Who this is for
You want the generalist Azure skill set — the person a team calls first, who can provision compute, lock down identity, wire up networking, and keep the lights on, before specializing further. If you're completely new to IT, start with The Stack Floor first — this path assumes those fundamentals.
How this path works
Each cluster links to its real lesson page. Go in order the first time — later clusters assume the ones before them. Come back to specific clusters as reference once you've done a full pass.
The path — in order
1 · Orientation
01
What Azure actually is, how the portal is organised, and the vocabulary the rest of this path assumes.
Domain 0 · The Stack Floor
2 · Compute
02
Provisioning, sizing, scale sets, and availability sets — the baseline unit of Azure infrastructure.
Domain 1 · Compute
03
Azure Functions, Logic Apps, and Event Grid — compute without managing servers.
Domain 1 · Compute
04
3 · Storage
05
Blob storage, Azure Files, access tiers, and lifecycle management.
Domain 2 · Storage
06
Azure SQL Database and Managed Instance — the default choice for structured data.
Domain 2 · Storage
4 · Networking
07
VNets, subnets, peering, NSGs, and route tables — everything else in this domain builds on this.
Domain 3 · Networking
08
VPN Gateway, ExpressRoute, and Azure Bastion for secure hybrid access.
Domain 3 · Networking
09
Load Balancer, Application Gateway, Front Door, and Traffic Manager.
Domain 3 · Networking
5 · Identity & security
10
Entra ID fundamentals — users, groups, and how authentication actually works.
Domain 4 · Identity & Security
11
RBAC, conditional access, and least-privilege in practice.
Domain 4 · Identity & Security
12
Where credentials, keys, and certificates actually belong — never in a config file.
Domain 4 · Identity & Security
6 · Operations
13
Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and Application Insights.
Domain 5 · Operations
14
Azure Policy, management groups, and tagging discipline at scale.
Domain 5 · Operations
7 · Infrastructure as Code
15
Declarative infrastructure — the native Azure IaC toolchain.
Domain 6 · IaC & DevOps
8 · Hybrid & resilience
16
Azure Arc and the reality that most environments aren't 100% cloud.
Domain 8 · Hybrid Workplace
17
Recovery Services vaults and backup policies — the capstone that ties the whole path together.
Domain 7 · Resilience
Optional, but worth it
Threat Protection (Defender) and Azure OpenAI Service aren't required here, but they're the two clusters Cloud Engineers reach for next most often as the role matures.
Certifications this path maps to
AZ-104: Azure Administrator
SC-900: Security, Compliance & Identity Fundamentals
Where this leads
From here, go deeper into design and trade-offs toward Solutions Architect, or narrow into automation and pipelines toward DevOps Engineer. Both build directly on this path.