Further information is being released about upcoming changes to the 70-534 Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions exam.
First, if you don’t know, Microsoft announced that the exam will be retiring as of December 31, 2017. A new exam, 70-535 Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions, will be the replacement.
Now new details have been released. The new exam will be available as of November 30, 2017. You will no longer be able to register for the 70-534 exam after that date.
Microsoft assures architects that the 70-535 will be considered a direct replacement for 70-534, so any certifications earned with 70-534 will still be considered valid going forward. You do not need to take exam 70-535 if you’ve already passed 70-534.
They also provided a preliminary syllabus for the exam. Let’s look at what stands out to me.
First, similar to the 70-532 and 70-533 exams, some new areas have been added to the exam:
- Containers
- Web apps on Linux
- Data Catalog, Azure Data Factory, SQL Data Warehouse, Azure Data Lake
- SQL Server Stretch Database
- Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL
- Time Series Insights
- CosmosDB
- Network Virtual Appliances
- DMZ
- Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
- Azure AD Domain Services
- Azure Key Vault
- Azure AD Managed Service Identity
- Azure AD Privileged Identity Management
- Artificial Intelligence Services such as Cognitive Services, Bot Service and Machine Learning
- More IoT
- Event Grid
- Azure Media Services added back in after being removed a year ago
- Network Watcher Service
These are just the things that catch my eye as being added to the exam that were not on the last version of the exam.
Has anything been removed from the exam?
Well there is no mention of:
- Hyper-V
- SAML
- Azure SQL Database TDE
Not much has been removed.
So as it stands right now, if you plan to take the Azure Architecture exam before the end of the year, you should probably just go ahead and do that. Waiting until the new exam is live, and study materials are updated, might not be worth it for you.
If taking the Azure Architecture exam is probably something that you’ll take early next year, I might wait to see how it plays out. There’s a few new things that need to be added to the course, and we haven’t heard yet from anyone who has seen the new exam.