I’m currently revising for the 70-473 exam on designing and implementing cloud data platform solutions, as there doesn’t yet seem to be any books available for it I’ve decided to collect some links to content here. There’s also a Microsoft video that provides a quick overview of the topics covered in the exam.
Design and implement database solutions for Microsoft SQL Server and SQL Database (20–25%)
Design a hybrid SQL Server solution
Design Geo/DR topology, design a data storage architecture, design a security architecture, design a data load strategy
- Designing highly available services using Azure SQL Database
- High availability and disaster recovery for SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines
- SQL Database Enable Geo Replication in Azure Portal
- Hybrid Connections overview
- DMZ between Azure and your on-premises datacenter
- Best practices for Azure SQL Data Warehouse
- Configure Always On availability groups in Azure Virtual Machines automatically: Resource Manager
- Overview of Traffic Manager
- Performance best practices for SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines
Implement SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines (VMs)
Provision SQL Server in an Azure VM, configure firewall rules, configure and optimise storage, migrate an on-premises database to Microsoft Azure, configure and optimise VM sizes by workload
- Provision a SQL Server virtual machine in the Azure Portal
- Azure Storage replication
- Manage the availability of Windows virtual machines in Azure
- Azure SQL Database server-level and database-level firewall rules
- Configuring the Azure SQL Database Firewall
- Performance best practices for SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines
- Azure Premium Storage: Design for High Performance
- SQL Server database migration to SQL Database in the cloud
- Migrate a SQL Server database to SQL Server in an Azure VM
- Move data from an on-premises SQL server to SQL Azure with Azure Data Factory
- Performance Tuning Best Practices For SQL On Azure VM
- Optimize Azure Virtual Machines for performance and availability
Design a SQL Database solution
Design a solution architecture, design Geo/DR topology, design a security architecture, design a data load strategy, determine the appropriate service tier
- Choose a cloud SQL Server option: Azure SQL (PaaS) Database or SQL Server on Azure VMs (IaaS)
- Configure active geo-replication for Azure SQL Database in the Azure portal and initiate failover
- SQL Database: How to Configure Active Geo-Replication
- Securing your SQL Database
- Azure SQL Database access control
- SQL Database options and performance: Understand what’s available in each service tier
Implement SQL Database
Provision SQL Database, configure firewall rules, configure active geo-replication, migrate an on-premises database to SQL Database, configure for scale and performance
- Migrate SQL database from On-Prem to Azure using SQL Database Migration Wizard tool
- Explaining Database Transaction Units (DTUs) and elastic Database Transaction Units (eDTUs)
- Elastic pools help you manage and scale multiple SQL databases
- Performance and scale-up with Azure SQL Database
Design and implement data warehousing on Azure
Design a data warehousing solution on Azure, design a data load strategy and topology, configure SQL Data Warehouse, migrate an on-premises database to SQL Data Warehouse
- What is Azure SQL Data Warehouse?
- Getting Started with Azure SQL Data Warehouse – Part 1
- Getting Started with Azure SQL Data Warehouse – Part 2
- Getting Started with Azure SQL Data Warehouse – Part 3
- A Developers Guide to Azure SQL Data Warehouse
- Load data into Azure SQL Data Warehouse
- Loading data into Azure SQL Data Warehouse just got easier
- Migrate Your Data
- Create an Azure SQL Data Warehouse
- Configure the Management Data Warehouse (SQL Server Management Studio)
- Manage compute power in Azure SQL Data Warehouse (Overview)
- Secure a database in SQL Data Warehouse
- Data Warehouse Migration Utility (Preview)
- Best practices for Azure SQL Data Warehouse
- Distributing tables in SQL Data Warehouse
Manage database management systems (DBMS) security (25–30%)
Design and implement SQL Server Database security
Configure firewalls; manage logins, users, and roles; assign permissions; configure auditing; configure transparent database encryption; configure row-level security; configure data encryption; configure data masking; configure Always Encrypted
- Database-Level Roles
- Transparent Data Encryption (TDE)
- How to configure Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) in SQL Server
- Get started with Transparent Data Encryption (TDE)
- Move a TDE Protected Database to Another SQL Server
- Enable TDE on SQL Server Using EKM
- Use SQL Server Connector with SQL Encryption Features
- Feature Spotlight: Transparent Data Encryption (TDE)
- Row-Level Security
- Encrypt a Column of Data
- Dynamic Data Masking
- Always Encrypted (Database Engine)
- Create a Login
- Create a Database User
- Create a Database Schema
- Join a Role
- Grant a Permission to a Principal
- Granting Row-Level Permissions in SQL Server
- Row Level Security with SQL Server 2016: Part 1 – Allow Access to Only a Subset of Rows Using Row Level Security
- SQL Server 2016 Always Encrypted
- Encrypting SQL Server: Using an Encryption Hierarchy to Protect Column Data
- Encrypting SQL Server: Transparent Data Encryption (TDE)
- SQL Server Encryption: Always Encrypted
- SQL Server Audit (Database Engine)
Implement Azure SQL Database security
Configure firewalls; manage logins, users, and roles; assign permissions; configure auditing; configure row-level security; configure data encryption; configure data masking; configure Always Encrypted
- Secure your Azure SQL Database
- Ports beyond 1433 for ADO.NET 4.5
- Microsoft Azure SQL Database Security Best Practices
- Building Secure Applications within an Azure SQL Database
- Security considerations for your Azure SQL Databases
- Adding Users to Your SQL Azure Database
- Azure SQL Pro Tip – Creating Login Account and User
- Get started with SQL database auditing
- Use PowerShell to configure SQL Database auditing and threat detection
- SQL Database Threat Detection
- Transparent Data Encryption with Azure SQL Database
- Always Encrypted: Protect sensitive data in SQL Database and store your encryption keys in Azure Key Vault
- Migrate Sensitive Data Protected by Always Encrypted
- Row Level Security in Azure SQL Database
- SQL Server row-level security: How to implement in Azure SQL databases
- Always Encrypted: Protect sensitive data in SQL Database and store your encryption keys in the Windows certificate store
- Get started with SQL Database dynamic data masking with the Azure Portal
- Get started with Dynamic Data Masking in SQL Server 2016 and Azure SQL DB
- Always Encrypted in SQL Server and Azure SQL Database
- Secure your Azure SQL Database
Design for high availability, disaster recovery and scalability (25–30%)
Design and implement high availability solutions
Design a high-availability solution topology, design a high-availability solution for SQL on Azure VMs, implement high-availability solutions
- High availability for applications built on Microsoft Azure
- Availability checklist
- Manage the availability of Windows virtual machines in Azure
- Configure Always On availability groups in Azure Virtual Machines automatically: Resource Manager
- Choose a cloud SQL Server option: Azure SQL (PaaS) Database or SQL Server on Azure VMs (IaaS)
- Designing highly available services using Azure SQL Database
- High availability and disaster recovery for SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines
Design and implement scalable solutions
Design a scale-out solution, implement multi-master scenarios with database replication, implement elastic scale for Azure SQL Database
- Scaling out with Azure SQL Database
- Elastic pools help you manage and scale multiple SQL databases
- Migrate existing databases to scale-out
- Autoscaling
- Scale up an app in Azure
- Multi-master globally replicated database architectures with Azure Cosmos DB
- How to distribute data globally with Azure Cosmos DB
- Overview: Failover groups and active geo-replication
- Elastic database tools FAQ
- Scale out databases with the shard map manager
Design and implement Azure SQL Database data recovery
Implement self-service restore, copy and export databases, implement long-term retention backups
- Export an Azure SQL database to a BACPAC file
- Copy an Azure SQL database
- Databases in Azure: Copy and Exports
- Store Azure SQL Database backups for up to 10 years
- Configure and restore from Azure SQL Database long-term backup retention
- Learn about SQL Database backups
- Questions about the Azure Backup service
- Azure SQL Database Point in Time Restore
- Service Healing – Auto-recovery of Virtual Machines
- Restore an Azure SQL Database or failover to a secondary
- Recover an Azure SQL database using automated database backups
- Overview of business continuity with Azure SQL Database
- HA/DR for Azure SQL Database
- Azure SQL Databases: Backups, Disaster Recovery, Import and Export
Monitor and manage database implementations on Azure (25–30%)
Monitor and troubleshoot SQL Server VMs on Azure
Monitor database and instance activity, monitor by using DMVs and DMFs, monitor performance and scalability
- Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine Monitoring with Azure Diagnostics Extension
- Monitor a Windows Virtual Machine with Azure PowerShell
- Use monitoring and diagnostics with a Windows VM and Azure Resource Manager templates
- Overview of Monitoring in Microsoft Azure
- Connect Azure virtual machines to Log Analytics with a Log Analytics agent
- How to monitor your SQL Server instances and databases
- Monitoring Azure SQL Database using dynamic management views
- Monitor your workload using DMVs
- Create metric alerts in Azure Monitor for Azure services – Azure portal
- Collect and consume diagnostic data from your Azure resources
- Overview of Metrics in Microsoft Azure
Monitor and troubleshoot SQL Database
Monitor and troubleshoot SQL Database, monitor database activity, monitor by using DMVs and DMFs, monitor performance and scalability
- Tuning performance in Azure SQL Database
- Simplify performance tuning and troubleshooting with Azure SQL Database
- Monitoring database performance in Azure SQL Database
- Monitoring and performance tuning
Automate and manage database implementations on Azure
Automate and manage SQL Server on Azure VMs, automate and manage Azure SQL Database, configure automation and runbooks
- Getting Started with Azure Automation
- My first PowerShell Workflow runbook
- Starting a runbook in Azure Automation
- Automate resources in your data center or cloud with Hybrid Runbook Worker
- Announcing Azure Resource Manager support in Azure Automation runbooks
- Using Azure Automation to run VMs during office hours only – using graphical runbooks
Update
So, I somehow managed to pass with 733 points. Probably the main areas to pay attention to are:
- DMVs and when to use them.
- Which tools to measure performance of both virtual machines and hosted SQL servers.
- The steps need for setting up Always On clusters.
- The SQL needed for creating keys/certificates involved in Always Encrypted.
Using the MeasureUp practice exam was also pretty useful though I’m not a fan of only getting access for either 30 or 60 days, especially given how much it costs.
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