AZ-400: Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps solutions

Course Description

Accelerate your DevOps journey with AZ400: Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions, a four-day instructor-led course crafted for DevOps engineers and solution architects. You’ll learn to design and implement secure, scalable CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions, manage source control, build and release strategies, apply DevSecOps principles, automate infrastructure as code using Bicep and ARM, and implement continuous monitoring and feedback. Ideal for those preparing for the Azure DevOps Engineer Expert certification, this course balances strategy and real-world application.

Target Audience

Ideal for:

• DevOps Engineers, Azure Administrators, and Cloud Operations Professionals implementing DevOps processes and practices

• Experienced developers and operations staff preparing for the AZ400 certification

Prerequisites:

• Proficiency with Azure administration or development

• Experience using Git, Azure DevOps, GitHub, CI/CD pipelines, scripting, and basic cloud services 

Course Outline 

Module 1: Plan DevOps Transformation & Source Control Strategy

• Align teams around DevOps culture and workflow planning

• Design enterprise-grade Git strategies with Azure Repos or GitHub

• Structure repositories, branching models, pull requests, and traceability 

Module 2: Implement Continuous Integration (CI) and Build Pipelines

• Build secure and scalable CI with Azure Pipelines and GitHub Actions

• Configure hosted vs self-hosted agents, multi-stage YAML pipelines, and container-based builds 

Module 3: Design and Implement Continuous Delivery (CD)

• Create robust release pipelines with approvals, gates, and variable groups

• Implement blue-green, canary, and feature-flag deployment strategies

• Automate environment provisioning and functional testing

Module 4: Secure DevOps (DevSecOps) and Compliance

• Embed security scanning, SCA, SAST/DAST into your pipelines

• Integrate Azure Key Vault, secrets management, and compliance policies

• Build pipeline-level security with threat modeling and governance 

Module 5: Manage Infrastructure as Code & Configuration

• Deploy resources via ARM Templates, Bicep, CLI, or PowerShell

• Apply Desired State Configuration and Azure Automation for consistency

• Modularize, version, and reuse IaC across environments

Module 6: Implement Continuous Feedback and Monitoring

• Integrate telemetry using Application Insights, Azure Monitor, and Log Analytics

• Define metrics, dashboards, alerts, and blameless postmortems

• Foster collaboration with chat integrations and documentation best practices 

HandsOn Experience

Expect 40–50% of the course time in hands-on, instructor-led exercises. You’ll build and secure CI/CD pipelines, automate deployments, and configure IaC and monitoring solutions to implement design best practices.

Skills You’ll Gain

After completing AZ400, you will be able to:

• Architect a DevOps pipeline strategy with Git and CI/CD tools

• Build and secure multi-stage build and release pipelines

• Automate infrastructure deployment as code using Bicep/ARM

• Integrate security and compliance throughout the DevOps lifecycle

• Set up monitoring and feedback loops to drive continuous improvement