Everything that goes with The Lowdown Lab’s AZ-900 book and video course: the exam as it stands today, the free hands-on labs, corrections, and how to report a mistake.
It changes when Microsoft changes the exam, so it’s worth bookmarking.
The exam today
- Skills outline last revised
- 20 Jul 2026
Objective weighting
Book and video course
Both cover the same exam objectives. The book comes as a PDF and as a paperback.
- Video courseComing soon
- Book — PDFComing soon
- Book — paperbackComing soon
Want to know the day these are out? Join the waitlist
Hands-on labs
Nine free labs on GitHub. Each one deploys real resources into your own Azure subscription from a Bicep template, with deploy, check and cleanup steps in its README.
Open the AZ-900 labs on GitHub →
| Lab | Exam area | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Resource groups and tagging | Cloud concepts / governance | Free |
| 2. Storage redundancy (LRS, ZRS, GRS) | Core services: storage | Near-free |
| 3. Virtual network and NSGs | Core services: networking | Free |
| 4. RBAC role assignment | Identity, governance, compliance | Free |
| 5. Budgets and cost alerts | Pricing, SLA and lifecycle | Free |
| 6. App Service (PaaS) | Cloud concepts: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS | Near-free |
| 7. Resource locks and Monitor alerts | Management and governance | Near-free |
| 8. Azure Policy | Management and governance | Free |
| 9. Virtual machine basics | Architecture and services: compute | A few cents (a real VM) |
Before you start
- An Azure subscription. A free trial or pay-as-you-go account both work.
- The Azure CLI, installed and signed in with
az login. - Bicep, which comes with a recent Azure CLI. Run
az bicep installif prompted.
Keep the cost at zero
Every lab is free or near-free except Lab 9, which runs a real virtual machine. It costs pennies for a short run, but it bills while it exists.
- Every lab ends with a cleanup step. Run it as soon as you finish.
- Lab 7: remove the resource lock first, or the resource group won’t delete.
- Lab 8: delete the policy assignment before the policy definition.
Lab 9 has no portal walkthrough; every other lab does.
If a deployment fails on a resource’s API version, Azure has moved on since the lab was written. Check the Azure Resource Manager template reference for the current version, and email info@thelowdownlab.com so the lab gets fixed.
What’s changed since publication
When Microsoft revises the AZ-900 skills outline after the book is out, the changes and the parts of the book they affect are listed here. The panel at the top of this page shows when the outline has moved on.
Nothing yet.
Errata
Corrections to the book, the course and the labs. Page numbers are for the paperback; the PDF has the same section headings.
| Where | It says | It should say | Posted |
|---|---|---|---|
| — | No corrections yet. |
Report an error
Email info@thelowdownlab.com. Problems with the labs go to the same address. Include:
- Which format: PDF, paperback, video course or lab, and its edition or version.
- Where: the chapter and section, plus the page number, the video timestamp, or the lab number and step.
- What’s wrong, and what you think it should say. A link to Microsoft’s documentation helps.
Confirmed corrections go into the errata table above.
Microsoft’s official resources
- AZ-900 study guide: the skills outline this page tracks, and Microsoft’s change log.
- Certification page: where you schedule the exam.
- Free practice assessment: questions from the team that writes the exam, with explanations. Take it as many times as you like.
- Exam sandbox: try the exam interface before the real thing.
- Passing score: 700 or more on Microsoft’s scaled score.
- Renewal: Fundamentals certifications don’t expire, so there’s nothing to renew.
Where AZ-900 fits
AZ-900 is the entry point, and it isn’t a prerequisite for AZ-104. If you already work in Azure, you can skip it. If Azure is new to you, it’s the fastest way to learn the vocabulary the later exams assume.
Next: AZ-104, Azure Administrator.