AZ-305 (Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions) is about choosing between options and justifying the choice against requirements. There is rarely a single correct service in the abstract; there's the best fit for the scenario. This guide follows the skills outline dated April 17, 2026.
Exam at a glance
| Skill area | Weight |
|---|---|
| Design identity, governance and monitoring solutions | 25-30% |
| Design data storage solutions | 20-25% |
| Design business continuity solutions | 15-20% |
| Design infrastructure solutions | 30-35% |
Microsoft expects advanced experience across networking, identity, security, business continuity, data platforms and governance, with design aligned to the Well-Architected Framework and Cloud Adoption Framework.
How to read a scenario
Pull out four things before looking at the answers:
- Hard requirements: compliance, latency, region, RTO and RPO
- Constraints: existing on-premises systems, skills, budget
- Operational preference: minimal management points toward PaaS or serverless
- Keywords: "lowest cost", "least administrative effort", "highest availability"
Then eliminate any option that violates a hard requirement. What's left is usually decided by the operational preference.
Decision tables worth memorizing
Relational data
| Need | Lean toward |
|---|---|
| Modern cloud app, minimal management | Azure SQL Database |
| Near-full SQL Server compatibility, lift and shift | SQL Managed Instance |
| OS-level control or unsupported features | SQL Server on a VM |
Messaging and events
| Need | Lean toward |
|---|---|
| Enterprise messaging, ordering, transactions | Service Bus |
| Reacting to discrete events | Event Grid |
| High-volume telemetry streaming | Event Hubs |
Traffic distribution
| Scope | Service |
|---|---|
| Global HTTP(S), edge acceleration, WAF | Front Door |
| Global DNS-based routing | Traffic Manager |
| Regional layer 7 | Application Gateway |
| Regional layer 4 | Load Balancer |
Domain notes
Identity, governance, monitoring (25-30%): logging and routing solutions, authentication and authorization choices (including on-premises resources), secrets, certificates and keys, management group and subscription structure, tagging, compliance and identity governance.
Data storage (20-25%): service tier and compute tier selection, scalability, protection, semi-structured versus unstructured storage balancing features, performance and cost, plus data integration and analysis.
Business continuity (15-20%): translate RTO and RPO into backup and recovery choices for compute, databases and unstructured data, and into high-availability designs.
Infrastructure (30-35%): compute (VMs, containers, serverless, batch), application architecture (messaging, events, API integration, caching, configuration, deployment automation), migrations with the Cloud Adoption Framework, and networking for internet, hybrid connectivity, performance, security and routing.
Study plan
- Read the skills outline and the Azure Architecture Center sections that match.
- For each objective, write a one-line "use X when, avoid X when" note.
- Redraw two or three reference architectures from memory.
- Take the practice assessment and, for every miss, write down which requirement you overlooked.
Verify weights on the official AZ-305 study guide before you book.
Which comparison trips you up most: SQL options, messaging services or load balancers? Share in the comments.
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