Microsoft Certified: Azure Network Engineer Associate (AZ-700)

Hybrid Azure networks are where small configuration mistakes become outages: a misrouted path, an NSG silently blocking traffic, or security controls applied in the wrong place. For IT Directors and Team Leads, this AZ-700 course gives network and cloud engineers a shared, repeatable way to design, deploy, monitor, and troubleshoot Azure networking, so fewer incidents turn into escalations.

Role fit: This is associate-level training built for practitioners with three to five years of cloud experience. It suits network engineers extending on-premises skills into Azure and cloud or DevOps admins who own VNets, VPNs, and app delivery. Less experienced staff may benefit from the Azure Administrator (AZ-104) course first.

Time investment: Plan on about 20.6 hours of video across 22 skills per learner. The course opens with Azure Resource Manager and Azure resource layout, including resource groups, regions, and availability zones. It then moves into virtual network design, DNS, peering, hybrid connectivity, advanced routing, Network Security Groups, Azure Firewall, web application firewalls, Network Watcher, DDoS protection, and Azure Extended Network. Each skill ends with a hands-on challenge.

Change-management notes: The instructor stresses safe practices your change process will recognize:

• Plan virtual network designs before making portal changes.
• Evaluate NSG behavior carefully before changing rules.
• Use Azure Network Watcher diagnostics to investigate virtual network issues and review NSG rule behavior before changing configurations.
• Treat Azure Extended Network work as a high-complexity change that needs clear validation and rollback criteria.

How CBT Nuggets supports the outcome: Training Managers can assign the course as a Playlist to standardize skills across the team and use Team Reporting to track progress toward certification readiness. Practice Exams help confirm whether learners are ready before exam attempts are scheduled.

IT teams use this training to design, connect, and secure Azure networks with fewer surprises in production. The course builds from Azure Resource Manager, PowerShell, and ARM/Bicep templates into the connectivity and security decisions that keep hybrid workloads available.

Scenarios drawn from the course:

• Multi-region resilience: Your team works through deploying an application across regions with a read-only database replica, so a regional outage can fail over instead of becoming downtime. They also evaluate routing and failover choices that keep users pointed at available front ends.
• Hybrid connectivity without guesswork: Engineers learn the ExpressRoute design decisions (connectivity modes, BFD, QoS), site-to-site and point-to-site VPNs, and hub-and-spoke routing with BGP and Azure Route Server. These are the skills that cut contractor dependence for on-prem-to-cloud links.
• Safer releases: Staged rollout patterns let engineers expose new code to limited traffic before a full rollout. Web Application Firewall rules are tested in logging mode against dev or test environments before they enforce in production.
• Faster troubleshooting: Network Watcher diagnostics help engineers evaluate NSG rules and isolate whether access rules or connectivity are blocking traffic. That shortens escalations.

Outcomes for your organization:

• Repeatable network deployments through infrastructure as code
• Reduced outage risk from well-designed routing and failover
• Layered app delivery and protection with Application Gateway, Front Door, Azure Firewall, and WAF
• AZ-700 certification readiness for network engineers

Knowledge

• How the Azure Resource Manager model, IaaS/PaaS service boundaries, PowerShell, and ARM templates (JSON and Bicep) underpin repeatable network deployments
• When to choose VNet peering, site-to-site VPN, point-to-site VPN, ExpressRoute, or Azure Virtual WAN for hybrid and multi-region connectivity
• How routing flows across hub-and-spoke and transit designs using BGP with private ASNs, forced tunneling, and Azure Route Server
• How Azure networking designs support performance, resilience, scale, and security across virtual network environments
• How Azure Network Watcher supports monitoring and diagnostics, especially when evaluating network security group rules
• How NSGs, Azure Firewall, and Web Application Firewall managed rules protect workloads

Ability

• Plan VNets and Azure DNS, then read PowerShell and ARM/Bicep code to recognize what a deployment is building
• Build hub-and-spoke topologies that combine peering with site-to-site VPN for remote-site connectivity
• Size Virtual WAN hubs for routing throughput and point-to-site user scenarios
• Evaluate application-layer security patterns, including web application firewall protection for Azure workloads
• Diagnose NSG-related traffic issues using Azure network monitoring and diagnostic workflows
• Tune WAF managed rules in detection logging mode against dev and test environments before enforcing them in production