What is the AZ-400 exam?

Exam AZ-400: Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions is the single required exam for the Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert certification. It tests processes and communications, source control strategy, build and release pipelines, security and compliance, and instrumentation. A score of 700 or greater is required to pass.

What are the AZ-400 prerequisites?

You can sit AZ-400 any time, but the DevOps Engineer Expert certification is only issued once you also hold the Azure Administrator Associate or the Azure Developer Associate certification. Since Exam AZ-204 retires on July 31, 2026, the practical prerequisite path for new candidates is AZ-104.

What is on the AZ-400 exam?

Five domains: design and implement processes and communications (10 to 15 percent), source control strategy (10 to 15 percent), build and release pipelines (50 to 55 percent), security and compliance (10 to 15 percent), and instrumentation (5 to 10 percent). One domain, pipelines, carries more than half the exam.

Did the AZ-400 exam change in 2026?

Yes. The official study guide publishes a new skills-measured version dated July 27, 2026. The change log grades the edits as minor rewording within traceability, security scanning and monitoring objectives rather than a structural rewrite, and the five domain weights are unchanged.

How hard is the AZ-400 exam?

AZ-400 is an expert-level exam that assumes you already administer or develop on Azure. The difficulty concentrates in the pipelines domain at 50 to 55 percent: package feeds, YAML pipelines, deployment strategies like blue-green and canary, IaC with Bicep, and pipeline cost optimization. Candidates strong on either GitHub or Azure DevOps alone get caught, because the outline tests both.

How many questions are on the AZ-400 exam?

Microsoft does not publish an official question count for AZ-400 on the study guide or the exam page. What it does publish: a passing score of 700, and an official practice assessment you can take free on Microsoft Learn. Treat any site quoting an exact question count as unofficial.

Is the AZ-400 certification worth it?

For engineers who own CI/CD at work, yes: it is one of the few expert-tier Microsoft certifications, it requires an associate certification underneath it, and its blueprint matches the actual job of running pipelines, release gates and DevOps security. It also covers GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines side by side, which mirrors how US teams actually operate.

AZ-400 practice test

AZ-400 Practice Test: Azure DevOps Certification Practice Exam Questions

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Exam AZ-400: Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions is the one exam behind the Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert certification. It has five domains, a published passing score of 700, and one number that should drive your whole study plan: design and implement build and release pipelines is 50 to 55 percent of the exam. No other current Microsoft role-based exam hangs half its marks on a single domain. It is also an expert-tier credential: the certification is only issued once you hold Azure Administrator Associate or Azure Developer Associate underneath it. A refreshed skills outline takes effect July 27, 2026, with the change log grading the edits minor and the weights unchanged.

Last updated July 2026

What AZ-400 actually tests: one domain is more than half the exam

We read the official skills-measured outline on Microsoft Learn the way we do for every certification page on this site. In the roughly 2,000-word study guide, pipeline appears 27 times, GitHub 23 times, and Azure DevOps 11 times. Two takeaways: this exam lives in the pipelines domain, and it now leans on GitHub at least as hard as on Azure DevOps.

Domain	What is actually in it	Weight
Design and implement build and release pipelines	The exam inside the exam. Package management with GitHub Packages and Azure Artifacts, SemVer and CalVer versioning, quality and release gates, YAML pipelines with templates and variable groups, runner and agent infrastructure, deployment strategies (blue-green, canary, ring, feature flags), IaC with Bicep and Azure Deployment Environments, database tasks, and pipeline cost, concurrency and flaky-test management.	50 to 55%
Design and implement processes and communications	Flow of work with GitHub Flow, feedback cycles with GitHub Issues, Azure Boards integration, DORA-style metrics (cycle time, lead time, time to recovery), wikis with Markdown and Mermaid, release notes, webhooks, and Teams integration.	10 to 15%
Design and implement a source control strategy	Trunk-based vs feature vs release branching, pull request workflows with branch policies and protection rules, Git LFS and git-fat for large files, Scalar for repo scale, permissions, tags, and recovering or purging data with Git commands.	10 to 15%
Develop a security and compliance plan	Service principals vs managed identities, GITHUB_TOKEN and GitHub Apps, secretless authentication with workload identity federation and OIDC, Azure Key Vault, GitHub Advanced Security for both GitHub and Azure DevOps, Defender for Cloud DevOps Security, CodeQL in containers, and Dependabot alerts.	10 to 15%
Implement an instrumentation strategy	Azure Monitor and Application Insights telemetry, GitHub insights and charts, alerts for Actions and Pipelines events, distributed tracing, and basic KQL queries against collected logs.	5 to 10%

The math is blunt: you cannot pass AZ-400 while weak on pipelines, and you can barely fail it while strong on them. Build your drills accordingly: generate practice questions from your own notes and weight at least half of every session to the pipelines domain.

AZ-400 has an official free practice assessment on Microsoft Learn worth taking at least once. Microsoft publishes the passing score (700) but no question count.

Pipelines domain weight: 50 to 55%
Passing score: 700
New outline effective: Jul 27, 2026
Practice questions: Unlimited

Two platforms, one exam: AZ-400 tests GitHub and Azure DevOps side by side

The audience profile says it outright: you should have experience implementing both GitHub and Azure DevOps solutions. The outline backs that up by pairing them objective after objective. Candidates who live in one platform reliably lose marks on the other, so drill the pairings, not the platforms:

GitHub Packages vs Azure Artifacts

The package management objective names both. Know feeds, views, upstream sources, and when each tool fits a .NET vs npm vs container shop.

GitHub Actions vs Azure Pipelines

Selecting a deployment automation solution is a named objective, as is integrating GitHub repositories with Azure Pipelines and migrating classic pipelines to YAML.

GITHUB_TOKEN vs service connections

The security domain expects GitHub Apps, PATs and GITHUB_TOKEN on one side, and Azure DevOps service connections and security groups on the other, plus OIDC federation on both.

GHAS on GitHub vs GHAS for Azure DevOps

GitHub Advanced Security now ships for both platforms, and the outline names both variants plus their integration with Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

If the GitHub half is your weak side, the GitHub Actions certification practice exam (GH-200) page breaks down the Actions-specific blueprint that AZ-400 samples from.

The July 27, 2026 refresh: what changes on AZ-400

The study guide currently shows two versions of the skills measured, with the new one effective July 27, 2026. Unlike the significant rewrites Microsoft shipped across other exams this year, the AZ-400 change log grades every edit Minor or No change: rewording inside traceability and flow of work, security and compliance scanning, and the two monitoring objectives. The five domains and their weights stay put.

What that means in practice: recent prep material stays usable, but two details deserve attention if you booked a date near the cutover. First, drill from the version that matches your exam date; the study guide prints both. Second, the prerequisite landscape IS changing this summer even though AZ-400 is not: Exam AZ-204 retires July 31, 2026, four days after the AZ-400 refresh. If you planned to qualify for the Expert certification through Azure Developer Associate, the AZ-104 practice test route is the one that remains open to new candidates, and our AZ-204 practice test page documents the retirement timeline.

Why working DevOps engineers still fail AZ-400

Most candidates run pipelines every day. The exam asks whether you can design them across strategies, platforms and failure modes. Compare what daily work teaches against what the outline asks.

What you know from day-to-day work	What the exam also expects
Your team's YAML pipeline works and you can edit it	Design reusable YAML templates, task groups and variable groups, and plan job execution order with parallelism across multi-stage pipelines
You deploy when the pipeline goes green	Choose between blue-green, canary, ring and progressive exposure, plan deployment slot swaps, and design a hotfix path for high-priority fixes
Secrets live in the vault someone set up	Design secretless authentication with workload identity federation and OIDC in both GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines, and prevent leakage in pipeline design
You merge PRs under branch protection	Design the whole strategy: trunk-based vs release branching, branch policy configuration, Git LFS for large files, and Scalar for repository scale
Monitoring is a dashboard someone else owns	Configure Application Insights telemetry, alert on Actions and Pipelines events, inspect distributed traces, and query logs with KQL

Every right-hand cell is a named objective on the current outline. Generated question drills are the cheapest way to find out which of those you can only half-explain, before the proctored clock is running.

How to build AZ-400 practice questions that match the real blueprint

Half the exam is one domain. Study like it.

1 Upload current material: The AZ-400 study guide, Microsoft Learn modules, or your own notes. If your material predates GHAS for Azure DevOps or workload identity federation, it is older than the current outline.
2 Spend half your drills on pipelines: Match the 50 to 55 percent weighting. Generate scenario questions on deployment strategies, YAML templates, package feeds and IaC until the design trade-offs are automatic.
3 Drill your weaker platform: The outline pairs GitHub and Azure DevOps on almost every objective. Generate questions specifically on the platform you use less at work; that gap is where expert-level candidates lose marks.
4 Finish with the official mock: AZ-400 has a free official practice assessment on Microsoft Learn. Use generated questions to close gaps domain by domain, then confirm readiness on the official mock before booking.

AZ-400 exam questions, answered

What is the AZ-400 exam?: Exam AZ-400: Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions is the single required exam for the Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert certification. It tests processes and communications, source control strategy, build and release pipelines, security and compliance, and instrumentation. A score of 700 or greater is required to pass, and the study guide is published on Microsoft Learn.
What are the AZ-400 prerequisites?: You can sit the exam any time, but the DevOps Engineer Expert certification is only issued once you also hold the Azure Administrator Associate or the Azure Developer Associate certification. Since Exam AZ-204 retires on July 31, 2026, the practical path for new candidates is AZ-104. The audience profile also expects working experience with both GitHub and Azure DevOps.
What is on the AZ-400 exam?: Five domains: design and implement processes and communications (10 to 15 percent), source control strategy (10 to 15 percent), build and release pipelines (50 to 55 percent), security and compliance (10 to 15 percent), and instrumentation (5 to 10 percent). The pipelines domain alone covers packages, testing strategy, YAML pipelines, deployment strategies, IaC and pipeline maintenance.
Did the AZ-400 exam change in 2026?: Yes. A refreshed skills outline takes effect July 27, 2026. The official change log grades the edits as Minor or No change: rewording inside traceability, security scanning and the monitoring objectives. Domain structure and weights are untouched, so current prep stays usable; just study from the version that matches your exam date, since the guide prints both.
How hard is the AZ-400 exam?: It is an expert-level exam that assumes real Azure experience and tests design judgment, not menu clicks. The difficulty concentrates where the marks are: the 50 to 55 percent pipelines domain spans package versioning strategy, quality gates, YAML templates, deployment patterns, IaC with Bicep, and cost optimization. The second trap is platform coverage, because objectives pair GitHub and Azure DevOps throughout.
How many questions are on the AZ-400 exam?: Microsoft does not publish an official question count for AZ-400. It does publish a passing score of 700 and offers a free official practice assessment on Microsoft Learn. Treat any site quoting an exact question count or duration as unofficial, and confirm details on the exam page when you schedule.
Is the AZ-400 certification worth it?: For engineers who own CI/CD, release management or platform tooling, it is one of the strongest signals in the Microsoft ecosystem: expert tier, an associate certification required underneath, and a blueprint that matches the actual job. Because the outline covers GitHub heavily, pairing your prep with the GitHub Actions certification practice exam (GH-200) covers both halves of the same toolchain.

PDFQuiz is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Microsoft or GitHub. Azure and Microsoft are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. This generator builds practice questions from material you upload and is a study aid, not a substitute for official learning paths. Always confirm the current skills-measured document before you book.

Related study tools

AZ-400 sits at the top of a ladder: the AZ-104 practice test covers the associate prerequisite most new candidates now take, the GitHub Actions certification practice exam covers the GitHub half of the toolchain in depth, and the AZ-204 practice test documents the developer path retiring July 31, 2026. Any study guide works with the certification exam generator.

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