AZ-305 Study Guide 2026: How to Pass the Azure Solutions Architect Expert Exam
Domain weights straight from Microsoft's April 2026 study guide, and a week-by-week plan built around the domain that decides the most points: infrastructure design.
TL;DR:AZ-305 is Microsoft's Expert-level exam for the Azure Solutions Architect Expert credential — 40-60 questions, 120 minutes, a 700+ passing score, $165 USD. Every domain is a design decision, not a build step: identity, governance & monitoring (25-30%), data storage (20-25%), business continuity (15-20%), and infrastructure (30-35%, the largest).
We built this from Microsoft's published AZ-305 skills outline, not a generic template — every reference link below points to the current Microsoft Learn page, verified before this went live.
What Is the AZ-305 Exam?
AZ-305 is the required exam for Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert. Microsoft's official study guide (skills measured as of April 17, 2026, checked August 4, 2026) targets someone who advises stakeholders and translates business requirements into Azure designs aligned with the Well-Architected Framework and Cloud Adoption Framework — not someone configuring resources directly.
Every domain name literally starts with the word "Design." Questions describe a business or technical constraint and ask which service, tier, or pattern satisfies it — the exam assumes you already know how to build the thing; it tests whether you'd choose the right thing to build.
AZ-305 Exam Domains and Weightings
| Domain | Weight | What it tests |
|---|---|---|
| Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions | 25-30% | Logging/monitoring, authentication/authorization, management group and subscription structure, compliance |
| Design data storage solutions | 20-25% | Relational data, semi-structured/unstructured data, data integration and analysis |
| Design business continuity solutions | 15-20% | Backup/DR meeting recovery objectives, high availability for compute and data |
| Design infrastructure solutions | 30-35% | Compute selection, application architecture, migrations, network design |
Where to put your study hours
Infrastructure alone is worth more than business continuity and data storage combined — weight accordingly:
| Domain | Suggested hours (of ~35 total) |
|---|---|
| Identity, governance & monitoring (25-30%) | ~10 hours |
| Data storage (20-25%) | ~8 hours |
| Business continuity (15-20%) | ~6 hours |
| Infrastructure (30-35%) | ~11 hours |
AZ-305 Study Plan: Week by Week
This plan puts infrastructure — the largest domain — in the middle, once the identity/governance foundation is familiar and before the final review week.
Authentication/authorization patterns, management group and subscription structure, resource tagging strategy, compliance and identity governance.
Relational data service and tier selection, database scalability, semi-structured/unstructured storage trade-offs, data integration patterns.
VM vs. container vs. serverless selection, messaging and event-driven architecture, API integration, caching, automated deployment.
Cloud Adoption Framework migration evaluation, IaaS/PaaS/database migration paths, connectivity and network security design.
Recovery objectives (RTO/RPO) for Azure and hybrid workloads, backup strategy by workload type, high availability design.
Full-length practice questions across all four domains, revisit any domain scoring under 80%.
Best Study Resources for AZ-305
- Azure Architecture Center — reference architectures for every domain
- Architect infrastructure operations in Azure — Microsoft's official learning path
For exam-style practice, MSCertQuiz maintains 500 AZ-305 practice questions weighted against the same domains above — see the practice questions and cheat sheet that go with this guide.
Exam Day Tips for AZ-305
- At 2-3 minutes per question, look for the constraint word first (cost, latency, compliance, durability) — it usually eliminates two of the four choices immediately.
- If a choice is technically capable but ignores a stated business constraint (budget, region, compliance requirement), it's the distractor — AZ-305 tests fit-to-requirement, not raw capability.
- Infrastructure questions often combine two decisions at once (compute AND network, or migration AND storage) — read for all constraints before eliminating any answer.
- Don't default to the most feature-rich Azure service — the "right" answer is often the simpler, cheaper option when the scenario doesn't need the extra capability.
Watch For This
The exam-day tips above point at a subtle trap: a technically capable answer that quietly ignores a stated business constraint. Here's why that pattern catches so many candidates. AZ-305 scenarios routinely pair a real technical need — say, high availability or low latency — with a constraint like a fixed budget or a specific compliance requirement. It's easy to lock onto the technical need and pick the most capable-sounding choice, the one that would satisfy the requirement in isolation, while missing that it blows through the stated budget or compliance boundary. It's also why identity, governance, and monitoring carries 25-30% of the score on its own: compliance and cost governance show up as constraints inside infrastructure and data-storage questions too, not just their own domain. Re-reading for the constraint word afteryou've found a technically correct answer, not just before, catches this category of mistake before you commit to a choice.
MSCertQuiz sells practice-exam access for AZ-305 and other Microsoft certifications; this guide is written by the same team that builds those questions. The official Microsoft Learn resources above are what you need at minimum, free.
AZ-305 FAQ
Is AZ-305 mostly design work or hands-on implementation?
Design work — every domain starts with "Design." The exam tests which service fits a requirement, not the step-by-step build.
Is AZ-305 hard?
Yes — Expert level, with infrastructure design alone at 30-35%. The difficulty is trade-off reasoning across multiple domains at once.
How many questions are on the AZ-305 exam, and how long is it?
40-60 questions in 120 minutes per Microsoft's official page — roughly 2-3 minutes each.
Does AZ-305 have a prerequisite certification?
No formal prerequisite is enforced, but the audience profile assumes advanced Azure administration experience — most candidates hold AZ-104 first.
Does the AZ-305 certification expire?
Yes, annually, renewed free through a Microsoft Learn assessment.
What languages is AZ-305 available in?
English plus nine other languages, including Japanese, German, French, Spanish, and Korean.
Continue Your AZ-305 Prep
25 scenario questions with detailed explanations, by domain.
"Which service when" decision tables for every domain.
The hands-on administration exam most AZ-305 candidates take first.
Full exam details and the complete 500-question practice bank.
Ready to test where you actually stand?
Start with free AZ-305 questions calibrated to the domains above.
Start Free AZ-305 Practice