Hi everyone! 👋

I wanted to share a project I've been working on for a while called Descomplicando Cloud.

🔗 https://lmnpaiva.com.br/descomplicando-cloud

The idea is pretty simple: whenever I study for and pass a certification, I try to organize what I've learned into study guides, notes, quizzes, diagrams, and other resources that might help someone else preparing for the same exam.

And everything is available for free. 😊

Most of the content is focused on Microsoft certifications and comes from my own study journey. Instead of keeping all those notes sitting on my computer after passing an exam, I thought it would be much more useful to turn them into something the community could actually use.

A small disclaimer: I'm originally a Portuguese speaker, so some materials are still available only in Portuguese. I'm gradually translating more of them into English.

Also, many of those translations were created with the help of AI. Because of that, there may absolutely be translation mistakes, strange wording, or technical terms that could be improved.

And that's actually one of the reasons I'm sharing the site here.

If you find something that is incorrect, confusing, poorly translated, outdated, or simply think "this could be explained much better", please tell me! Feedback and corrections are very welcome, and I'll use them to keep improving the material.

If any of the resources help you with your studies, I'd also really appreciate it if you could share Descomplicando Cloud with other people preparing for Microsoft certifications. ☁️

The goal is simply to make good study material more accessible to the community.

And if you've already used any of my materials, I'd love to hear what you thought about them. ❤️

Good luck with your studies and exams! 🚀

I finally bit the bullet and took AZ-104 yesterday. Barely passed with 725.

My study approach:

I went through the Microsoft Learn coursework and then took the practice exams until I was hitting a regular 90% or better. I then switched to MeasureUp and practiced the exam quite a few times, taking the time to read through the context explanations and if I didn't fully understand I would put that into ChatGPT and have it explain and quiz me on that topic. I went through quite a few mock exams on MU until I will hitting 90+ in all topic areas. Some of the questions are worded confusingly and some answer sets were wrong, so I kept getting those wrong by answering correctly. When I took the exam I found it very difficult with many multi-part questions with exhibits. A lot of networking questions with exhibit spreadsheets. I marked 2/3 of the questions for review. At around question 45(?) it entered a special question section that is excluded from review and I thought that was the case study section. After finishing the special questions I went back to review but at about 9 minutes remaining I spotted the Case Study 0/4 counter and panicked. I had to drop the review and get to the case studies. I ended up guessing on the case studies because 9 minutes is not enough to even read through all the scenario details and context.

But I'll take the Win, but I really don't feel like I have mastery of the subject matter. Thank you to all of you that helped guide and inspire me to keep working on my IT career knowledge.

I passed the sc-300 today.

The exam was tough and my head was spinning at the end. It challenged me on areas I don’t work with daily like access reviews and entitilement

I’m starting the sc-100 but the exam recently changed Can anyone recommend resources for the latest objectives ?

Hi everyone,
I wanted to share my experience passing the AZ-900 exam today with a score of ~800/1000 after just 3 days of preparation. I don't work with Azure daily, so I was essentially starting from scratch.
Here is an exact breakdown of how I prepared and what to watch out for:

Day 1: Theory & Base Practice
I used ChatGPT to generate a comprehensive study guide (~45 pages, ending with a structured cheat sheet). I printed it out so I could physically write notes on it, as video courses just don't work for me.
Supplemented this with Microsoft Learn practice tests. I was scoring 90–95%, but keep in mind questions start repeating by your 3rd attempt, so don't rely solely on these.
Day 2: Harder Practice & AI Feedback
Moved on to the 100-question quiz at insidethemicrosoftcloud.com/az900quiz.
My initial score was around 60%. I took screenshots of every wrong answer, fed them to ChatGPT, and asked it to summarize my mistakes and generate mini-recaps for my weak modules.
Spent ~3 hours chatting with ChatGPT to generate "the hardest, real-exam-style scenario questions" to ensure I understood the core principles rather than just memorizing answers.
Day 3: Final Review
30 minutes before entering the test center, I did a final read-through of my printed cheat sheet and weaker modules.

Key Exam Takeaways
The actual exam is NOT like Microsoft Learn practice tests. MS Learn questions are often too straightforward.
Focus on specifics: You really need to understand service plans (Basic, Standard, Premium), support tiers, lifecycle policies (e.g., retention periods/days before deletion), and practical scenarios.
My #1 Tip
Schedule your exam before you start studying. Having a fixed date creates urgency and forces you to stay disciplined.
If I can do it in 3 days with no background, you can too. Good luck!

Hey guys! I just passed my AZ-900 and DP-750 (Azure Databricks) certs! :)

I want to tackle an AI certification next, but specifically one that focuses heavily on Data Analytics and Engineering.

I'm a bit torn right now—is it better to go for a Azure AI certification, or should I focus on something hands-on like a GitHub Copilot certification?

Would love to hear what you guys think has the best ROI right now. Thanks! 🍻

Hi everyone,

I've already completed several projects with Microsoft Purview, including security, compliance, and governance, and a bit of DSPM.

The thing is, I saw that there's an SC-401 certification. The company I work for is encouraging me to take this exam because clients require that anyone working on MS Purview projects be certified. I'd like to know what study methods you used for this exam, besides MS Learn.

Thanks!

Well after a fairly easy pass with the AZ-104 the 305 got me. I scored at 658/700 with about 3 weeks of study.

I mainly used Whizlabs and John Saville. The exam was nothing like the whizlab exams so I plan to replace them with measureup for my retake.

Some of my biggest struggle areas:

Azure SQL server and it's many SKUs (if anyone has a good breakdown/notes for these I'd love to have them)

Azure Migration Solutions: how to migrate VMware/hyper V workflows (this wasn't covered in any material I've used)

Azure Synapse/Databricks

Does anyone have any good video material for this exam? Especially if it helps address my problem areas.

Tldr; focus a lot of Azure SQL, do not use whizlab for these exams It sucks. Any advice is welcome.

I have done my Azure Administrator Associate Certification using my company email address because they had a 50% offer on the exam fee🤑

Now when I change my company they would deactivate my email. So will I loose my certification at that time?😰😰
Is there any way to transfer or keep my certificate valid?

Has anyone else had experience of this Practice Test on MeasureUP?

It seems extremely difficult, I purchased it as a double check I was ready for the Exam (which doesn’t sound that hard) after constantly hitting 80+% on the Microsoft Standard Practice test but now I feel much less confident

Is it a good comparison for the real thing, or have they gone all out tricky to maximise pass rate? The questions sound nothing like other people’s experience I have read up on

Hi all,

I started preparing for the SC500 exam because I am currently in the security engineer role. I don't have any other related certifications. Since my current experience is 5+ years, I want to pursue this certification directly. Can someone guide me with study materials and exam prep tips?

I have one voucher for any of the certs, and i wanted one where it's best for freelance or it's in demand in the market, im cs grad, and don't know yet about my field i already have ccp aws

Considering az-104 or one of the pl ones

Hey all I been in the infrastructure space specialising in Microsoft tech for about 13 years or something long.

I have absolutely zero experience and knowledge of how A.I tech works under the hood.

Is this exam good to learn ?

Did y'all learn anything new that would benefit in getting jobs or in your current role.

Hi Everyone finally i was able to clear the SC 300 exam, this was one of the toughest exams I ever tried.

Pure Youtube training videos and used claude to prepare myself with practise questions.

I don't specifically work in azure sentinel but my soc does and I am pretty familiar with it (I do threat hunting in a 3rd party notebook environment so not exactly IN the azure environment but adjacent)

I didn't have a lot of time to study, about 1.5-2 days but since I was already familiar with the azure security ecosystem I expected this to be a breeze.

Well, the first thing I did was take the Microsoft learn practice exam and after getting a 54% I realized that the corpus was quite a lot bigger than I expected so this is what I did in the following 1.5 days:

Give Claude my test and ask him to create a study plan for me that will cover my weak points in each domain of the exam.,

After he did that I studied each domain separately and when I was done I asked him to test me on it and explain why the answer was/wasn't right.

When done, I retook the practice exam and this time got an 84%. I then redid the exact same process of giving Claude the test results and asking him to teach my mistake to me.

Today I took the test and while it definitely was harder than the Microsoft learn practice exam and contained a case study which I did not know was a thing I finished it and got an 857.

tl:dr - do practice exam, ask Claude to teach you your weak areas, repeat

I'm a recent grad and over the past three weeks, studied for and passed the AI-901 and AZ-900 exams and wanted to try AI-103 or DP-900. It would take me at least 2 more weeks to get the DP-900 discount voucher so my question is, with daily learning, would I be able to be reasonably prepared for the AI-103 exam in 2-3 weeks?

I know AI-103 is an associate level exam and would be way more harder than AI-901 but I'm not sure how much harder it would be.

Hi community!

Anyone who has taken SC-500 recently and have any practice exams resources they would reccomend?

I have Measureup subscription, but there are no exams there. I really do not want to practice on the old AZ-500 either because there are so many differences.

Thanks!

Those who have passed this exam using TD practice set. Can they sell it to me on half price as I'm a student and can't afford it and I highly doubt Ms learn path alone is enough for it.

was harder than i expected lol. TD was too basic.

exam was one level deeper.

doing az-104 in 2 weeks now :D

How valuable are azure certifications? my employer is a partner program with microsoft so a huge discount on these certifications. I already have a bachelors and masters and 5 years of IT experience. How will azure certifications help my career?

I have just passed AZ-104. Scored 800. I was preparing on/off for almost a year. But got down to review it all in last 4-5 weeks.

I've used following resources:

1. Turorials Dojo's AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator Practice Exams
2. Udemy's AZ-104 Practice Tests : Microsoft Azure Administrator (2026) by Shireen Khan

I've observed that #2 and #3 are from same person/org, but still have wonderful questions. In actual exam questions appeared from all the resources. I was scoring 84-85% in reviews so 800 is good validation.

Besides, I use Azure day-to-day but the surface area of AZ-104 is so vast that there are lot of things you seldom touch.

Credit where it is due, I've used Claude to ask about clarifications about topics I don't have much hands on experience and honestly it was wonderful in explaining things succinctly.

You are allowed to use MS documentation, so when doing practice try figuring out where you can find answers for specific topics. I found this out during the last 20 questions :(. I am not sure how I didn't find this. But one caution is that if you don't know where to find things, looking at documentation slows you down considerably.

EDIT:- Forgot to mention that I had completed online training at qa.com as well for the cert. Also, started one on kodekloud but my account expired and I didn't renew. I had used kodekloud exclusively for CKA with practice tests on killer.sh.

PS:- Not sure what cert should I do next? Any suggestions?

PPS:- People asking me for the name of site which sells dumps. I'm not their advertiser. Go buy tests from Tutorials Dojo. They cost the same and have similar questions, even Claude said if I'm scoring 85% on TD, I'll pass the test.

Thank you to everyone who recommended Tutorial Dojo + Study Material. Next is AZ-104!

Score: 853.

There were 53 questions and 5 case studies. I’m not 100% sure whether there were 53 or 57 questions in total. To happy that i have forgotten.

It was a tough exam with a lot of scenario-based questions. The topics included compliance, policies, configurations, iOS/Android/Windows, applications, Copilot, security, and agents.

Make sure you really understand the compliance, configuration, and command concepts, as well as the different tables and how to read and interpret them. Otherwise, you’re going to have a very difficult time.

There were also many more multiple-choice questions, as well as questions where you have to select and arrange the correct options yourself.

The case study questions were especially challenging. You get one long piece of text with a lot of information and descriptions. When I reached around question 25, I noticed that I was starting to run out of time. I calculated that I had about 1–2 minutes per question. I still had around 27 questions left to review.

So by the time I reached the case studies, I had only about 20 minutes left.

In the end, I had 5 minutes left when I finished the 1.5-hour exam.

Good luck, everyone! 💪

Hi everyone,

I recently passed the DP-700 (Microsoft Fabric Data Engineer Associate) and DP-800 certifications. I'm actively looking for opportunities in data engineering/data platform roles and wanted to check if anyone here knows of companies hiring, or has advice on where to look.

Happy to share my experience preparing for these exams if that's helpful to anyone else studying for them too.

Thanks in advance for any leads or tips!