AZ-305 tests design decisions, not button clicks. If you have run servers, storage, identity and backup on premises, you already make most of these decisions. In Azure they just carry different names.
Map what you already know
Start by writing your own on-premises decisions next to their Azure equivalents:
- Active Directory and Entra Connect map to Entra ID and hybrid identity.
- Failover clustering and disaster recovery runbooks map to availability zones, paired regions, Azure Site Recovery and Azure Backup.
- SAN and NAS storage maps to storage account types, managed disks and Azure Files.
- Group Policy and change control map to Azure Policy, management groups and role-based access control.
- Monitoring and reporting map to Azure Monitor and Log Analytics.
Study the trade-offs
Questions ask which option fits a stated requirement: cost, resilience, security or operating effort. Practise comparing services that look alike, such as the different load balancing and traffic routing services, the storage redundancy options and the database hosting options.
Read each requirement twice
Case-style questions tend to hide the deciding detail in a single sentence: a recovery time, a data location rule, an existing licence. Find that sentence before you look at the answers.
Spend time in a subscription
Reading is not enough. Use the Microsoft Learn sandboxes or a small subscription with a budget alert, and build a hub and spoke network at least once. Having seen a design work, you remember why it was chosen.
I hold AZ-104 and AZ-305 alongside several years of on-premises work, and the on-premises background helped most with identity, networking and recovery planning.