AZ-400 Exam: DevOps Engineer Expert Guide for Indian Engineers

AZ-400, Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions, is the only exam for the Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert certification, but passing it is not enough on its own. You also need an active Azure Administrator Associate or Azure Developer Associate. Azure Developer Associate retired on 31 July 2026, so most Indian engineers starting now should plan AZ-104 first, then AZ-400, where pipelines carry half the marks.

At a glance

• Exam: AZ-400, Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions; English version updated 27 July 2026
• Certification: DevOps Engineer Expert (expert level), renewed free every year
• Prerequisite: Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104) or Azure Developer Associate, which retired on 31 July 2026
• Biggest area: build and release pipelines, 50 to 55% of the exam
• Pass mark: 700
• Exam time: 100 minutes, or 120 minutes if the exam contains labs
• Retirement date: none listed as of October 2026

The prerequisite rule after the AZ-204 retirement

Microsoft's DevOps Engineer Expert certification page says you must earn at least one of two certifications: Azure Administrator Associate or Azure Developer Associate. The second one now has a catch. Microsoft's credential retirement page shows Azure Developer Associate retired on 31 July 2026, and its renewal assessment has gone with it.

Here is what that means for you:

• You hold an unexpired Azure Developer Associate. It stays in the Active section of your transcript until it expires, but you cannot renew it. Pass AZ-400 before that expiry date, and check that the certification page still lists it when you book.
• You hold AZ-104. Keep it renewed. It is the dependable prerequisite today.
• You hold neither. Plan AZ-104. The developer replacement, AI-200 (Azure AI Cloud Developer Associate), is live, but on 25 October 2026 the DevOps Engineer Expert page does not list it. Do not pick it as your prerequisite until Microsoft does.

You can sit AZ-400 before AZ-104 if you prefer. The expert certification is only awarded once both requirements are met, so what matters is finishing both while the prerequisite is still active. Our AZ-104 exam guide for India covers the first step.

What AZ-400 measures

The AZ-400 study guide lists five skill areas. The 27 July 2026 update made minor changes to four sub-areas and left the weights alone.

Read the weight column twice. Half the marks come from one area, so at least half of your preparation time should go into building, breaking and fixing real pipelines. Reading about blue-green and canary deployments is not the same as running one.

You need GitHub and Azure DevOps, not one of them

The audience profile says you should have experience implementing both GitHub and Azure DevOps solutions, and the skills list proves it. Almost every topic appears in pairs:

• GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines
• GitHub Packages and Azure Artifacts
• Branch protection rules and branch policies
• GITHUB_TOKEN and GitHub Apps, against Azure DevOps service connections and personal access tokens
• GitHub Advanced Security for GitHub, and GitHub Advanced Security for Azure DevOps

A common mistake is preparing only on the platform your current project uses. If you have spent three years in Azure Pipelines, build at least one complete GitHub Actions workflow before the exam, and the other way round. Many questions ask which tool fits a scenario, so you need to know where each one stops. Also practise the joins between them: running Azure Pipelines against a GitHub repository, and linking Azure Boards work items to GitHub commits and pull requests.

A practice lab that costs little

You do not need a big Azure bill to prepare. Use the free tiers deliberately.

• Azure DevOps. The free tier covers the first five users with Basic access, unlimited private Git repos, 2 GiB of Azure Artifacts storage and one self-hosted parallel job. For Microsoft-hosted agents, private projects get one free parallel job of up to 60 minutes per run and 1,800 minutes a month, but only after you link the organisation to an Azure subscription. Microsoft has retired public projects, so you cannot create new ones.
• GitHub. Actions is free for public repositories on standard GitHub-hosted runners, and GitHub Free includes 2,000 minutes a month for private repositories.
• Your own laptop. Registering a self-hosted agent or runner costs nothing on either platform, and agent infrastructure is a named exam skill.
• Azure resources. Use the smallest tiers, keep each lab in one resource group and delete it the same day. Set a budget alert before your first deployment. Students should read our guide to Azure for Students credits.

Connect pipelines to Azure with workload identity federation (OpenID Connect) from the first week. It removes stored secrets, and the exam names secretless authentication explicitly.

An eight-week pipeline practice plan

This plan assumes you already hold AZ-104, or work in Azure every day. Each week ends with something that runs.

In week 3, if your employer still runs classic release pipelines, migrate one to YAML. The study guide lists that task by name. A minimal multi-stage pipeline looks like this:

trigger:
  branches:
    include: [ main ]

stages:
- stage: Build
  jobs:
  - job: build
    pool:
      vmImage: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - script: dotnet test --collect:"XPlat Code Coverage"
      displayName: Run unit tests

- stage: Production
  dependsOn: Build
  jobs:
  - deployment: deploy
    environment: production   # approvals and checks are set on this environment
    pool:
      vmImage: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      runOnce:
        deploy:
          steps:
          - script: echo "Deploy the build artifact here"

Notice that the approval does not live in the YAML. You add it to the production environment in Azure DevOps, and that distinction is exactly what scenario questions test.

For week 8, this KQL query shows hourly failures and slow requests after a release:

AppRequests
| where TimeGenerated > ago(24h)
| summarize total = sum(ItemCount),
            failed = sumif(ItemCount, Success == false),
            p95_ms = percentile(DurationMs, 95)
  by bin(TimeGenerated, 1h)
| order by TimeGenerated asc

Exam day for candidates in India

• Timing. Microsoft's exam duration page gives 100 minutes for role-based exams without labs and 120 minutes for those that may contain labs, with seat times of 120 and 140 minutes. Your booking confirmation shows which applies.
• Microsoft Learn in the exam. You can open Learn during role-based exams, but the clock keeps running. Use it to confirm a setting, not to learn a topic.
• Language. AZ-400 is offered in ten languages, none of them Indian. If you are not proficient in English, you can request extra time through the English as a Second Language process, with a letter from an instructor or employer.
• Account. Book with a personal Microsoft account, not your work account. Microsoft warns that exam records tied to an organisational account are lost if you leave that organisation.
• Price. It depends on the country where the exam is proctored. Our Microsoft exam cost guide for India explains how to check it.

How CertTulen Academy can help

CertTulen Academy runs MCT-led, live online classes with hands-on labs for both steps of this path. The AZ-104 Azure Administrator course builds the prerequisite, and the AZ-400 DevOps Engineer Expert course works through GitHub and Azure DevOps pipelines end to end. Professional certification courses include an exam voucher, mock practice tests and lab access; each course page has the details, with prices in INR and UPI, card or netbanking checkout. For teams we run private corporate cohorts. Contact us or WhatsApp +91 93618 83583 for a batch that suits your time zone.