AZ-700 Guide for Indian Network Engineers: From CCNA to Azure

AZ-700, Designing and Implementing Microsoft Azure Networking Solutions, is the exam for the Microsoft Certified: Azure Network Engineer Associate certification. If you already work with routing, VPNs and firewalls at CCNA level, most of your knowledge transfers. What changes is the model: Azure is a Layer 3 overlay with no VLANs, routing is a mix of system routes, user-defined routes and BGP, and you need a score of 700 to pass.

At a glance

• Exam: AZ-700, Designing and Implementing Microsoft Azure Networking Solutions
• Certification: Azure Network Engineer Associate, intermediate level, renewed free every 12 months
• Skills measured: as of 27 July 2026, in five areas
• Pass mark: 700
• Exam time: 100 minutes for role-based exams, or 120 if the exam contains labs
• Prerequisite certification: none, but Microsoft expects hands-on experience with Azure compute, storage and networking
• Free help from Microsoft: a practice assessment and an exam sandbox, both linked from the study guide

What AZ-700 measures in 2026

The AZ-700 study guide lists five skill areas:

The 27 July 2026 update made minor changes to IP addressing, network monitoring and network security group objectives. Read the current list rather than an old blog post, because several items reward recent features: Azure Virtual Network Manager for both connectivity and security rules, virtual network flow logs, Azure DNS Private Resolver, Azure Route Server, custom IP prefixes (bring your own IP), and network findings in Microsoft Defender for Cloud such as attack path analysis and Cloud Security Explorer.

The official instructor-led course is AZ-700T00, which Microsoft lists as three days. Its audience profile assumes you already understand TCP/IP, DNS, VPNs, firewalls and encryption, which is exactly the ground a CCNA covers.

How your CCNA knowledge maps to Azure

The fastest way to prepare is to translate what you know, then learn the differences.

Microsoft's virtual network FAQ confirms the details that catch network engineers out. Azure reserves the first four addresses and the last address in every subnet. The smallest IPv4 subnet is /29. Multicast, broadcast, GRE and IP-in-IP packets are blocked inside virtual networks, so a design that depends on GRE tunnels between routers must change. The Azure-provided default gateway does not answer ping, although tracert works.

Three habits to unlearn

1. Expecting transitive routing. Virtual network peering connects two networks only. If spoke 1 and spoke 2 both peer with a hub, they still cannot reach each other. You make them talk through the hub (Azure Firewall or a network virtual appliance plus user-defined routes), through a Virtual Network Manager connected group, or through Virtual WAN. Be ready to explain when you would choose each of these three options.

2. Troubleshooting with ping. Because the gateway ignores ping, learn the Azure tools instead: effective routes on a network interface, IP flow verify and next hop in Network Watcher, and virtual network flow logs. These are named objectives in the study guide.

3. Assuming outbound internet works. Microsoft's default outbound access page says that for API versions released after 31 March 2026, subnets in new virtual networks are private by default, and the portal already defaults to private subnets. A VM in a private subnet needs an explicit outbound method: a NAT gateway on the subnet, a public IP on the VM, or outbound rules on a Standard public load balancer. Existing virtual networks are not changed. If your lab VM cannot download updates, check this before anything else.

India-specific design points

Exam questions use the fictional Contoso, but interviewers in India ask about Indian regions and carriers. Get these facts right.

Regions. The Azure regions list shows four general regions in India:

This matters for gateways. Microsoft recommends a VPN gateway SKU that ends in AZ where the region supports availability zones, so a zone-redundant design fits Central India or India South Central, not Chennai or Mumbai.

ExpressRoute. Microsoft's ExpressRoute locations page lists six peering locations in India: Chennai, Chennai2, Mumbai, Mumbai2, Mumbai Metro and Pune. Providers listed at Indian locations include Airtel, BSNL, Reliance Jio, Sify, Tata Communications and Vodafone Idea. A circuit at any Indian location reaches every Azure region in the India geopolitical region on the Standard SKU; reaching regions outside India needs the Premium add-on. Microsoft now recommends high resiliency, also called ExpressRoute Metro, as a minimum for all workloads, and Mumbai Metro is the Indian metro location.

Six labs to build before the exam

Reading will not get you through case studies. Build these, in this order, in a lab subscription. Our Azure for Students guide covers free credit if you are still in college.

1. Hub and spoke. One hub and two spokes, peered both ways. Prove the spokes cannot talk, then fix it with Azure Firewall and user-defined routes.
2. Private endpoint and DNS. A storage account behind a private endpoint, a privatelink.blob.core.windows.net private DNS zone linked to the virtual network, and nslookup from a VM showing the private address.
3. Simulated branch VPN. Two virtual networks in different regions, for example Central India and South India, joined by VNet-to-VNet VPN with BGP turned on. Read the learned routes. Microsoft notes a gateway can take 45 minutes or more to create, so start it first.
4. Explicit outbound. A private subnet with a NAT gateway, and a check of the public IP the VM uses for egress.
5. Web delivery. Application Gateway with path-based routing and a WAF policy, first in Detection mode, then in Prevention mode.
6. Monitoring. Virtual network flow logs, IP flow verify, next hop and connection troubleshoot on the traffic you created in labs 1 to 5.

Here is the Azure CLI start for lab 1. Run it in Azure Cloud Shell:

RG=rg-az700-lab1
LOC=centralindia
az group create --name $RG --location $LOC

az network vnet create -g $RG -n vnet-hub --address-prefixes 10.0.0.0/16 \
  --subnet-name snet-shared --subnet-prefixes 10.0.1.0/24
for i in 1 2; do
  az network vnet create -g $RG -n vnet-spoke$i --address-prefixes 10.$i.0.0/16 \
    --subnet-name snet-app --subnet-prefixes 10.$i.1.0/24
  az network vnet peering create -g $RG -n hub-to-spoke$i --vnet-name vnet-hub \
    --remote-vnet vnet-spoke$i --allow-vnet-access --allow-forwarded-traffic
  az network vnet peering create -g $RG -n spoke$i-to-hub --vnet-name vnet-spoke$i \
    --remote-vnet vnet-hub --allow-vnet-access --allow-forwarded-traffic
done

Add a small VM to each spoke, then list the routes the spoke 1 VM's network interface really uses:

az network nic show-effective-route-table -g $RG -n <spoke1-vm-nic> -o table

You will see a route to 10.0.0.0/16 with next hop type virtual network peering, and nothing for 10.2.0.0/16. That one output explains non-transitive peering better than any slide. When you finish for the day, remove everything with az group delete --name $RG --yes --no-wait.

Control your bill. VPN gateways, Azure Firewall, Application Gateway and Bastion are charged while they exist, even when idle. Keep one resource group per lab, delete it the same night, and set a budget alert on day one. Check the Azure pricing pages before you leave anything running.

A study plan for working engineers

If you work a day shift in IST, plan for six weeks of weekday evenings and one longer weekend session:

You cannot buy an ExpressRoute circuit for practice, so learn it from the documentation: connectivity models, SKUs, private versus Microsoft peering, Global Reach, FastPath and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection.

If Azure itself is new to you, start with administration. Our AZ-104 guide for India is the place to begin.

Exam day and renewal

• Microsoft Learn is open during role-based exams, but the timer keeps running. Use it to confirm a SKU limit or a setting name, not to research every question.
• Labs are possible. Microsoft does not publish which exams contain labs; your registration shows the exam time.
• Book carefully. Our guide to booking a Microsoft exam from India covers the profile name, ID rules and online proctoring checks.
• Renewal is a free online assessment on Microsoft Learn, taken before the 12-month expiry.

How CertTulen Academy can help

CertTulen Academy runs the AZ-700 Azure Network Engineer Associate course as live, MCT-led online training with hands-on labs on hub and spoke routing, VPN with BGP, private endpoints, Application Gateway and Azure Firewall. Professional certification courses include an exam voucher, mock practice tests and lab access; the course page has details and INR pricing. If you are new to Azure, the AZ-104 course is the better first step. Use our contact page or WhatsApp +91 93618 83583 to ask for a batch that suits your time zone.