AZ-305 study guide · 2026

The 4 AZ-305 domains, explained

4 domains and 12 official functional groups. Design infrastructure solutions carries the most weight at 30–35%. Each guide explains what the domain covers, how its questions are framed and where candidates lose marks.

Start with Domain 4 See all domains
Questions
40–60 (varies)
Time
120 minutes
Passing score
700 / 1000
Outline
Skills measured as of 17 April 2026 (current)

Exam blueprint

Bar widths follow the official weights. Weight ranges are drawn at their midpoint.

  1. 1 25–30%
  2. 2 20–25%
  3. 3 15–20%
  4. 4 30–35%
  1. 1 Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions
  2. 2 Design data storage solutions
  3. 3 Design business continuity solutions
  4. 4 Design infrastructure solutions

All 4 domains

12 official functional groups 90–125 hrs suggested study

  1. Domain 01 25–30%

    Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions

    This domain covers designing the control plane of an Azure solution: logging and monitoring, authentication and authorization with Microsoft Entra ID, secrets management, and governance with management groups, Azure Policy and compliance.

    Inside this domain

    • Design solutions for logging and monitoring
    • Design authentication and authorization solutions
    • Design governance

    Watch for Stored secret for app access

    Functional groups
    3
    Questions est.
    11–16
    Study time est.
    25–35 hrs
  2. Domain 02 20–25%

    Design data storage solutions

    This domain covers designing the data layer: choosing relational stores and their tiers and scaling, selecting stores for semi-structured and unstructured data, and designing data integration and analytics pipelines.

    Inside this domain

    • Design data storage solutions for relational data
    • Design data storage solutions for semi-structured and unstructured data
    • Design data integration

    Watch for Relational for global NoSQL

    Functional groups
    3
    Questions est.
    9–14
    Study time est.
    20–30 hrs
  3. Domain 03 15–20%

    Design business continuity solutions

    This domain covers keeping solutions available and recoverable: designing backup and disaster recovery for compute, databases and data to meet RTO and RPO, and designing high availability across compute and data tiers.

    Inside this domain

    • Design solutions for backup and disaster recovery
    • Design for high availability

    Watch for Backup for regional failover

    Functional groups
    2
    Questions est.
    7–10
    Study time est.
    15–20 hrs
  4. Domain 04 30–35%

    Design infrastructure solutions

    This is the largest AZ-305 domain. It covers designing compute, application architecture, migrations and networking: choosing VMs, containers or serverless, messaging and eventing, migration strategy with the Cloud Adoption Framework, and connectivity and load balancing.

    Inside this domain

    • Design compute solutions
    • Design an application architecture
    • Design migrations
    • Design network solutions

    Watch for VM for event workload

    Functional groups
    4
    Questions est.
    13–20
    Study time est.
    30–40 hrs

Study the heaviest domains first

Marks follow weight. This order puts the most marks behind you first, across about 90–125 hrs of study.

  1. 4 Design infrastructure solutions 30–35% · 30–40 hrs
  2. 1 Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions 25–30% · 25–35 hrs
  3. 2 Design data storage solutions 20–25% · 20–30 hrs
  4. 3 Design business continuity solutions 15–20% · 15–20 hrs

Try one

Practice questionDomain 4: Design infrastructure solutions

A web application serves users worldwide and must route each user to the lowest-latency healthy regional deployment, provide layer-7 routing, and include web application firewall protection at the edge. Which Azure service should the architect recommend?

One trap from every domain

The answer that looks right, and the clue that gives it away.

  • Domain 1

    Stored secret for app access

    Clue An Azure resource needs to access another Azure resource securely.

  • Domain 2

    Relational for global NoSQL

    Clue The workload is global, high-throughput and flexible-schema.

  • Domain 3

    Backup for regional failover

    Clue The requirement is minutes-level regional failover.

  • Domain 4

    VM for event workload

    Clue The workload is event-driven, intermittent or bursty.

Other Cloud Computing certifications

Study guides for exams that overlap with AZ-305.

Practise what you read

AZ-305 domains: common questions

How many domains are in the AZ-305 exam?

AZ-305 has 4 domains with 12 official functional groups between them: Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions, Design data storage solutions, Design business continuity solutions and Design infrastructure solutions.

Which AZ-305 domain carries the most weight?

Design infrastructure solutions is the heaviest at 30–35%, followed by Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions (25–30%). The lightest is Design business continuity solutions (15–20%). Weights come from Microsoft's official outline.

What is the AZ-305 exam format?

Questions: 40–60 (varies). Time allowed: 120 minutes. Passing score: 700 / 1000.

How long should I study for AZ-305?

Our planning estimate is 90–125 hrs across all domains, split by weight. It is an editorial estimate, not an official figure, so adjust it to your experience and to how you score on practice questions.

Where should I start?

Start with Design infrastructure solutions, because it carries the most marks, then work down by weight. Use the checklist on each domain page to confirm you can do what the domain asks before moving on.

Which outline is this guide based on?

This guide follows Skills measured as of 17 April 2026 (current), published by Microsoft. It was last reviewed in October 2026.

Domain names, weights and functional groups come from Microsoft's official outline (Skills measured as of 17 April 2026 (current)). Question counts and study hours are editorial planning estimates, not official figures. Last reviewed October 2026.