AZ-400 Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions Exam

Design and implement quality and release gates, including security and governance

Quality and release gates help ensure that only good code moves forward in your pipeline. A quality gate checks metrics like code coverage and static analysis results. If a build does not meet the gate criteria, it fails early and prevents further deployment.

Security gates focus on spotting vulnerabilities before release. They often include security scans, such as checking for known weaknesses or verifying that secret keys are not exposed. Teams can automate these scans in Azure Pipelines to run on every pull request.

Governance gates enforce organizational rules and policies. This can be done through branch policies, approvals, and compliance checks. For example:

• Approvals from security or compliance teams
• Policy checks for naming conventions or resource tags
• Audit logs to track who approved each change

By combining quality, security, and governance gates, teams can build trust in their releases. These gates act as automated guards that stop builds with issues and guide teams to fix problems quickly.

Design a comprehensive testing strategy, including local tests, unittests, integration tests, and load tests

A good testing strategy starts with local tests that developers run on their own machines. These tests catch simple errors early before code goes into the shared repo. Developers often use unit test frameworks like xUnit or NUnit for this step.

Unit tests focus on small pieces of code, such as single functions or classes. They help verify that each part works as expected. Fast feedback is critical here, so unit tests should be quick to run.

Next come integration tests, which check how modules work together or how the code interacts with external services. These tests may require a test database or mock APIs. They take longer than unit tests but give a better view of the overall system behavior.

Finally, load tests verify that the application can handle high traffic or data volumes. Tools like Azure Load Testing simulate real-world use. Running load tests in a pipeline helps catch performance bottlenecks before production.

Implement tests in a pipeline, including configuring test tasks, configuring test agents, and integration of test results

To run tests in Azure Pipelines, you add test tasks to your YAML or classic pipeline. For example, you can use the DotNetCoreCLI@2 task for .NET tests or the VSTest@2 task for Visual Studio tests. Each task runs a set of tests and returns pass/fail status.

Test agents are the machines that execute these tasks. You can use Microsoft-hosted agents or create your own self-hosted agents. Self-hosted agents let you install custom tools or target specific environments. Be sure to configure agent pools and security settings in Azure DevOps.

Once tests finish, you need to collect and display results. This is done by publishing test result files and logs. Azure Pipelines provides built-in widgets to show test trends across builds. Teams can quickly see which tests started failing and when.

Integrating test results into the pipeline gives immediate feedback. If tests fail, the build can stop or notify the team. This feedback loop helps developers catch issues before they affect later stages like staging or production.

Implement code coverage analysis

Code coverage analysis measures how much of your code is tested by unit and integration tests. High coverage can mean more confidence in code quality, but it is not a guarantee of bug-free code. Tools like Coverlet for .NET or JaCoCo for Java help collect coverage data.

To enable coverage in your pipeline, add a coverage tool task alongside your test task. For example:

• DotNetCoreCLI@2 with --collect:"XPlat Code Coverage"
• PublishCodeCoverageResults@1 for showing coverage reports

These tasks generate a coverage report that pipelines can read. Azure Pipelines then publishes this report so you can see which lines of code were tested and which were missed.

You can also set up coverage gates to enforce a minimum threshold. If coverage drops below an agreed percentage, the build fails. This motivates teams to write tests for new code and keep test coverage high over time.

Conclusion

In this section, we covered how to design and implement a testing strategy for pipelines in Azure DevOps. We started with gates that enforce quality, security, and governance rules. Then, we looked at creating a testing strategy with local, unit, integration, and load tests.

Next, we explored how to run tests in pipelines by configuring tasks, agents, and result publishing. Finally, we discussed code coverage analysis and how to collect, display, and enforce coverage metrics. Together, these practices help teams build reliable, secure, and well-tested software.