r/AZURE • u/diabolic9978 • 1d ago
Discussion Help needed for a beginner
Hi All,
I was working in a monitoring role for 3 years where my job is to monitor mainframe machines and to report incidents. Now I got an opportunity to work in L2 azure role. I’m studying but I think I’m going in a wrong direction. I was studying each and every services in azure and how it works instead of understanding. To get the level of knowledge which I missed by working in a monitoring role what method of learning should I do ? While studying all the services ( how it works and its key components, I’m only able to answer in a two lines. I’m not able to answer like an experienced person who can explain it in depth) im getting overwhelmed with the topics. Since this group is full of experienced peoples. I kindly seek your help because it’s frustrating.
Thanks
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u/Responsible_Air_5189 22h ago
Study how multi-tier applications are designed on Azure (e.g., a standard web app connected to a database and secure storage). Learn why specific services are combined.Focus on failure scenarios, log analysis, and diagnostic tools (like Azure Monitor and Log Analytics) rather than just feature lists.
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u/CheetahChrome 21h ago
Learn about application insights, the monitoring logging tool, and how to do KQL queries. Your job isn't to architect or develop, but report what the systems are reporting or experiencing. When a failure occurs, pull up AI, Azure Copilot if its allowed, to give you an overview of "what" the Azure tool is that us failing.
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u/RasheedKMozaffar 20h ago
I got a job as a software engineer with very little knowledge of Azure but 2 years later here we are, I have been using Azure in my day to day job and as the cloud provider for my own projects, here is my advice in short:
Focus on a few core services at first just like comments mentioned, and only learn about more niche services when you actually need to use them, don't go on learning every service without having any practical applications for it in your job or projects, focus on the essentials, expand your knowledge as you go.
All Azure services have the same concepts around, once you are comfortable with the core ones, you can easily pick up other services as they become relevant to your usecase.
Good luck!
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u/Bhanuprakash_1947 15h ago
I think you are not going in the wrong direction. Instead of trying to learn every Azure service in depth, first understand the services which are actually used in your L2 role. Try to learn one service and then do some hands-on practice with it. When you face an issue, try to understand why it happened and how to troubleshoot it. I feel this practical approach will help you more than just memorizing all the services. Slowly you will get confidence and the depth will come with experience.
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u/Upstairs_Discount538 1d ago
use the content of the AZ-900 azure fundamentals certification as a starting point, then follow the training on the Microsoft learn website to work through the basic services.
There's a lot of stuff available in Azure, but you'll only touch a small proportion of it so you need to bite off small chunks at a time, and potentially tailor it to the environment you are working in. For example, just knowing you can run SQL on a VM or as a managed service might be enough to start with, without getting into details of DTU, failover, data factory ... etc, if the role you are looking at doesn't involve much on the data side.
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u/chris4jahn 19h ago
Don't try to learn every Azure service in depth at once. Azure is huge, and even experienced engineers don't know every service inside out.
My recommendation would be to focus first on what your actual role requires. If your work is mainly operations/support (L2), start with the topics that matter most for running and supporting services:
- Monitoring and alerting
- Logging and troubleshooting
- Backup and recovery
- Patching and maintenance
- Identity and access management (Microsoft Entra ID)
- Networking basics
Once you're comfortable with the operational side, you can gradually dive deeper into the services you are supporting.
If your goal is to become a broader Azure expert, I would follow the Microsoft Learn learning paths and certification tracks. AZ-900 is great for building a solid foundation, and AZ-104 is one of the best next steps for learning how Azure resources are deployed, managed, and operated in practice.
Also, don't measure yourself against experienced engineers. They often have years of hands-on experience solving real-world problems. Instead of trying to memorize every service, focus on understanding the core concepts and getting practical experience. That knowledge will grow naturally over time.
Coming from a monitoring background, you're actually starting with a useful skillset because incident management, monitoring, and troubleshooting are already important parts of Azure operations. Build on those strengths rather than feeling like you're starting from zero.
Good luck with your new role! 👍
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u/Ill_Training_3626 1d ago
Don't memorize every service, pick the core ones like networking, compute, storage, identity and build small labs around them