Failed Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305)? Here's Your Recovery Plan

Pro tip: Microsoft Learn modules are free and align directly with exam objectives.

• Assuming AZ-104 is a required prerequisite because older guidance said so.
  Microsoft lists AZ-305 as the single exam required for Azure Solutions Architect Expert and states no prerequisite exam. AZ-104 is useful preparation because the audience profile expects Azure administration experience, but you can book AZ-305 without it.
• Studying how to configure Azure services rather than how to choose between them.
  Nearly every AZ-305 skill statement begins with recommend. Practise by taking a requirement, listing two or three viable services, and writing the sentence that eliminates each one. That sentence is the exam answer.
• Answering case study questions before reading the full scenario, then discovering a constraint later.
  Microsoft's guidance is explicit that once you leave a case study you cannot return to its questions. Read all the tabs, write the requirements down, and only then start answering, because the review screen inside the case study is your last chance.
• Taking a break in the middle of a case study to buy thinking time.
  Once a break is launched you cannot return to any question you have already seen, even if it is unanswered or marked for review, and the clock keeps running. Microsoft also blocks breaks inside labs and inside problem-and-solution question sets.
• Planning to look up answers on learn.microsoft.com during the exam.
  Access to Microsoft Learn is real but no extra time is added and the timer runs while you browse. Microsoft designed it so that using it on every question makes the exam impossible to finish. Budget it for two or three questions at most.
• Treating high availability and disaster recovery as the same requirement.
  The business continuity area separates them into distinct skill groups. High availability answers what happens when one instance or zone fails, and is usually availability zones or a redundant tier. Disaster recovery answers a stated RTO and RPO across regions, and is usually Azure Site Recovery, geo-replication or a paired-region design.
• Choosing Azure Front Door, Application Gateway, Load Balancer and Traffic Manager interchangeably.
  Build one table before exam day: Load Balancer is layer 4 regional, Application Gateway is layer 7 regional with WAF, Front Door is layer 7 global with WAF and edge acceleration, and Traffic Manager is DNS-based global routing. Case studies frequently hinge on global versus regional scope.
• Recommending a storage redundancy option without checking the stated availability requirement.
  LRS, ZRS, GRS and RA-GRS differ in what failure they survive and whether the secondary copy is readable. When a scenario states a regional outage requirement plus read access during failover, RA-GRS or a zone-redundant plus geo option is the intended answer, not simply the most expensive one.
• Preparing from material written before the April 17, 2026 exam update.
  Read the change log at the bottom of the AZ-305 study guide, which lists the current skill areas against the version before that date. Localized exam versions update about eight weeks after English, so check which version you are booking if you test in another language.

• Requires AZ-104 or equivalent experience
• Focus on designing identity, governance, and monitoring
• Master Azure networking and security architecture
• Study data platform and business continuity design
• Practice case study scenarios