In this article, we will discuss how to prepare yourself for an important Microsoft Azure exam: Designing an Azure Data Solution (DP-201).
Exam Overview
The Designing an Azure Data Solution certificate exam measures your intermediate-level knowledge on three main areas. This includes:
- How to design Azure data storage solutions, with relative questions weight in the exam up to 45%
- How to design data processing solutions, with relative questions weight in the exam up to 30%
- How to design data security and compliance for your data related solutions, with relative questions weight in the exam up to 30%
Officially, there are no prerequisites for that Microsoft Azure exam. But it is recommended to go through, and better to take, the Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) exam if you are new to Microsoft Azure world, and the Microsoft Azure Data Fundamentals (DP-900) if you are new to the Microsoft Azure data platform.
In order to gain the Azure Data Engineer Associate certificate, you should pass the Designing an Azure Data Solution (DP-200) and the Designing an Azure Data Solution (DP-201) certificate exams. For more information about Microsoft Azure certificates, you can check out this article, It is time to specify your Microsoft Certifications path.
The Designing an Azure Data Solution certificate exam can be scheduled from the Designing an Azure Data Solution certificate page.
Certificate Candidate
Working as a Microsoft Azure data engineer, you will be responsible for designing the different aspects of any data-related cloud and hybrid solutions that are in line with business and technical requirements. This includes identifying and designing the data storage service, choosing the proper batch or stream data ingesting tool, designing the data transformation workflow, designing the data access and security and the data retention policies at all levels in order to meet the business requirements, and designing the data high availability and disaster recovery for big data, batch processing and streaming data solutions.
Unlike the Microsoft Azure relational database administrators, the Microsoft Azure data engineer’s responsibilities exceed the relational database administration to the No-SQL and Data Warehouse administration.
If you are working, or plan to work as, a Microsoft Azure data engineer, data professional, data architect, or business intelligence professional, you are the best candidate for the “Designing an Azure Data Solution” certificate exam.
Study Guideline
Preparing yourself for Designing an Azure Data Solution exam, after finishing the Implementing an Azure Data Solution certificate exam will be an easy task. Where the previous exam concentrates on the practical part of the Microsoft Azure Data platform solutions, where this exam concentrates only on the design part of the Microsoft Azure Data Platform solutions. You can go with the Implement then design courses and certificates preparation or the opposite order will work fine with you.
The 7-module Designing an Azure Data Solution learning path self-study course, provided by Microsoft, is a good resource for you to prepare for the Designing an Azure Data Solution exam and pass it. If you prefer to attend an online course or watch related videos, you can easily subscribe to any online data engineering-related course such as the ones provided by Udemy, PLURALSIGHT.
In order not to spend a long time preparing for that course and dive deeply into non-related subjects, consider that this type of exam contains a large number of subjects. While passing this exam, requires you to have good design knowledge and skills in previously mentioned subjects. As a trainer and consultant, you need to be fully prepared for such an exam in order to be able to understand and cover any trainee or customer requirement by gaining all needed knowledge and digging deeper.
In this article, I will provide links for the official Microsoft articles that discuss all the measured skills in this exam. I recommend you to go through these articles, discuss it and read further about any subject you find it new or harder for you:
Design Azure Data Storage Solutions
In this part, you need to gain enough knowledge about the measured skills below:
- Recommend an Azure data storage solution based on requirements:
-
Design non-relational cloud data stores
- Azure Cosmos DB partitioning design patterns – Part 1
- Partitioning and horizontal scaling in Azure Cosmos DB
- Partitioning in Azure Cosmos DB
- Global data distribution with Azure Cosmos DB – overview
- High availability with Azure Cosmos DB
- Using Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 for big data requirements
- Choose the appropriate API for Azure Cosmos DB
- Frequently asked questions about different APIs in Azure Cosmos DB
- Backup and disaster recovery
- Backup and disaster recover for Azure applications
- Building solutions for high availability using Availability Zones
- Architecting Azure applications for resiliency and availability
-
Design relational cloud data stores
- Data Modeling and Partitioning for Relational Workloads
- Horizontal, vertical, and functional data partitioning
- Get high-performance scaling for your Azure database workloads with Hyperscale
- Azure Synapse Analytics
- Design a data warehouse with Azure Synapse Analytics
- Disaster recovery strategies for applications using Azure SQL Database elastic pools
- High availability for Azure SQL Database and SQL Managed Instance
Design Data Processing Solutions
In this part, you need to gain enough knowledge about the measured skills below:
- Design batch processing solutions
-
Design real-time processing solutions
- Azure Stream Analytics solution patterns
- Stream processing pipeline with Azure Databricks
- Choosing a stream processing technology in Azure
- Stream processing pipeline with Azure Stream Analytics
- Real Time Analytics on Big Data Architecture
- Choose an Azure compute service for your application
- Review your compute options
Design for Data Security and Compliance
In this part, you need to gain enough knowledge about the measured skills below:
- Design security for source data access
-
Design security for data policies and standards
- Azure data encryption at rest
- Azure data security and encryption best practices
- Dynamic data masking
- Data Discovery & Classification
- What is data classification?
- Manage Azure SQL Database long-term backup retention
- Long-term retention – Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance
- Managing the data life cycle using Azure Data Factory
Practicing
Once you finish studying the exam required material, you will start searching for the related exam practice tests. If this is your first Microsoft certification exam, I recommend you to go through the Microsoft certificates Exam Formats and Questions Types and check the Microsoft exams questions shape. You will see how these questions require you to UNDERSTAND the usage of these technologies and not memorize all information that can be easily found in the Microsoft documentation or other non-Microsoft rich articles.
After that, you can find any free practice test on the internet, such as the ExamTopics site, and evaluate your skills in the measured subjects. You will always see that the exam questions are new for you and this is the goal, to test your skills in new scenarios and ensure that you can apply what you learned.
As a rule of thumb, always be prepared, practice, test it by yourself, and take your time in your preparation. No one is counting the number of tries for you; one fail will open a door of successes.
Good Luck.
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He is a Microsoft Certified Solution Expert in Data Management and Analytics, Microsoft Certified Solution Associate in SQL Database Administration and Development, Azure Developer Associate and Microsoft Certified Trainer.
Also, he is contributing with his SQL tips in many blogs.
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