Exam AZ-102: Microsoft Azure Administrator Certification Transition

Microsoft Certification

Recently passed the 70-533 exam and earned a MCSE. Now I’m studying for the transition exam AZ-102 (expiring March 31, 2019), which would give me the Azure Administrator Associate badge. In this post I will give a short description on which methods I used to pass AZ-102.

The resources I used were:

The exam is broken into 8 sections:

    1. Manage Azure Subscriptions and Resources (5-10%)
      • May include but not limited to: Configure diagnostic settings on resources; create baseline for resources; create and rest alerts; analyze alerts across subscription; analyze metrics across subscription; create action groups; monitor for unused resources; monitor spend; report on spend; utilize Log Search query functions; view alerts in Log Analytics
    2. Implement and Manage Storage (5-10%)
      • May include but not limited to: Create Azure file share; create Azure File Sync service; create Azure sync group; troubleshoot Azure File Sync
    3. Configure and manage virtual networks (15-20%)
      • May include but not limited to: Create and configure VNET peering; create and configure VNET to VNET; verify virtual network connectivity; create virtual network gateway
      • May include but not limited to: Configure Azure DNS; configure custom DNS settings; configure DNS zones
    4. Manage identities (15-20%)
      • May include but not limited to: Add custom domains; configure Azure AD Identity Protection, Azure AD Join, and Enterprise State Roaming; configure self-service password reset; implement conditional access policies; manage multiple directories; perform an access review
      • May include but not limited to: Install and configure Azure AD Connect; configure federation and single sign-on; manage Azure AD Connect; manage password sync and writeback
    5. Evaluate and perform server migration to Azure (15-20%)
      • May include but not limited to: Discover and assess environment; identify workloads that can and cannot be deployed; identify ports to open; identify changes to network; identify if target environment is supported; setup domain accounts and credentials
      • May include but not limited to: Migrate by using Azure Site Recovery (ASR); migrate using P2V; configure storage; create a backup vault; prepare source and target environments; backup and restore data; deploy Azure Site Recovery (ASR) agent; prepare virtual network
    6. Implement and manage application services (5-10%)
      • May include but not limited to: Create and manage objects; manage a Logic App resource; manage Azure Function app settings; manage Event Grid; manage Service Bus
    7. Implement advanced virtual networking (5-10%)
      • May include but not limited to: Monitor on-premises connectivity; use network resource monitoring and Network Watcher; manage external networking and virtual network connectivity
    8. Secure identities (5-10%)
      • May include but not limited to: Enable MFA for an Azure tenant; configure user accounts for MFA; configure fraud alerts; configure bypass options; configure trusted IPs; configure verification methods; manage role-based access control (RBAC); implement RBAC policies; assign RBAC Roles; create a custom role; configure access to Azure resources by assigning roles; configure management access to Azure

If you can answer (and know the reason behind the answer) the following questions regarding Azure, you should be ready to take the AZ-102 exam. For each question I will provide a link to the answer. There might be more than one correct answer to a question, but the questions link points to which tool or technology you should know about in order to pass.

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SCCM – Cloud Management Gateway and Cloud Distribution Point

The cloud management gateway (CMG) provides a simple way to manage Configuration Manager clients on the internet. By deploying the CMG as a cloud service in Microsoft Azure, you can manage traditional clients that roam on the internet without additional infrastructure. You also don’t need to expose your on-premises infrastructure to the internet.

A cloud-based distribution point is a System Center Configuration Manager distribution point that is hosted in Microsoft Azure. The following information is intended to help you learn about configurations and limitations for using a cloud-based distribution point.

In this step-by-step guide, I will demonstrate how to configure and establish a Cloud Management Gateway (CMG) and Cloud Distribution Point (CDP) in SCCM and Azure.

In order to walk you through the entire process of setting up the Cloud Management Gateway and Cloud Distribution Point features, I am going to break this down into 6 parts.

  1. Overview
  2. Certificates
  3. Azure Service
  4. Cloud Management Gateway
  5. Cloud Distribution Point
  6. Log Files

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PowerShell – Intune Local Administrator Password Solution (iLAPS)

iLAPS

If you have devices that is connected to an on-premise, you would certainly configure the Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS), which allows unique password for each local administrator across the enterprise network.

Unfortunately this method only works when you have on-premise devices, but what about Azure AD Joined machines? – A short answer is “no”.

LAPS takes advantage of 2 attributes in the local Active Directory, these attributes are not available in Azure AD.

Therefor I have created a small application that mimic the same behavior for Azure AD devices, which I call “iLAPS” for Intune Local Administrator Password Solution.

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PowerShell – Azure Storage Using REST API

Azure Storage Services

Yo! I’m back again. This time I have been playing around with Azure Table Storage.

Azure Table storage is a service that stores structured NoSQL data in the cloud, providing a key/attribute store with a schema less design. Because table storage is schema less, it’s easy to adapt your data as the needs of your application evolve. Access to Table storage data is fast and cost-effective for many types of applications, and is typically lower in cost than traditional SQL for similar volumes of data.

You need to create a storage account in an Azure subscription and generate a shared access signature, prior before using the code below.

I created some lightweight functions that allows you to insert and get data from a table with PowerShell, using REST API.

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