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Microsoft Certification Guide · 2026AZ-305 Certification Guide 2026: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
Everything about the AZ-305 exam — the prerequisite certification you must already hold, all four domains and weightings, why 46 of its 49 objectives begin with the word “Recommend”, which domain costs the most effort per mark, architect salary bands, and a 12-week roadmap.
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AZ-305 — Azure Solutions Architect Expert
The credential this guide covers
Passing AZ-305 on its own does not make you an Azure Solutions Architect Expert. Microsoft’s certification page states it plainly: “To become a Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert, you must earn the Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate certification.” That means AZ-104 first. The certification listing shows “Prerequisites: 1 certification”. This is one of the very few genuinely enforced prerequisites in Microsoft’s catalogue, and it is the single most common thing people discover too late.
AZ-305 (Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions) is Microsoft’s Expert-tier architecture exam — the top of the Azure ladder. Four domains, 49 objectives, pass at 700 out of 1000. And here is what defines it: 46 of those 49 objectives begin with the word “Recommend”. Two more say “Evaluate” and one says “Specify”. Not a single one says implement, configure, deploy or create.
That verb count is the whole exam in one statistic. AZ-305 does not test whether you can build things in Azure — AZ-104 already did that, which is precisely why it is the prerequisite. AZ-305 tests whether, given a set of business requirements, you can choose the right thing to build and defend the choice. It is a judgement exam wearing an infrastructure exam’s clothes.
AZ-305 exam at a glance
| Attribute | Detail |
|---|---|
| Exam code | AZ-305 — Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions |
| Certification earned | Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert |
| Level | Expert — Microsoft’s highest role-based tier |
| Prerequisite | Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104) — required, not recommended |
| Required exams | AZ-305 — a single exam, on top of the prerequisite certification |
| Passing score | 700 out of 1000 |
| Domains | Four — identity/governance/monitoring, data storage, business continuity, infrastructure |
| Examinable objectives | 49, of which 46 begin with “Recommend” |
| Frameworks assumed | Azure Well-Architected Framework and Cloud Adoption Framework — named in the audience profile |
| Skills measured version | Current as of 17 April 2026 |
| Languages | Ten, including English, Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Korean, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil) and Italian |
| Renewal | Annually — expert certifications expire each year, renewed by a free online assessment on Microsoft Learn |
What is the AZ-305 certification?
Microsoft’s audience profile describes an architect with subject matter expertise in designing cloud and hybrid solutions across compute, network, storage, monitoring and security. The responsibilities named are advising stakeholders and translating business requirements into designs that align with the Azure Well-Architected Framework and the Cloud Adoption Framework.
Note the word advising. The profile then says you implement solutions by partnering with developers, administrators, security engineers and data engineers — not by doing it yourself. AZ-305 certifies the person in the room who decides, not the person who deploys.
Because “Recommend a solution for X” has no single right answer until you read the constraints — budget, recovery objectives, compliance, latency, existing on-premises estate. Engineers who know Azure deeply still fail AZ-305 by picking the technically best option rather than the one the scenario asks for. The skill being tested is requirement-reading under pressure, and it is genuinely different from the skill AZ-104 tested.
AZ-305 skills measured and weightings
Four domains, and unusually for a Microsoft blueprint, the midpoints total exactly 100%.
AZ-305 exam blueprint — share of exam by domain
Official Microsoft weightings, skills measured as of 17 April 2026. Bars show the midpoint of each range.
Source: Microsoft Learn, “Study guide for Exam AZ-305”, skills measured as of 17 April 2026. Midpoints are 32.5 / 27.5 / 22.5 / 17.5, which sum to exactly 100% — rare among Microsoft blueprints, most of which leave a gap because they publish ranges.
Where the reading is, versus where the marks are
Weighting tells you the marks. Counting objectives tells you the workload. On AZ-305 those two things diverge sharply, and knowing where is worth several weeks of your time.
Examinable objectives by domain
Count of published bullet-level objectives, against 49 in total
Counted by us from the published blueprint. Infrastructure is 42.9% of the objectives but only 32.5% of the marks — a 0.76× return. Business continuity is the inverse: 14.3% of the objectives for 17.5% of the marks, a 1.23× return, the best on the exam. Identity and governance is close behind at 1.22×.
Do not start with the infrastructure domain because it is the biggest. It is the biggest and the least efficient — four sub-domains covering compute, application architecture, migrations and networking, 21 objectives deep. Start with business continuity: seven objectives, 15–20% of the marks, and the fastest domain on the exam to close completely. Then identity and governance. Leave infrastructure for the long middle of your study plan, where it belongs.
The four domains as flashcards
Design infrastructure solutions
Compute: specifying components from workload requirements, then recommending VM-based, container-based, serverless and batch-processing solutions. Application architecture: messaging, event-driven architecture, API integration, caching, application configuration management, automated deployment. Migrations: evaluating a migration using the Cloud Adoption Framework, evaluating on-premises servers and applications, migrating to IaaS and PaaS, migrating databases and unstructured data. Network: connectivity to the internet and to on-premises, optimising performance and security, load balancing and routing.
30–35% · 21 objectivesDesign identity, governance and monitoring
Logging and monitoring: recommending a logging solution, a solution for routing logs, and a monitoring solution. Authentication and authorization (five objectives): an authentication solution, identity management, authorizing access to Azure resources and separately to on-premises resources, and managing secrets, certificates and keys. Governance: a structure for management groups, subscriptions and resource groups plus a resource tagging strategy, managing compliance, and identity governance.
25–30% · 11 objectivesDesign data storage solutions
Relational: storing relational data, recommending a database service tier and compute tier, database scalability, and data protection. Semi-structured and unstructured: storing each, plus recommending a storage solution that balances features, performance and cost — the objective that most rewards reading the scenario carefully — and a solution for protection and durability. Integration: data integration and data analysis.
20–25% · 10 objectivesDesign business continuity solutions
Backup and disaster recovery: a recovery solution for Azure and hybrid workloads that meets stated recovery objectives, plus backup and recovery for compute, databases and unstructured data. High availability: for compute, for relational data, and for semi-structured and unstructured data. Seven objectives for 15–20% of the marks — the best effort-to-mark ratio on the exam.
15–20% · best valueRPO and RTO decide the answer
The business continuity domain asks for a recovery solution “that meets recovery objectives”. In practice that means every question hands you an RPO and an RTO and expects the design to follow from them. Know cold what each Azure backup, replication and availability option actually delivers against those two numbers — not what it is called, what it guarantees.
Inside domain 4The two frameworks are not optional reading
The audience profile names the Azure Well-Architected Framework and the Cloud Adoption Framework, and one migration objective explicitly requires evaluating a solution that leverages the CAF. These are not background — they are the vocabulary the correct answers are written in. Reliability, security, cost optimisation, operational excellence and performance efficiency are how the exam reasons.
Named in the audience profileWho AZ-305 is actually for
- AZ-104 holders ready to move from operating Azure to designing it — the intended and only supported path.
- Senior infrastructure and cloud engineers who already make architecture calls informally and want the title to match the responsibility.
- Consultants and pre-sales engineers whose job is literally to recommend solutions to stakeholders — the exam is built around exactly that task.
- Engineers pairing it with AZ-400 — architecture plus delivery is the combination that opens principal-level roles.
Where it will not carry you
- It is not an entry point. AZ-104 is a hard requirement, and the audience profile asks for advanced IT operations experience on top of it.
- It will not teach you to build. No objective asks you to implement anything. If you cannot already operate Azure, this exam is the wrong tool.
- It is Azure-specific. The architectural reasoning transfers to AWS or GCP; the service names and their exact guarantees do not.
Architect pay, the top of the ladder
This is the highest-paying credential in our Microsoft catalogue, and the reason is structural rather than promotional. An architect’s decisions commit budget. Choosing the wrong data platform or the wrong recovery design costs an organisation far more than a slow pipeline ever will, and pay follows that exposure.
The architect progression
Engineer to architect
Architect
Senior architect
Principal
Cloud and solutions architect pay by market
India and the US shown as two separate charts, because rupee and dollar bands are different measures on different scales and should never share an axis.
India — annual CTC
Cloud and solutions architect roles, ₹ lakh per annum
Bar length maps the upper bound of each band against a ₹90 L scale. Bands compiled from published Indian cloud and solutions architect ranges. Product companies and global capability centres sit at the top of each band; service firms at the bottom.
United States — annual base
Cloud and solutions architect roles, US$ thousands
Bar length maps each figure against a $250K scale. Bands compiled from published US cloud and solutions architect ranges; base pay only, excluding bonus and equity, which are a larger share of total compensation at principal level than at any band below it.
These are role bands, not certification outcomes, and the architect bands in particular are driven by years of experience far more than by any credential. No published figure attaches a salary increase to holding AZ-305 by itself. What the Expert certification does is make the architect title defensible when you apply for it — which matters most at the engineer-to-architect step, where candidates are otherwise judged only on whether someone already let them do the job.
Compensation figures are compiled from independent, publicly available industry sources and are shown for role context. They are not a guarantee of pay in any specific market, company or outcome, and 360DT does not promise a salary result from any certification or programme.
Why AZ-305 holds its value
1. The prerequisite is a moat
Most certifications can be attempted by anyone with an exam voucher. This one cannot — you must already hold AZ-104. That single requirement filters out the population who collect certificates without operating anything, and it is why an Expert badge still means something to a hiring manager who has learned to discount the rest.
2. Design decisions are the ones that do not get automated away
Provisioning is now largely templated and increasingly AI-assisted. Deciding whether a workload belongs in containers or serverless, what recovery objective the business actually needs, and how to structure subscriptions for a company that is about to acquire another — those remain human judgement calls made with incomplete information. AZ-305 is aimed squarely at that layer.
3. It is a hybrid exam, not a cloud-purist one
Look at how often on-premises appears: authorizing access to on-premises resources, connecting Azure resources to on-premises networks, evaluating on-premises servers and applications for migration, recovery for hybrid workloads. Real enterprises are hybrid for years, and the exam refuses to pretend otherwise. That is what makes it useful rather than aspirational.
4. Annual renewal keeps the Expert badge honest
Expert certifications expire every year and renew through a free online assessment on Microsoft Learn. Azure changes constantly, and a current Expert credential tells an employer you have kept pace — which is a materially different claim from having passed a hard exam once, some years ago.
Your 12-week AZ-305 roadmap
Ordered by effort-to-mark ratio rather than blueprint order, so the efficient domains close early and the 21-objective infrastructure domain gets the long middle. Assume 8–10 hours per week. This plan assumes you already hold AZ-104 — if you do not, that comes first.
The two frameworks, first and properly
The Azure Well-Architected Framework — reliability, security, cost optimisation, operational excellence, performance efficiency — and the Cloud Adoption Framework. Every correct answer on this exam is reasoned in this vocabulary. Skipping this week is why technically strong candidates get scenario questions wrong.
Business continuity — the best value domain
Recovery solutions for Azure and hybrid workloads that meet stated RPO and RTO. Backup and recovery for compute, databases and unstructured data. Build a table of every option against the recovery objectives it actually delivers — that table is worth more than any video.
High availability, and domain 3 closed
High availability for compute, for relational data, and for semi-structured and unstructured data. Zones versus regions versus paired regions, and what each costs. Completes business continuity — 15–20% of the exam banked in two weeks.
Identity and access
Recommending an authentication solution and an identity management solution. Authorizing access to Azure resources, then separately to on-premises resources — the exam treats these as different problems and so should you. Managing secrets, certificates and keys.
Governance, logging and monitoring
A structure for management groups, subscriptions and resource groups, plus a resource tagging strategy. Managing compliance. Identity governance. Then logging, routing logs, and monitoring. Completes domain 1 — the second-best ratio on the exam.
Relational data design
Recommending a solution for storing relational data. Service tier and compute tier — know the tiers and what each is priced for. Database scalability. Data protection. Scenario questions here hinge on cost and performance trade-offs, not on which product is best.
Non-relational data and integration
Storing semi-structured and unstructured data. Balancing features, performance and cost — practise this one deliberately, it is the objective most likely to appear as a long scenario. Protection and durability. Then data integration and data analysis. Completes domain 2.
Compute design
Specifying compute components from workload requirements. VM-based, container-based and serverless solutions, and batch processing. The recurring question is not what each does but which one the stated requirements point to, and what it costs to be wrong.
Application architecture
Messaging architecture. Event-driven architecture. API integration. Caching. Application configuration management. Automated deployment. Six objectives, and the most software-shaped part of an infrastructure exam — expect queues, topics, events and idempotency to matter.
Migrations
Evaluating a migration solution using the Cloud Adoption Framework. Evaluating on-premises servers, data and applications. Migrating workloads to IaaS and PaaS, migrating databases, migrating unstructured data. This is where week 1’s framework study pays off directly.
Network design, and domain 4 closed
Connectivity to the internet and to on-premises networks. Optimising network performance and network security. Load balancing and routing — know exactly which load balancer belongs at which layer and why. Completes the 21-objective infrastructure domain.
Scenarios, practice assessment, book the exam
Stop reading and start deciding. Work through the Azure Architecture Center reference architectures and, for each, articulate why that design and not the obvious alternative. Then the free official practice assessment, scored by domain rather than overall. Then book.
Microsoft states it directly on the AZ-305 certification page: “We strongly recommend that you register for an exam with a personal MSA account. If you register with an organizational (work/school) AAD account, your exam records will be lost if you leave your organization and they will be unrecoverable.” For an Expert credential that renews annually, losing the record is not a small problem.
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Azure DevOps + Solutions Architect Program
The 360DT Azure DevOps + Solutions Architect Program covers the full AZ-305 blueprint — identity and governance design, data storage design, business continuity against real RPO and RTO targets, and the 21-objective infrastructure domain — alongside AZ-400 for the delivery half. Architecture and DevOps together is the combination that opens principal-level roles.
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AZ-305 frequently asked questions
Do I need AZ-104 before AZ-305?
Yes, and this is not optional. Microsoft’s certification page states that to become a Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert you must earn the Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate certification, and the listing shows “Prerequisites: 1 certification”. You can sit and pass AZ-305 without it, but you will not hold the Expert certification until AZ-104 is done.
Is AZ-305 a hands-on exam?
No. Of its 49 published objectives, 46 begin with “Recommend”, two with “Evaluate” and one with “Specify”. None asks you to implement, configure or deploy anything — AZ-104 covered that, which is why it is the prerequisite. AZ-305 tests whether you can read business requirements and choose a defensible design.
Which AZ-305 domain should I study first?
Business continuity. It carries 15–20% of the marks across only seven objectives — the best effort-to-mark ratio on the exam. The infrastructure domain looks like the priority because it is the largest at 30–35%, but it holds 21 of the 49 objectives, so it returns the least per hour. Close the efficient domains first.
How hard is AZ-305 compared with AZ-104?
Different rather than simply harder. AZ-104 tests whether you know how to do things; AZ-305 tests whether you know which thing to do when a scenario gives you conflicting constraints. Engineers who know Azure deeply still fail it by choosing the technically best option instead of the one the requirements point to.
How long does it take to prepare for AZ-305?
Around twelve weeks at 8–10 hours per week for someone already holding AZ-104 — the roadmap on this page. It is 49 objectives across four domains, and the scenario format means recognition is not enough; you need to have made these trade-offs, ideally at work, or at minimum by reasoning through reference architectures.
Do I need to know the Well-Architected and Cloud Adoption Frameworks?
Yes. Both are named in the audience profile, and one migration objective explicitly requires evaluating a solution that leverages the Cloud Adoption Framework. More practically, the frameworks are the reasoning the correct answers are built on — reliability, security, cost optimisation, operational excellence and performance efficiency. Study them in week one, not week eleven.
Does the Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification expire?
Yes. Microsoft’s role-based and specialty certifications expire annually, and Expert tier is included. Renewal is free — a short online assessment on Microsoft Learn during your renewal window. Note that you will also need to keep the prerequisite AZ-104 certification current.
AZ-305 or AZ-400 — which should I take first?
AZ-305 if your next role is architecture and design; AZ-400 if it is delivery, pipelines and release engineering. Both are Expert tier and both require an Associate prerequisite. Our programme pairs them because architecture without delivery is a diagram, and delivery without architecture is a fast route to the wrong system.
Sources and further reading
- Microsoft Learn — Study guide for Exam AZ-305: Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions (audience profile naming the Well-Architected and Cloud Adoption Frameworks; four skills-measured domains and weightings; full objective list; skills measured as of 17 April 2026; change log)
- Microsoft Learn — Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification page, which states: “To become a Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert, you must earn the Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate certification”, lists “Prerequisites: 1 certification”, and carries the personal-MSA registration warning quoted on this page
- Microsoft Learn — exam scoring and score reports (a score of 700 or greater is required to pass)
- Microsoft Learn — certification renewal (associate, expert and specialty certifications expire annually and renew via a free online assessment)
- Objective counts and verb analysis on this page were tallied by us from the published blueprint: 11 / 10 / 7 / 21 objectives, 49 in total, of which 46 begin with “Recommend”
- Published Indian and US cloud architect and solutions architect compensation ranges, used for role context only
360DT is an independent training provider. Microsoft certification exams are administered by Microsoft through Pearson VUE and are not included in programme tuition. Exam details are accurate as of 20 August 2026; always confirm current format, pricing, prerequisites, renewal policy and skills measured on Microsoft Learn before booking.