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Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305) practice exam and study path

A free, timed 60-question AZ-305 practice exam in 100 minutes, scored by domain, with every option explained after you submit. Also 108 practice questions you can check one at a time, a page for every task in the exam guide, and a study path. No sign-up.

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Azure Solutions Architect Expert exam pack:

$11.99for 12 months

For Azure solutions architects who turn business requirements into Azure designs: identity, governance and monitoring, relational and non-relational data, backup, disaster recovery and high availability, and compute, application, migration and network architecture.

The exam

Exam code
AZ-305
Questions
Not yet published
Time
100 minutes
Passing score
700 of 1,000 (scaled)
Exam fee
$165 (USD)
Question types
multiple choice, multiple response

Exam AZ-305 is the expert-level Azure design exam, and the certification also requires the Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104) certification. 700 passes; the exam is offered in ten languages and has no retirement date. Microsoft doesn't publish the exam time or the number of questions for AZ-305: its exam duration page gives expert role-based exams 100 minutes without labs and says most exams have 40 to 60 questions. The fee is set by the country or region (USD 165 in the United States, the price of Microsoft's AZ role-based exams), and the certification renews every year with a free online assessment. Our forms use 60 questions split 16 / 13 / 11 / 20, close to the midpoints of the guide's ranges, and most are multi-requirement design scenarios.

From Microsoft's certification page and exam guide, checked Oct 24, 2026.

Domains and weights

  • Domain 1: Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions

    27%

  • Domain 2: Design data storage solutions

    22%

  • Domain 3: Design business continuity solutions

    18%

  • Domain 4: Design infrastructure solutions

    33%

On our roadmap this comes after Azure Administrator Associate. See every certification.

Practice

108 original practice questions, every option explained with the Microsoft documentation page that proves it. Free, no sign-up; progress stays on this device.

Your results on this device →

More practice exams

The lessons, the sample questions on every task page and the first full practice exam are free and stay free. A pack adds the further timed AZ-305 practice exams.

Azure Solutions Architect Expert exam pack

$11.99for 12 months

  • Every paid AZ-305 practice exam, timed, with every option explained
  • The next version of this exam included when it changes within your 12 months
  • 12 months of access. One payment, nothing renews by itself.
  • 14-day refund, no conditions
  • 14-day refund, no conditions: ask within 14 days of buying and you get the whole payment back.
  • No pass guarantee. These are practice exams written by us from the exam guide and the Microsoft documentation; a score here does not predict your result on the real exam.

Study path

One module per exam domain. Lessons that already exist on BytePatterns are linked; the rest are being written.

  1. Module 1: Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions

    1. 1Log Analytics workspace design, table plans and retentionTask 1.1

      Lesson coming

    2. 2Routing logs: diagnostic settings, data collection rules, Event Hubs and storageTask 1.1

      Lesson coming

    3. 3Monitoring applications, VMs, containers and networks with Azure MonitorTask 1.1

      Partly covered by: CloudWatch, Alarms & X-Ray, Observability Basics, Tracing a Request

    4. 4Hybrid sign-in, Conditional Access and passwordless authenticationTask 1.2

      Lesson coming

    5. 5Identities for partners, customers and workloads; managed identitiesTask 1.2

      Lesson coming

    6. 6Azure RBAC and access to on-premises applicationsTask 1.2

      Partly covered by: Shared Responsibility & IAM

    7. 7Key Vault and Managed HSM for secrets, certificates and keysTask 1.2

      Partly covered by: KMS, Envelope Encryption & Private CA

    8. 8Management groups, subscriptions, resource groups and taggingTask 1.3

      Partly covered by: Organizations, SCPs & Control Tower

    9. 9Azure Policy, compliance reporting, locks and deployment stacksTask 1.3

      Partly covered by: Organizations, SCPs & Control Tower

    10. 10Identity governance: PIM, access reviews and entitlement managementTask 1.3

      Lesson coming

  2. Module 2: Design data storage solutions

    1. 11Choosing Azure SQL Database, SQL Managed Instance, SQL Server on VMs or a flexible serverTask 2.1

      Lesson coming

    2. 12Service tiers, compute tiers, elastic pools and scaling out relational dataTask 2.1

      Partly covered by: Database Replication, Database Sharding

    3. 13Protecting relational data: TDE, Always Encrypted, masking, row-level security and ledgerTask 2.1

      Lesson coming

    4. 14Azure Cosmos DB: APIs, partition keys, throughput and consistencyTask 2.2

      Partly covered by: SQL vs NoSQL, Consistency Models

    5. 15Blob Storage, Data Lake Storage, Azure Files and Azure NetApp FilesTask 2.2

      Lesson coming

    6. 16Access tiers, lifecycle rules, immutability, versioning and encryptionTask 2.2

      Partly covered by: S3: Consistency, Classes, Lifecycle

    7. 17Data Factory pipelines and integration runtimesTask 2.3

      Lesson coming

    8. 18Streaming and analysis: Event Hubs, Stream Analytics, Fabric, Synapse, Databricks and Data ExplorerTask 2.3

      Lesson coming

  3. Module 3: Design business continuity solutions

    1. 19Recovery objectives: matching RPO and RTO to Azure Backup and Site RecoveryTask 3.1

      Partly covered by: Disaster Recovery: RPO & RTO

    2. 20Vault design: redundancy, immutability, soft delete and multi-user authorizationTask 3.1

      Lesson coming

    3. 21Backup and restore for VMs, databases, file shares and blobsTask 3.1

      Partly covered by: Disaster Recovery: RPO & RTO

    4. 22High availability for compute: zones, scale sets and multi-region designsTask 3.2

      Partly covered by: EC2, Auto Scaling & Load Balancers

    5. 23High availability for relational data: zone redundancy, geo-replication and failover groupsTask 3.2

      Partly covered by: Database Replication

    6. 24High availability for Cosmos DB and storageTask 3.2

      Partly covered by: Consistency and CAP

  4. Module 4: Design infrastructure solutions

    1. 25Choosing compute: VMs, AKS, Container Apps, Container Instances, App Service and FunctionsTask 4.1

      Partly covered by: Containers vs VMs, ECS vs EKS vs Fargate, Lambda & Event-Driven Design

    2. 26VM families, Spot and reservations, and Batch for batch processingTask 4.1

      Lesson coming

    3. 27Messaging and events: Service Bus, Event Grid and Event HubsTask 4.2

      Partly covered by: SQS vs SNS vs EventBridge, Message Queues

    4. 28API Management, caching and application configurationTask 4.2

      Partly covered by: Caching, CloudFront & Caching Layers

    5. 29Automated deployment with Bicep, deployment stacks and pipelinesTask 4.2

      Lesson coming

    6. 30The Cloud Adoption Framework, Azure Migrate and migration strategiesTask 4.3

      Partly covered by: Migration: The 7 Rs, TCO & Waves

    7. 31Migrating databases and unstructured dataTask 4.3

      Partly covered by: Moving Data Into AWS

    8. 32Internet connectivity and hybrid connectivity: NAT Gateway, VPN, ExpressRoute and Virtual WANTask 4.4

      Partly covered by: Hybrid Networking & DNS

    9. 33Network security: private endpoints, Azure Firewall, NSGs and DDoS ProtectionTask 4.4

      Partly covered by: VPC: Subnets, NAT & Firewalls

    10. 34Load balancing and routing: Load Balancer, Application Gateway, Front Door and Traffic ManagerTask 4.4

      Partly covered by: Load Balancing, EC2, Auto Scaling & Load Balancers

Every task in the exam guide

The exam guide splits each domain into task statements. Each one has a page with a short summary, the lessons that teach it and open sample questions.

Domain 1: Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions

Domain 2: Design data storage solutions

Domain 3: Design business continuity solutions

Domain 4: Design infrastructure solutions

How these questions are made

  • Written by us from the exam guide's task statements and the Microsoft documentation — never from real exam content.
  • Every option carries its own explanation and a link to the Microsoft page that proves it.
  • A question enters a timed exam only after an independent check; until then it is a practice question.
  • Results are a plain percentage, per domain too — not an imitation of Microsoft's scaled score.

Questions about the AZ-305 practice exam

Is the AZ-305 practice exam free?
Yes. The full practice exam (60 questions, 100 minutes) is free with no sign-up, and so are the 108 practice questions, the task pages and the study path. Your attempts are saved in this browser, on this device.
How many questions does it have, and is it timed?
60 questions in 100 minutes: the real AZ-305 pace, scaled to this form. When the time runs out, the exam is submitted as it stands.
Are the answers explained?
After you submit, not during: like the real exam, the timed exam gives no feedback until the end. Then you get your score overall and per exam domain, and every question with each option explained and a link to the Microsoft documentation page behind it. In practice mode an answer is explained as soon as you check it.
What does the Azure Solutions Architect Expert exam pack add?
3 more timed practice exams (Practice exam 1: 60 questions, 100 minutes; Practice exam 2: 60 questions, 100 minutes; Practice exam 3: 60 questions, 100 minutes), each scored and explained the same way, and the next version of this exam if it changes within your 12 months. 12 months of access. One payment, nothing renews by itself. Everything above stays free. See the pack.
Can I get a refund?
Yes, with no conditions: ask within 14 days of buying and you get the whole payment back. The details are in the terms.
Is this an official Microsoft practice exam?
No. BytePatterns is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Microsoft. Every question is written by us from the public exam guide and the Microsoft documentation, never from real exam content, and a score here does not predict your result on the real exam. Microsoft lists its own preparation resources on its certification page.