The 70-475 Designing and Implementing Big Data Analytics Solutions certification exam was first published Oct. 27, 2015. Many features and services in the Microsoft Azure platform have changed since the exams initial release. This is true of all the certification exams that cover Microsoft Azure services. For this reason, Microsoft published updates to these exams periodically. The latest update to this exam was published in February 2017. This article outlines the current state of this certification exam.

EXAM IS RETIRED: This exam is retired as of June 30, 2019

Certification Target Audience

The focus of this exam is on Big Data Analytics solutions in Microsoft Azure, and as such the exam is targeted towards data management professionals, data architects, data scientists, and data developers who are designing Big Data Analytics solutions in Microsoft Azure.

Skills Measured

Here is a high level list of the skills and objectives measured on this exam. The percentages next to each represents the number of questions on the exam are in each category.

• Design big data batch processing and interactive solutions (30-35%)
  • Ingest data for batch and interactive processing
  • Design and provision compute clusters
  • Design for data security
  • Design for batch processing
• Design big data real-time processing solutions (30-35%)
  • Ingest data for real-time processing
  • Design and provision compute resources
  • Design for Lambda architecture
  • Design for real-time processing
• Operationalize end-to-end cloud analytics solutions (30-35%)
  • Create a data factory
  • Orchestrate data processing activities in a data-driven workflow
  • Monitor and manage the data factory
  • Move, transform, and analyze data
  • Design a deployment strategy for an end-to-end solution

The official page for the Designing and Implementing Big Data Analytics Solutions (70-475) exam lists out more details on the full exam objectives that are measured.

Training Material

In the previous post about the 70-475 exam, I listed out the exam objectives and not too much in regards to study materials. The reason for this as the exam was still so new there really wasn’t many study materials available. Below is an outline of what study / training materials are available today for this updated version of the exam.

As far as text books… There still isn’t an official Exam Guide for the 70-475 Designing and Implementing Big Data Analytics Solutions certification exam. This is 1 of a few exams that Microsoft Press hasn’t been publishing Exam Guides for. Thankfully, in addition to the above course resources, you can also use the official Microsoft Azure documentation as it does cover all the different exam objectives tested and measured. Unfortunately, you may have to choose your own study adventure rather than a structured one that a Exam Guide book could provide.

Practice Exams

In addition to using multiple training / study material sources for learning all about the exam objectives, there’s another very important companion when studying for any certification exam. This is a good practice test that will really help prepare you for taking the real exam.

MeasureUp one of the leading practice test vendors for Microsoft certification exams, and even though the 70-475 Designing and Implementing Big Data Analytics Solutions exam is still relatively new (at the time of writing this) they already have a practice test available for purchase.

You can find it at the following link:

http://www.measureup.com/Designing-and-Implementing-Big-Data-Analytics-Solutions-English-P5940.aspx

Happy Studying!!

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