Data Factory and Microsoft Fabric pipelines
    • Batch vs streaming ingestion
    • Data integration security

  3. Backup and recovery

    • Defining RTO and RPO with the business
    • Azure Backup for VMs, files and databases
    • Immutable vaults and soft delete
    • Backup for PaaS services
    • Lab: Back up and restore a VM and file share · 40 min

    High availability and disaster recovery

    • Availability zones and region pairs
    • Azure Site Recovery
    • Active-active vs active-passive patterns
    • HA options for compute, storage and databases
    • Lab: Fail over a VM to a secondary region with Site Recovery · 55 min

    Continuity design workshop

    • Mapping workloads to tiers of resilience
    • Costing a DR strategy
    • Testing and runbooks
    • Lab: Design workshop: tiered DR for a financial services client · 45 min

  4. Compute and application architecture

    • Choosing between VMs, App Service, AKS, Container Apps and Functions
    • Messaging and event architectures
    • API Management and caching
    • Application configuration and deployment strategy
    • Lab: Design workshop: modernise a three-tier application · 45 min

    Network design

    • Hub-and-spoke and Virtual WAN topologies
    • Hybrid connectivity: VPN and ExpressRoute
    • Private endpoints and DNS design
    • Load balancing and application delivery options
    • Lab: Validate private endpoint DNS resolution in a hub-spoke network · 40 min

    Migrations

    • Cloud Adoption Framework migration approach
    • Azure Migrate assessment and tooling
    • Migrating databases and unstructured data

    Exam readiness

    • Reading case studies efficiently
    • Eliminating plausible but wrong designs
    • Practice case study with full review
Download full syllabus (PDF)

Skills you will gain

  • Solution architecture
  • Azure landing zones
  • Azure Policy
  • Identity design
  • Azure SQL
  • Azure Cosmos DB
  • Data integration
  • Azure Backup
  • Site Recovery
  • High availability
  • Hub-and-spoke networking
  • ExpressRoute
  • Azure Migrate
  • Well-Architected Framework

Tools & technologies

  • Azure portal
  • Azure CLI
  • Azure pricing calculator
  • Azure Migrate
  • Azure Site Recovery
  • Bicep
  • Microsoft Visio or draw.io

Certification exam

Exam details
Exam nameMicrosoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
Exam codeAZ-305
Duration100 minutes
Passing score700 / 1000 (scaled)
Voucher includedNo — book directly with the vendor
Question formatMultiple choice, Multiple response, Drag and drop, Case study
DeliveryOnline proctored or Test centre
Validity & renewal1 year (free online renewal assessment)

Skill areas measured

  1. Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions
  2. Design data storage solutions
  3. Design business continuity solutions
  4. Design infrastructure solutions

Exam details are pending verification. Vendors change exams; confirm on the official vendor page before booking. Official exam page (opens in a new tab)

Schedule & Pricing

Live Online

Individual

Price on request

  • 32 hours of live, trainer-led sessions
  • 9 hands-on labs
  • Ace Skills course completion certificate

Onsite

At your office or our centre

Pricing depends on location, group size and dates.

  • Delivered at your premises or an Ace centre
  • Same curriculum and labs as live online
  • Dates planned around your team

Corporate / Team

Private batch for your organisation

A private batch with content adapted to your environment and goals.

  • Customised curriculum
  • Private batch, online or onsite
  • Progress and assessment reports
  • GST invoice and PO-based billing

No public batches scheduled — Talk to an Advisor for a private batch.

Projects & labs you will build

  • Day 2 · 45 min

    Configure an auto-failover group for Azure SQL

  • Day 3 · 55 min

    Fail over a VM to a secondary region with Site Recovery

Your certificate

Certificate of Completion — Ace Skills Consulting

Awarded on completing the course. It records the course title and training hours, and you can share it on your LinkedIn profile.

The Microsoft certification itself is awarded by Microsoft when you pass exam AZ-305.

Frequently asked questions

Should I take AZ-104 before AZ-305?

Yes, ideally. AZ-305 assumes administration experience, and the expert certification requires an associate prerequisite — check Microsoft Learn for the current list.

Is this course mostly theory?

It is design-focused, but each day includes validation labs and workshops where you produce and defend your own designs.

How are case studies handled in class?

You practise them throughout the course and in a dedicated final session, learning how to extract requirements quickly and rule out weaker options.

What happens if Microsoft updates the AZ-305 exam?

We map the curriculum to the current published skills outline and revise it when Microsoft changes the exam. Always check the latest outline on Microsoft Learn before booking.

Do you run weekend batches?

Yes. Weekend batches cover the same 32 hours across consecutive Saturdays and Sundays, with timings in IST that also suit learners in the Gulf.

Can you run a private batch for our team?

Yes. We run private online or onsite batches for corporate teams, and we can weight the labs towards your organisation’s target architecture. Request a corporate quote with your team size and preferred dates.

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Private batches online or at your office in India and the GCC, with a curriculum adapted to your environment.