AZ-400: Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions

Course Outline

Module 1: Get started on a DevOps transformation journey

Lessons

• Introduction to DevOps
• Choose the right project
• Describe team structures
• Choose the DevOps tools
• Plan Agile with GitHub Projects and Azure Boards
• Introduction to source control
• Describe types of source control systems
• Work with Azure Repos and GitHub

After completing this module, students will be able to:

• Understand what DevOps is and the steps to accomplish it
• Identify teams to implement the process
• Plan for the transformation with shared goals and timelines
• Plan and define timelines for goals
• Understand different projects and systems to guide the journey
• Select a project to start the DevOps transformation
• Identify groups to minimize initial resistance
• Identify project metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)
• Understand agile practices and principles of agile development
• Create a team and agile organizational structure

Module 2: Development for enterprise DevOps

Lessons

• Structure your Git Repo
• Manage Git branches and workflows
• Collaborate with pull requests in Azure Repos
• Explore Git hooks
• Plan foster inner source
• Manage Git repositories
• Identify technical debt

After completing this module, students will be able to:

• Understand Git repositories
• Implement mono repo or multiple repos
• Explain how to structure Git Repos
• Implement a change log
• Describe Git branching workflows
• Implement feature branches
• Implement GitFlow
• Fork a repo
• Leverage pull requests for collaboration and code reviews
• Give feedback using pull requests

Module 3: Implement CI with Azure Pipelines and GitHub Actions

Lessons

• Explore Azure Pipelines
• Manage Azure Pipeline agents and pools
• Describe pipelines and concurrency
• Explore Continuous integration
• Implement a pipeline strategy
• Integrate with Azure Pipelines
• Introduction to GitHub Actions
• Learn continuous integration with GitHub Actions
• Design a container build strategy

After completing this module, students will be able to:

• Describe Azure Pipelines
• Explain the role of Azure Pipelines and its components
• Decide Pipeline automation responsibility
• Understand Azure Pipeline key terms
• Choose between Microsoft-hosted and self-hosted agents
• Install and configure Azure pipelines Agents
• Configure agent pools
• Make the agents and pools secure
• Use and estimate parallel jobs

Module 4: Design and implement a release strategy

Lessons

• Introduction to continuous deliveryCreate a release pipeline
• Explore release strategy recommendations
• Provision and test environments
• Manage and modularize tasks and templates
• Automate inspection of health

After completing this module, students will be able to:

• Explain continuous delivery (CD)
• Implement continuous delivery in your development cycle
• Understand releases and deployment
• Identify project opportunities to apply CD
• Explain things to consider when designing your release strategy
• Define the components of a release pipeline and use artifact sources
• Create a release approval plan
• Implement release gates
• Differentiate between a release and a deployment

Module 5: Implement a secure continuous deployment using Azure Pipelines

Lessons

• Introduction to deployment patterns
• Implement blue-green deployment and feature toggles
• Implement canary releases and dark launching
• Implement A/B testing and progressive exposure deployment
• Integrate with identity management systems
• Manage application configuration data

After completing this module, students will be able to:

• Explain the terminology used in Azure DevOps and other Release Management Tooling
• Describe what a Build and Release task is, what it can do, and some available deployment tasks
• Implement release jobs
• Differentiate between multi-agent and multi-configuration release job
• Provision and configure target environment
• Deploy to an environment securely using a service connection
• Configure functional test automation and run availability tests
• Setup test infrastructure
• Use and manage task and variable groups

Module 6: Manage infrastructure as code using Azure and DSC

Lessons

• Explore infrastructure as code and configuration management
• Create Azure resources using Azure Resource Manager templates
• Create Azure resources by using Azure CLI
• Explore Azure Automation with DevOps
• Implement Desired State Configuration (DSC)
• Implement Bicep

After completing this module, students will be able to:

• Understand how to deploy your environment
• Plan your environment configuration
• Choose between imperative versus declarative configuration
• Explain idempotent configuration
• Create Azure resources using ARM templates
• Understand ARM templates and template components
• Manage dependencies and secrets in templates
• Organize and modularize templates
• Create Azure resources using Azure CLI

Module 7: Implement security and validate code bases for compliance

Lessons

• Introduction to Secure DevOps
• Implement open-source software
• Software Composition Analysis
• Static analyzers
• OWASP and Dynamic Analyzers
• Security Monitoring and Governance

After completing this module, students will be able to:

• Identify SQL injection attack
• Understand DevSecOps
• Implement pipeline security
• Understand threat modeling
• Implement open-source software
• Explain corporate concerns for open-source components
• Describe open-source licenses
• Understand the license implications and ratings
• Work with Static and Dynamic Analyzers
• Configure Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Module 8: Design and implement a dependency management strategy

Lessons

• Explore package dependencies
• Understand package management
• Migrate, consolidating and secure artifacts
• Implement a versioning strategy
• Introduction to GitHub Packages

After completing this module, students will be able to:

• Define dependency management strategy
• Identify dependencies
• Describe elements and componentization of a dependency management
• Scan your codebase for dependencies
• Implement package management
• Manage package feed
• Consume and create packages
• Publish packages
• Identify artifact repositories
• Migrate and integrate artifact repositories

Module 9 : Implement continuous feedback

Lessons

• Implement tools to track usage and flow
• Develop monitor and status dashboards
• Share knowledge within teams
• Design processes to automate application analytics
• Manage alerts, Blameless retrospectives and a just culture

After completing this module, students will be able to:

• Implement tools to track feedback
• Plan for continuous monitoring
• Implement Application Insights
• Use Kusto Query Language (KQL)
• Implement routing for mobile applications
• Configure App Center Diagnostics
• Configure alerts
• Create a bug tracker
• Configure Azure Dashboards
• Work with View Designer in Azure Monitor