# Mission: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) Certification

## Why
You need to pass the AZ-900 exam within about two weeks — it's tied to a job requirement and to strengthening your job search. Passing gives you a recognized credential that proves foundational Azure knowledge immediately, without waiting on deeper hands-on role-based certs.

## Success looks like
- Score 700+ (the pass mark) on the official AZ-900 exam, sat within ~2 weeks of 2026-07-25
- Can explain cloud concepts cold: shared responsibility model, deployment models (public/private/hybrid), consumption-based pricing, IaaS/PaaS/SaaS
- Can describe Azure's core architecture (regions, region pairs, availability zones, resource groups, subscriptions, management groups) and core services (compute, networking, storage, identity/access/security)
- Can describe Azure management & governance tooling (cost management, Azure Policy, resource locks, ARM/IaC, monitoring tools)
- Scores 85%+ consistently on the official [free practice assessment](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/certifications/exams/az-900/practice/assessment?assessment-type=practice&assessmentId=23) before booking the real exam

## Constraints
- ~2-week runway — pacing is aggressive, sessions need to be dense and daily, no wasted scope
- Already has "some exposure" to Azure (clicked around the portal, deployed something basic) — skip ground-zero basics, calibrate quickly per topic rather than assuming zero knowledge
- Real exam is only 45 minutes and costs money to retake — prioritize even coverage across all 3 scored domains over deep-diving any one

## Out of scope
- Deep hands-on skills for role-based certs (AZ-104 Administrator, AZ-204 Developer) — natural next mission once AZ-900 is passed, not now
- Comparing AWS/GCP in depth — only enough to frame "what is cloud computing" conceptually
- Azure services outside the official AZ-900 skills outline