AZ-305 Azure Infrastructure — 3-month study plan for a solutions architect
Taking the AZ-305 in 12 weeks. I've got the AZ-104 (Azure Admin) and have been working in Azure environments for about 3 years, so this isn't starting from zero. But the 305 is notably broader in scope — it's a design exam, not an administration exam, and that shift requires a different kind of preparation.
The four domains are identity, data storage, business continuity, and infrastructure. Business continuity is where I'm putting the most time — RTO/RPO tradeoffs, choosing between backup, Site Recovery, and paired regions depending on the scenario.
Architecture decision questions are genuinely hard because they're rarely clear-cut. Azure always has 4-5 services that could technically solve a problem and the question is which one fits the constraints in the scenario. That kind of judgment takes hands-on experience more than memorization.
Anyone else come from AZ-104 directly to 305? How big of a jump did you find it?
Business continuity is worth 25%+ of the exam and it's where people lose the most points. Know when to use Backup vs ASR vs geo-replication vs paired regions for different scenarios. The constraints in the question (cost, RTO, RPO, region availability) determine the answer — practice reading them carefully.
John Savill's AZ-305 YouTube series is the best free resource for this exam. He's genuinely good at explaining design trade-offs rather than just listing services. Pair it with the Microsoft Learn paths and you have most of what you need.
Hands-on labs matter more for this exam than for 104. You need to have actually built and connected these services to understand their constraints. Microsoft Learn sandbox labs are free — use them heavily in the last month.
104 to 305 is a real jump. The admin exam tests can-you-do-it; the design exam tests should-you-do-it and why. Study the Microsoft Well-Architected Framework seriously — it's the conceptual backbone behind most of the trade-off questions.