I recently passed the Microsoft PRO: Designing & Developing Windows Azure Applications Exam and would like to share my experiences and insights with all those who are interested.
Let me begin by giving you an overview of what the exam is all.
The Exam:
Microsoft’s Exam 70-583 PRO: Designing and developing Windows Azure Applications is a Professional level certificate that demonstrates your ability to design, optimize and troubleshoot apps for Windows Azure Cloud. It can also be used to earn credit towards MCPD on Microsoft Visual Studio 2010’s Windows Azure Developer certification path. This exam is the final exam in the certification pathway, but it can be taken as a single test.
Skills measured:
The exam lasts 120 minutes and contains 55 multiple-choice questions that measure a candidate’s skills in the following areas.
Designing Data Storage Architecture (18%): This section describes design scenarios and requires that you choose a storage structure based on performance, scalability cost, accessibility, accessibility, and cost. It also covers migration from SQL Server to SQL Azure, as well as synchronization and reporting.
Optimize Data Access and messaging (17%) – This is where you will be required to solve optimization scenarios that include batch operations, processing latency, cost, data accessibility standards, table storage, partitions, and message processing using queues.
Designing the Application Architecture (19%): This section outlines design requirements for developing applications. It requires you to choose an architecture that is based on performance, resource usage and cost.
Preparing for Application & Service Deployment (15%)- Provides a solution to application upgrades, virtual machines size, deployment life cycles (Service Management API), efficiency and resource naming scheme.
Investigating and Analyzing Applications (16%): Troubleshoot issues with application and SQL Azure such as long-running queries and capacity, start-stop cycles, run-time memory, connectivity, access control via diagnostics logs, reports and Dynamic Management Views.
Designing Integrated Solutions (15%) – This section discusses design considerations for hybrid clouds, including interoperability and integration, hosting, connectivity, security, and connectivity.
My Experience with the Exam
A survey was conducted to determine my expertise in the six areas. After that, the exam began. The exam covered Windows Azure Storage Services such as blob, tables & queues, SQL Azure Data Sync and Microsoft Sync Framework. Content Delivery Network, Database Migrator from SQL Server to SQL Azure. IntelliTrace. Dynamic Management Views. Monitoring connections, capacity & logs. AppFabric Service Bus. Access Control mechanism. Service Management API. Upgrade strategy. Instance sizes. Web & worker roles. All topics were split across the six topics.
A second survey was conducted about exam taking experiences. The test center provided a printout and displayed the result immediately.
My Verdict on the Exam:
The exam was easy and straightforward in that it asked only straight forward design questions and then asked you to answer them. The exam didn’t contain any developer-specific questions, such as syntax or coding. It covered key Windows Azure Services that are essential for designing and developing Microsoft cloud applications. This exam is required for all developers, architects, and consultants who work on designing and building applications for Microsoft Azure.
Resources for Exam Preparation
Experience is key.
