Master DevOps on Azure DevOps and GitHub — Build a Real Production Pipeline
AZ-400 exam prep: design and implement DevOps solutions across Azure DevOps and GitHub — source control, pipelines, IaC, testing, security, monitoring.
About This Course
The AZ-400 is Microsoft's expert-level DevOps certification, and it sits on top of the AZ-104 or AZ-204 associate credential. It is not a tooling tour. The exam expects you to *design* delivery processes — to pick a branching strategy and defend it, to decide where a quality gate belongs, to know which deployment pattern fits a given risk profile. This course teaches it that way, and it teaches both platforms the exam covers: Azure DevOps and GitHub receive parallel treatment throughout, so you finish fluent in both rather than guessing at half the questions.
The course runs on a four-act structure. Act 1 establishes DevOps culture, orients you on both platforms, and covers Agile planning and collaboration. Act 2 moves through Git and branching into authoring real pipelines — Azure Pipelines YAML and GitHub Actions side by side — then into advanced pipeline architecture and the agents and runners that execute them. Act 3 delivers software: package management, testing strategies, deployment patterns, Bicep infrastructure as code, and pipeline optimization. Act 4 secures and observes what you have built, covering authentication, secrets management, DevSecOps scanning with GitHub Advanced Security, and instrumentation.
Running alongside the feature labs is a demo application — the Order Buddy, a Python and Flask storefront. It ships in section four with a single manual deploy command, and every hands-on section afterwards replaces a piece of that manual process with governed automation. By the final module the same app is tested, secured, provisioned from Bicep, observable, and delivered through a full CI/CD pipeline. You do not just learn the patterns; you watch one real application accumulate all of them.
What You'll Learn
Design a source control strategy with Git branching, pull requests, and repository governance
Author CI/CD pipelines in both Azure Pipelines YAML and GitHub Actions
Provision infrastructure as code with Bicep and deploy with progressive delivery patterns
Secure the delivery chain with managed identities, Key Vault secrets, and DevSecOps scanning
Instrument applications with Azure Monitor, Application Insights, and KQL
Prerequisites
- AZ-104 or AZ-204 certification, or equivalent hands-on Azure experience
- An Azure subscription, a free-tier Azure DevOps organization, and a GitHub account
- Git, Azure CLI, and VS Code with the Azure and GitHub extensions installed
- Basic YAML familiarity — the pipeline authoring builds on it from the ground up
Who Is This Course For
This course is for engineers who already know Azure and now own delivery — DevOps engineers, platform engineers, SREs, and developers who have inherited the pipelines. If you hold the AZ-104 or AZ-204 and want the expert-level credential, or you are running CI/CD in production and want to replace habit with deliberate design, this is built for you.
You need real Azure experience going in; this is an expert exam and the course does not re-teach the associate material. What it does assume is that you learn best by building — every section pairs the concepts with hands-on labs on both Azure DevOps and GitHub, and the demo application track means you finish with a complete, working reference implementation rather than a folder of disconnected exercises.
What's Inside
DevOps Foundations and Platform Orientation
- DevOps culture, practices, and the metrics that matter
- Azure DevOps and GitHub platform overview — how the two map onto each other
- Agile planning, work tracking, and backlog management
- Collaboration and communication across delivery teams
Source Control Strategy
- Git fundamentals and the branching strategies teams actually run
- Pull request workflows and code review gates
- Repository management, permissions, and governance at scale
- Handling large repositories and cross-repo dependencies
Building Pipelines — Azure Pipelines and GitHub Actions
- Authoring Azure Pipelines in YAML from first principles
- Building equivalent workflows with GitHub Actions
- Pipeline architecture — templates, stages, and reusable components
- Self-hosted and Microsoft-hosted agents and runners
Delivery — Packages, Testing, and Deployment
- Package management and artifact feeds across both platforms
- Testing strategies inside pipelines and where gates belong
- Deployment patterns — blue-green, canary, and progressive rollout
- Release approvals and environment promotion
Infrastructure as Code and Optimization
- Provisioning Azure resources with Bicep and ARM templates
- Bringing infrastructure deployment under pipeline control
- Pipeline optimization, caching, and maintenance
Security, Compliance, and Monitoring
- Authentication and authorization for DevOps workloads
- Secrets and sensitive information management with Azure Key Vault
- Security scanning and DevSecOps with GitHub Advanced Security
- Monitoring and instrumentation with Azure Monitor, Application Insights, and KQL