Personal Bootcamp
Since it's expensive and not really flexible on dates, I decided to create my own bootcamp for the AZ-500. I took a little more than a week off work and scheduled it between sessions at CTU. I handed in all my assignments for the CTU session a week early to give myself a week break between sessions. I took an extra Friday at the beginning of my vacation week to clear up whatever I needed to around the house (cleaned the yard), so there weren't any distractions there. I spent the weekend wrapping up what I was doing at the summer home so I could skip a weekend. And now it's Monday and I begin.
I started with finishing up the INE course for AZ-500 that I was working through (about halfway through) and read the Microsoft Azure Security Center book that has been begging me to read it for much longer than it took to read. That one is less than 200 pages and I read through it like a novel. I didn't want to get hung up on the details since the book is a little dated. But it's read. The official Microsoft AZ-500 Study Guide is on its way (2nd edition). I'll pay closer detail to that once it arrives since it's more current.
My plan is to work on all the training for this that I started and didn't finish. I finished the O'Reilly course with Tim Warner. Now I need to finish the INE course, the Udemy AZ-500 course (halfway through that too) and read the pile of 5 books that I have been waiting to read. After Azure Security Center, I have "Microsoft Azure Security Infrastructure" that has also been waiting in the pile. It is another 200-page book that I will read like a novel (and take with a grain of salt). It may also be dated, but if you read through that stuff first, you get very familiar with the vocabulary (naming conventions) and you see what came before what may actually be in the updated material.
The three other books are a little thicker, but again will be read like novels. Modern Authentication with Azure Active Directory for Web Applications is scheduled for after I finish the Udemy course. I had started reading that and it's really good. It does go through the history of authentication and show what problems people were trying to solve and how the different methods solve those issues. An interesting read and I'm looking forward to getting back to that.
The other two books in my pile are The Azure Cloud Native Architecture Mapbook and Mastering Azure Security (2nd Edition). Not really sure how useful they will be for this exam. Once I get to them and start reading, I'll evaluate and update.
Depending on when the official study guide arrives and how far I get with the backlog ... I am considering checking out Acloudguru and their courses. I've seen a number of "practice exams" available for AZ-500 in various places. If I'm doing well on those, I'll skip it. If I'm not comfortable with my results, I'll definitely use it.
