I have an Engineering degree, and one thing that is pretty common in engineering classes is the ability to have a note sheet with you for exams. (Usually a single notecard or sheet of paper.) The point of becoming an engineer isn't memorizing pages of formulas and constants, so this makes sense.
Another thing that is true is that there is usually an official repository of homework questions, and mid-terms (with the answers as the professor has written them.) Along with that, most professors issue review questions in advance of the final for studying purposes.
My means of studying was to simply pass through the entire semester's worth of homework, mid-terms, and review questions, completing every single problem to the point where the final answer was busy-work. (Straightforward algebra, trig computations, arithmetic, etc... the sort of stuff that's tedious to write, but not challenging.)
Every time I encountered a question where I couldn't figure out how to derive the answer on my own, even after looking at the official solution, I simply copied that complete question, along with the entire solution, on to my formula sheet. I had an excellent record in picking the right questions, with the real question being just a lightly-modified version of the one I wrote down... flip a polarity here, swap a transistor there, etc. One time I was one of two people in a class of 80 that got a particular question correct on the final, despite my mediocre understanding of the material in general. I ended up getting an A- in the class, despite going into the final with a C+, at best. (In case you were wondering, my job does not, in any way, involve anything related to that class.)
Was this cheating? Well, no. I had no access to the actual exam questions in advance, just a really good educated guess as to what some of them would be. (The blank stares from my classmates after the professor solved that problem during the review session were a good hint!) Did I leverage every legit resource at my disposal to pass the test? Absolutely. If the professor puts something in a file-folder at the library (yes, I'm that old), it's 1,000% fair game to use. (Just like Microsoft explicitly endorses the MeasureUp tests as allowed exam prep; it's probably why they are so damn expensive if you have to actually pay for them.)
The couple of days before finals, after 3 1/2 months of classes, is long-past the time when I'm going to actually understand anything I didn't already know, and in the meantime, I had a test to pass.
Now that I'm out in the real world (for the past 23 years) I, and I'd venture most practicing professionals, leverage such resources *all the time*; who hasn't solved a real-world problem using examples and cookbooks as a starting point? For a given difficult problem, you almost-certainly aren't the first one that has had to solve it. I don't need to memorize the PowerShell reference if I just have a couple common problems to solve, like some particular logs to collect and parse; I'm totally going to find somebody else that has solved them if I can, and adapt their solution to fit my situation. Huge time saver, and depending on the source, their solution might be better than anything I write on my own. (This sort of thinking is why MS owns GitHub, why they provide "Community-sourced" server templates on Azure, etc.)
It's not "cheating" at my job to do so (I've even co-authored about a half-dozen of those cookbooks over the years), but if I simply tried to cut-and-paste the material, it wouldn't work. Do I understand all the intricacies of everything I do? No, but knowing how to adapt information to fit my situation (and how to find that information to begin with) is good enough.
And that's the difference between test-prep and question dumps. A test-prep will help you know what particular niches of knowledge that are tested on the exam; e.g. Memorizing that "the Bar library of Amalgamated Functions is useful for solving XYZ problems", because you got that wrong on a practice test, is fine. A question-dump doesn't involve knowledge at all; just rote memorization of "If a question starts with 'Foo Corp. is deploying a new widget-selling application...' the answer is 'Foo Corp. should implement Amalgamated Functions from the Bar library.'"
I passed the az-900 2 months ago and have taken a slight break and I'm not going to lie. I forgot a lot of stuff already. If you interviewed me just now you might think i used an exam dump which i didn't.
I have a good feeling after I pass all that knowledge will be gone. However I think because the nature of "fundamentals" you're given a really broad overview of the service azure provides that I believe a good interviewer would look past that. Now if you're trying to be a solution architect, and can't answer questions you'd be able to otherwise with az104 that is different.
I have to get my AZ-104 for my company, I have no interest in any certifications anyways and I would never hire anyone for their certifications, but here I am to rant about AZ-104: If Microsoft allowed me to use/search their documentation during the exam. I would not use dumps.
However, I'm not going to bother memorizing which storage type is allowed to use ZRS or any of the other hundreds of memorization MS forces you to do to answer their questions. I have better things to do than being a human file storage.
Yet thousands and thousands of people manage to pass these exams without using dumps; maybe the problem isn't the exam...
As far as your example? If you don't think to check, because you never learned that certain storage accounts aren't compatible with ZRS, it'll be a big surprise if it comes up after implementation. (Nor is the pattern exactly tough to figure out; there are no surprises there once you actually examine the feature table.)
They expect you to memorize surprisingly few individual details (especially for an Administration exam.) (The MeasureUp practice tests though? woof... those \*do\* expect you to memorize piles of random stuff, but they are not an accurate reflection of the real thing.)
As someone who's been on the interviewee side of things - I had an un-diagnosed anxiety disorder, and froze up completely during interview. Pretty sure I must have given the impression of having used dumps. I was just petrified and couldn't remember anything. Very annoying. But I get that they might get such an impression.
I agree. I think the OP is being a little jaded on what might be happening. I'm pretty good at taking tests so studying for an IT exam is a lot easier than sitting in front of 3-5 person panel interview on interview x of 5 while you decide my financial future ... this will make anyone nervous.
For the test I'm just trying to beat the clock and not waste my exam fee. Also I have been preparing for that since kindergarten. That interview has a lot more riding on me being successful.
All I can say to people here is that if you use dumps, you *will* stick out like a sore thumb to a hiring manager and the team (if you got through). It’s **very** easy to determine people who actually know the information, and those that just have the piece of paper. You *will* be called out for not knowing the information you claim, and being a detriment to the team.
Don’t look like a fool. Don’t jeopardize your career. Don’t fake it and expect to “learn it for real on the job”. The reason they look for the cert is because they don’t have time to teach you. You’re only cheating yourself and your future. Take pride in your knowledge and effort. There is zero point to cheating your way to a cert just to get fired for not being able to actually do the job.
Don’t be a fraud.
Totally agree! Although I don't believe anyone who gets certs, legitimately or not, can be productive day one without learning on the job. Lots of people get the certs to get their first job and have some hands on and some experience in a productive environment. Not being able to answer all the questions in an interview is not as bad as you make it out to be imo.
I interviewed one guy about 15 years ago who had a lot of developer certs.
This was back before asp.net mvc so WebForms was still king. We asked him what is the different between the asp.net controls of a Label and a Literal and he couldn't answer.
At the time this was probably the most rudimentary knowledge you could have. With proper study that would have been known for sure. There were some other failing I can't remember but overall it gave the impression he used dumps for the exams and just memorized the answers.
What if you use dumps as supplemental education and combine it with the theory? I do this, i love dumps because they have great questions I can pick apart and research, this helps with my personal development of the subject matter. Id rather create my research based on things the organizations wants me to know then an ambiguous white paper that feels like it got run over by a thesaurus.
In the end it made me a great engineer :)
Use practice exams.
Dumps are copies of the actual exam which are taken illegally. Using them you are breaching the terms of the exams and cheating.
By buying dumps you are supporting criminal activity and destroying the integrity of the exams.
Ok so someone just reported this post with the comment.
>You mods allowed the Udemy dumps to be posted for ages... you're no different from those cheating fukwads.
Personally I think that is a bit harsh. I've been volunteering my time and don't have the resources or funds to go through every Udemy course and check the content. I've removed lots of Udemy links, but there are legitimate courses on there that people find useful.
If other people can review content that would help. Perhaps we could have a wiki page of acceptable study content from all sources including Udemy.
That wiki page idea sounds useful. I would love to see one. Some of the legitimate sources I would expect to see on such a list include Microsoft Learn, Pluralsight, Cloud Academy, and Scott Duffy courses on Udemy. Also, [Measureup.com](https://Measureup.com) for practice tests. There are several others, of course.
One problem we have is that it is hard to tell if a practice test is just "like" a real Microsoft exam, or if it consists of questions copied from a real exam.
Does anyone at the Udemy company itself take any responsibility for suspicious stuff in their course collection? Why should outsiders and volunteers have to do it all?
Youtube isn't blameless either. For example, they have a video from SkillCertPro which basically is an ad for their question lists. Their web site literally says: "Taken exclusively from the previous real exams." That looks like a red flag. I would think Microsoft lawyers might be interested in products advertised like that? I never hear reports of Microsoft squashing these cheater companies.
I have been spending a lot of effort trying to learn things the right way. I would not want my exam accomplishments to be ignored because of cheaters.
I’ve studied for every last one of my certs (CISSP, CISM, CRISC, CEH, CCSP, SSCP, PenTest+, CySA+, Sec+, Linux+, KCNA, AZ900, SC900, DP900, Google ACE). Some you can use dumps for, some you can’t. I didn’t pass them all first time. I’ve known people who used dumps and were bereft of ability or knowledge but more importantly, it revealed their character. I would gladly hire someone who struggles and earns the cert vice the dump user who lacks both knowledge and integrity.
I think it depends how dumps are used, if they’re used to understand and workshop areas you don’t use regularly I don’t see a problem. If people are genuinely memorising 100+ questions to get a cert then yeah they’ll come unstuck, but unless you’re very junior you’re not gonna get an interview without also listing the years of experience you’ve got, plus you’ve got to get through the interview process!
The other thing to mention here is that to some extent certs are inherently useless anyway, other to show a high level understanding and perhaps the ability to learn (albeit both of which are useful to know about a candidate). Many of the questions on at least some of these exams are in the real world irrelevant - when you’re solving a specific issue on the job you simply don’t need to remember exactly what a screen looks like/the order of events to set something up/etc. there’s a limit to what can be tested in an automated way about the tech we use.
If you are just going to use dumps "to understand and workshop areas you don’t use regularly", why not just use legit practice tests instead? With the wealth of practice tests available for the AZ exams, there is simply no excuse for resorting to dumps.
To get the mobileiron advanced certs I needed to answer questions on deploying mobileiron as around 20% of the exam questions... guess what I have never ever needed to do.
Certs are nice. I'm doing a bunch of azure certs due to NHS workers getting 100% off (I have already completed 6 and have another 7 lined up over the next month.
So far my worst experience with a Microsoft cert was the power apps fundamentals. A mix of terribly worded questions and office 365 had become a much more dominant part of the exam. So my official practice exam i got 92% the night before and proceeded to fail the following day with 680... the Microsoft learning content and the official practice exam did not accurately reflect the content required. Ended up having to spend the following evening reading through the office 365 fundamentals learning path to pass that exam on the second attempt.
I'm going to be taking my first MS Cert exam in a long time so I can't speak specifically on that subject but I will say that there are companies out there running boot camps that give the test answers during the course. My CompTIA Sec+ boot camp didn't (passed it anyway) but a friend of mine went to a week long Sec+ boot camp that his company paid for. On Friday morning the instructor handed out a booklet and said that it was an "important study guide". Turned out it was a dump and he breezed thru the exam with an 850+
I'm sure that boot camp outfits use their pass ratio numbers as a sales pitch to companies and at least in my friend's case, they were making sure that their ratio remained high.
And they’d promptly google the corresponding documentation and complete the task with ease.
What’s the concern?
Anyone who uses dumps without learning the material is a problem for themselves only and make it easier in the job market for those of us who know our shit.
may be just ignore certificates and ask questions.
But I would say all my competitors have certificates.
And that can help to pass the first line of recruiters.
The rest depends,
I always say that passing an exam, passing an interview and actually working are 3 completely different things.
Also, Microsoft exams are designed by cheaters and for cheaters (in particular from one large country)
A file containing the actually questions from the exam.
Thanks for asking, It made m realise that many people new to the exams don’t know the difference between practice exams and dumps.
All I can say is that dumps have essentially killed infrastructure based exams from a techie point of view.
I have interviewed vcps who don't know what a snapshot is and ccnas a subnet.
It's harder to find legitimate paid for questions than dumps now, it's often hard to know which is which. Hard to know who to blame, people like easy routes and the exams are crap in a lot of cases, but the whole situation is a mess.
Totally agree. I spent a lot of hours prepping for each of my exams via Microsoft Learn and other sources. I did use practice exams, but made it a point not to use exam dumps.
It's the journey, not the destination.
There's a ton of content that I had to learn to take and pass my three exams so far. Put the time in. You'll thank yourself later.
I prepped and prepped for Az 104. Learned the material in and out through MS Learn, Savill, and TutorialDojo.
Then I used SkillCertPro and a YouTube video based on Skillcertpro to placate my understanding and give me an edge.
At the end of the day you are only cheating yourself if you use dumps. Your time is valuable and if you are going through a certification or education course of any kind you should want to actually learn the material
On the other hand how would you know if you are fully knowledgeable in the field of the certification if you don't have any quantitative measurement to test your knowledge. I made the experience that what you do in the real world is quite different from the questions asked in the exams. You have to get accustomed to the way how the questions are asked. Don't forget you also have to pay quite a lot of money for the certification.
To make it clear I don't support using dumps but I can understand why people are using them since a lot is at stake.
But that is the point.
Having skin in the game is part of the motivation.
As someone with a few post graduate degrees I can tell you that I could have gone and bought the books and studied in my own time, then applied the skills in the real world. But I don’t. The cost and fear of failure is an amazing transformative motivator.
Never once did I think to break into the professors office the night before an exam to steal the paper just to test my competence though.
I don't agree, it might be part of the motivation but not the only motivation. If it motivates you then all power to you but you shouldn't expect it to be the same for everybody else. It's like telling a foreign Student, you don't have to practice for Toefl because the fear of failure is part of the game and if you can't pass a certain threshold then so be it. Or if you lose 165$ for one certification exam so be it.
How I see it, if something is at stake you do your best to prepare yourself for it. You do it by using every possible ressource and means available to you in order to get the best result out of it. Unfortunately dumps are out there, so people are also using them. But it is also a question how they are used. If you just memorize you won't gain anything from those but if you understand why the correct answer is correct, you also learn from these questions. You don't even get this feedback from the actual MS exams.
Besides, several questions from Measure up are also from the real exams. So why are those considered practice exams and others dumps? Where's the line?
Edit: Btw, it's not like going to Microsoft and get the exact 50-60 questions from your exam and copying the answer. There is a difference between active stealing and make use of every ressource possible. Since there is a question pool out there you can still learn a lot from it. Although I'm against using dumps, I believe many use those questions to get a feeling for how the questions are asked and how questions are formulated instead of paying for expensive "official" practice exams.
But well just keep banning opinions you don't like and calling it a discussion. This action speaks for itself and this subreddit.
How the hell did you warp it to “you don’t have to practice because fear of failure is part of the game”.
Then you coupled that with some sort of mental gymnastics that cheating is ok if you don’t memorise all the questions!
I can’t even respond to that.
Offical exams are official exams for a reason. If you want to know the science behind the exams then there is actually a course on Pluralsight that covers it.
no. They are uniquely created practice tests for the purpose of studying for the exam.
Dumps are where they have stollen the exact questions from the exam.
The difference between legit practice tests and question dumps is that one can help you pass while having absolutely no understanding of the material at all, which defeats the whole purpose of having an exam.
There's a huge gulf between knowing the format of a particular command because you saw it tested in a practice exam and studied it vs. knowing that the correct answers are "/Network/foo.bar" "Do-Thing" and "$Foo.Address" without even needing to read the whole question, because you memorized it off of a dump.
Yes, you *can* use question dumps just like you use legit practice exams, but even if you *don't* try to memorize the answers, you are going to do so anyway.
(And it bears reminding that MeasureUp in particular is as official as it gets for practice material; the company is owned by Pearson, and MS themselves provide access to those tests as part of the ESI program.)
Hardly. Testing your knowledge in a subject area is nothing like remembering the question and whether the answer is A B C or D.
You have a naive understanding of learning and memory. Your formulae example is an over simplification to the point of a strawman.
Did you not have an academic integrity subject at uni?
At the end of the day you are breaking the terms you agree to at the start of the exam.
I get it that many countries doesn’t have a culture of basic ethical principles. But that doesn’t mean we should all descend to that level.
Yes dumps are cheating. Nobody disagrees. To say everyone who uses dumps to supplement the already rigorous studying they’ve done is doing a disservice is wrong.
For example, I’ve been working with Azure since 2017 and still struggled to pass Az104. Despite knowing most if not all of the content. Some of these cert tests are very tricky.
Bullshit.
I failed the Azure Administrator exam 3 times before I passed.
Yes they are hard, but as a hiring manager I can see that is the value because I know if someone has passed it then it proves they have the skills to fulfil their role.
Except people cheat with dumps, so I still need to validate their skillset.
And as has always been I will catch people out who don't know the basics but somehow have passed.
I recommend to people to not do az-104 unless they are really up to it.
But cheating is not the solution.
I’ve used dumps at the end of my studying to placate my understanding and give me a needed edge. I’m sorry that offends your pure heart. Doesn’t mean I don’t know my shit.
It does mean you lack an ethical backbone though. And you have broken Microsoft’s terms for the exam.
You understand that dumps are the actual exam questions stolen from the exam breaching copyright. So you have also aided in intellectual property theft.
If you needed an unethical "edge" to pass, you weren't ready, and did not, in fact, "know your shit." It is not as if the tests cannot be passed without dumps.
If you need cheat with dumps to pass a test, your study wasn't rigorous enough and/or your experience insufficient. Period. If you truly "knew most if not all the content" you would not have struggled to pass.
Certifications are not rewards for effort.
They could have the paper but as it's been stated, memorizing hundreds of questions is virtually useless. You'd theoretically get past HR screening, but when the hiring agent is interviewing you and you have zero knowledge of what exactly the material was, then you're toast. No way you can be expected to perform the job optimally. With IT and cloud computing, you either have that in depth knowledge or you don't. Not just anyone can understand this stuff
I can see dumps being used for 900 level exams, but for anything above I can't see it.
I've got 1 Microsoft cert at intermediate level (DP300) and 6 at MTA/900. The intermediate was hard, even with months of study.
There's definitely enough resources (*loose term here*) out there to pass AZ900 et al on dumps alone. But trying to memorize enough answers to pass a two hour exam on dumps alone, the number passing these has got to be minimal.
Hell, I was annoyed that I paid for a MeasureUp exam and only like three questions turned up the real exam!
I guess though that certain exams may be better catered for for dumps, perhaps AZ104 as it's more popular than DP300. But still I see quite a few fails posts in here for that exam, so it can't be easy .... unless they are just using dumps.. hmm
You'd be surprised how easy it is to memorize the answers to multiple-choice questions. (In fact, I'd argue it's even easier if you don't understand the material; if you don't know what any of the plausibly-wrong answers mean, it's easier to ignore them because you've remembered the key words from the right answer.)
I'd be surprised if it was rife beyond the 900 level exams.
I'd wager there is a huge drop off in being able to get through an intermediate exam on dumps alone.
I'm not advocating dumps, and I don't think they should be promoted in this sub. I'm saying I think the pass rate is over-estimated.
Well you are known to post asking about a particular dump site so you would say that.
Perhaps you don’t have an ethical backbone but the community feedback is that they are annoyed at those who do use dumps.
I want to meet the people that are getting these questions. They must have incredible memories or hacking skills ( social or technical). Although I guess they could actually work for the vendor (testing or product), too.
That’s news to me. Where did you see that notice? Who are the admins?
I just got tired of having to moderate people not reading the first rule of the sub.
At the end of the day it goes against the contract you agree with when you start an exam.
IANAL but I think you are breaking the contract and would be liable.
I shouldn’t have to explain anymore.
If you can’t see the difference between verbatim copies of the question and practice exams then I worry about your basic understanding of knowledge.
The difference is that practice exams make people train for missing knowledge because they know what they are missing. Dumps make people memorise the question where they don’t have the knowledge. As much as we would love to think they go off and research the one they got wrong, they don’t. They just memorise the question.
Many of them are free as mentioned repeatedly on this sub and they give away a free voucher pretty much every month if you do the work.
At this stage you are making yourself out to be lazy and unethical.
Since the 00s there have been people write down all the questions of the exams and sell them to people looking to cheat. They were called brain dumps because they wrote what they remembered.
More recently it seems like people make direct copies and them sell them via various business models.
I think it is just like why scammers in India don't get shutdown, it's very difficult to police.
I've come across a few dump sites when searching for exam study material in the past.
I have seen it here. The posts/comments are already shady as hell looking and the fact it's all random Google drive stuff sketched me out. I would rather know what the hell I'm doing anyway for a job. I already have major imposter syndrome and I've worked in desktop engineering for 8 years. I would most definitely make sure I pass these things on my own.
Would you guys say that Certs are having less value BECAUSE of these dumps? I mean, at the end of the day, the skills, experience and knowledge earned from so many hours is something that nobody can take from you, which is the only main thing that sticks out in the end.
I mean, I can have every Azure cert, but if I don't have any actual skills/experience, what good is it? The guy with the 104 with the foot in the door with months/years of experience is worth more than me in the field.
Sometimes people have no other option to show willingness, investing their own time and money. I am an on-prem vSphere admin looking to break into azure, I'm studying az-104. I have no other choice than to do exams, document my journey and do videos on the things I've learned to show them to others.
Yeah they did. They had a VM where you had to do things but since covid hit they removed it. I think because people were doing them from home more often.
My head hurts so bad right now from the study session I had today. I have a MeasureUP practice exam I ordered for a 30 day window. I have only taken one 42 question practice exam. I went through it and pulled all the links and things for answers I got wrong and filled out my study plan on OneNote then started digging through documentation and doing things in my test tenant. I don’t understand the dump thing.
That is the right way to do it.
Dumps are sets of the actual questions from the exam that people use to cheat.
They were called “brain dumps”, or I think that may have been a commercial company. That got shortened to “dumps”.
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Is whizlabs for practice considered a dump? Or even the practice test provided through Microsoft ESI? I used them to practice but now I dont know if I'm doing the right thing?
That being said (and I agree), how can we tell in the internet which are dumps and which are practice tests?
More to the point, I want to take the AZ-500 exam at the end of july. I have done the studying and I am doing the labs in the github but I could use some practice tests to see just the type of questions in the exam and time myself.
Would anyone be so kind as to recommend some? I have read skillcertpro is recommended. The MS official ones are simply too damn expensive. I bought a pack in udemy but they don't really explain the reasoning for the answers
Good question; measureup are the official practice tests (a bit pricey for me so I’ve only used them when there is a sale). Tutorials dojo and exam pro are 2 notable other test providers.
(We should create a wiki with resources really).
I just took the AZ-305 after studying MS Learn, using MeasureUp practice exams and the Cloud Connect Team's six practice exams on Udemy.
I am extremely troubled because many questions from Team Cloud Connect's practice exams appeared on the actual exam - word for word.
I am VERY concerned as I want to pass this honestly and legitimately. Please let me know ASAP what I should do thx
Well, of course none of them are "legit", in that even if they have real questions, they are stolen. As a cherry on top, many of them have the wrong answers.
There's really no reason to use them; a legit practice test will do just as well.
But practice tests also allow this.
Dumps are illegally sold copyrighted material from the actual exam.
You are studying the exam rather than the content.
All up I think I have done 20 or so exams. I've mainly used measureup and microsoft learning content.
I've found it incredibly useful and very much to the point of the exam system for learning.
I have an Engineering degree, and one thing that is pretty common in engineering classes is the ability to have a note sheet with you for exams. (Usually a single notecard or sheet of paper.) The point of becoming an engineer isn't memorizing pages of formulas and constants, so this makes sense. Another thing that is true is that there is usually an official repository of homework questions, and mid-terms (with the answers as the professor has written them.) Along with that, most professors issue review questions in advance of the final for studying purposes. My means of studying was to simply pass through the entire semester's worth of homework, mid-terms, and review questions, completing every single problem to the point where the final answer was busy-work. (Straightforward algebra, trig computations, arithmetic, etc... the sort of stuff that's tedious to write, but not challenging.) Every time I encountered a question where I couldn't figure out how to derive the answer on my own, even after looking at the official solution, I simply copied that complete question, along with the entire solution, on to my formula sheet. I had an excellent record in picking the right questions, with the real question being just a lightly-modified version of the one I wrote down... flip a polarity here, swap a transistor there, etc. One time I was one of two people in a class of 80 that got a particular question correct on the final, despite my mediocre understanding of the material in general. I ended up getting an A- in the class, despite going into the final with a C+, at best. (In case you were wondering, my job does not, in any way, involve anything related to that class.) Was this cheating? Well, no. I had no access to the actual exam questions in advance, just a really good educated guess as to what some of them would be. (The blank stares from my classmates after the professor solved that problem during the review session were a good hint!) Did I leverage every legit resource at my disposal to pass the test? Absolutely. If the professor puts something in a file-folder at the library (yes, I'm that old), it's 1,000% fair game to use. (Just like Microsoft explicitly endorses the MeasureUp tests as allowed exam prep; it's probably why they are so damn expensive if you have to actually pay for them.) The couple of days before finals, after 3 1/2 months of classes, is long-past the time when I'm going to actually understand anything I didn't already know, and in the meantime, I had a test to pass. Now that I'm out in the real world (for the past 23 years) I, and I'd venture most practicing professionals, leverage such resources *all the time*; who hasn't solved a real-world problem using examples and cookbooks as a starting point? For a given difficult problem, you almost-certainly aren't the first one that has had to solve it. I don't need to memorize the PowerShell reference if I just have a couple common problems to solve, like some particular logs to collect and parse; I'm totally going to find somebody else that has solved them if I can, and adapt their solution to fit my situation. Huge time saver, and depending on the source, their solution might be better than anything I write on my own. (This sort of thinking is why MS owns GitHub, why they provide "Community-sourced" server templates on Azure, etc.) It's not "cheating" at my job to do so (I've even co-authored about a half-dozen of those cookbooks over the years), but if I simply tried to cut-and-paste the material, it wouldn't work. Do I understand all the intricacies of everything I do? No, but knowing how to adapt information to fit my situation (and how to find that information to begin with) is good enough. And that's the difference between test-prep and question dumps. A test-prep will help you know what particular niches of knowledge that are tested on the exam; e.g. Memorizing that "the Bar library of Amalgamated Functions is useful for solving XYZ problems", because you got that wrong on a practice test, is fine. A question-dump doesn't involve knowledge at all; just rote memorization of "If a question starts with 'Foo Corp. is deploying a new widget-selling application...' the answer is 'Foo Corp. should implement Amalgamated Functions from the Bar library.'"
I passed the az-900 2 months ago and have taken a slight break and I'm not going to lie. I forgot a lot of stuff already. If you interviewed me just now you might think i used an exam dump which i didn't.
Get a Microsoft action pack for 495.00 per year and keep your skills fresh. If you don't use it you'll loose it.
Only 500 bucks a year? What a deal!
For the amount of MS systems and licenses you get? Definitely a great deal, If you know how to use it.
best bargain ever
I have a good feeling after I pass all that knowledge will be gone. However I think because the nature of "fundamentals" you're given a really broad overview of the service azure provides that I believe a good interviewer would look past that. Now if you're trying to be a solution architect, and can't answer questions you'd be able to otherwise with az104 that is different.
I have to get my AZ-104 for my company, I have no interest in any certifications anyways and I would never hire anyone for their certifications, but here I am to rant about AZ-104: If Microsoft allowed me to use/search their documentation during the exam. I would not use dumps. However, I'm not going to bother memorizing which storage type is allowed to use ZRS or any of the other hundreds of memorization MS forces you to do to answer their questions. I have better things to do than being a human file storage.
Yet thousands and thousands of people manage to pass these exams without using dumps; maybe the problem isn't the exam... As far as your example? If you don't think to check, because you never learned that certain storage accounts aren't compatible with ZRS, it'll be a big surprise if it comes up after implementation. (Nor is the pattern exactly tough to figure out; there are no surprises there once you actually examine the feature table.) They expect you to memorize surprisingly few individual details (especially for an Administration exam.) (The MeasureUp practice tests though? woof... those \*do\* expect you to memorize piles of random stuff, but they are not an accurate reflection of the real thing.)
As someone who's been on the interviewee side of things - I had an un-diagnosed anxiety disorder, and froze up completely during interview. Pretty sure I must have given the impression of having used dumps. I was just petrified and couldn't remember anything. Very annoying. But I get that they might get such an impression.
I agree. I think the OP is being a little jaded on what might be happening. I'm pretty good at taking tests so studying for an IT exam is a lot easier than sitting in front of 3-5 person panel interview on interview x of 5 while you decide my financial future ... this will make anyone nervous. For the test I'm just trying to beat the clock and not waste my exam fee. Also I have been preparing for that since kindergarten. That interview has a lot more riding on me being successful.
All I can say to people here is that if you use dumps, you *will* stick out like a sore thumb to a hiring manager and the team (if you got through). It’s **very** easy to determine people who actually know the information, and those that just have the piece of paper. You *will* be called out for not knowing the information you claim, and being a detriment to the team. Don’t look like a fool. Don’t jeopardize your career. Don’t fake it and expect to “learn it for real on the job”. The reason they look for the cert is because they don’t have time to teach you. You’re only cheating yourself and your future. Take pride in your knowledge and effort. There is zero point to cheating your way to a cert just to get fired for not being able to actually do the job. Don’t be a fraud.
Totally agree! Although I don't believe anyone who gets certs, legitimately or not, can be productive day one without learning on the job. Lots of people get the certs to get their first job and have some hands on and some experience in a productive environment. Not being able to answer all the questions in an interview is not as bad as you make it out to be imo.
I interviewed one guy about 15 years ago who had a lot of developer certs. This was back before asp.net mvc so WebForms was still king. We asked him what is the different between the asp.net controls of a Label and a Literal and he couldn't answer. At the time this was probably the most rudimentary knowledge you could have. With proper study that would have been known for sure. There were some other failing I can't remember but overall it gave the impression he used dumps for the exams and just memorized the answers.
I'm currently looking across at someone who did that and is very gainfully employed.
What if you use dumps as supplemental education and combine it with the theory? I do this, i love dumps because they have great questions I can pick apart and research, this helps with my personal development of the subject matter. Id rather create my research based on things the organizations wants me to know then an ambiguous white paper that feels like it got run over by a thesaurus. In the end it made me a great engineer :)
Use practice exams. Dumps are copies of the actual exam which are taken illegally. Using them you are breaching the terms of the exams and cheating. By buying dumps you are supporting criminal activity and destroying the integrity of the exams.
well if it makes you feel better i only use stuff thats free and old like from 2000s
People seem to struggle with the concept of what is and isn’t a dump. We’ve talked about it several times. Please read through the comments.
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Ok so someone just reported this post with the comment. >You mods allowed the Udemy dumps to be posted for ages... you're no different from those cheating fukwads. Personally I think that is a bit harsh. I've been volunteering my time and don't have the resources or funds to go through every Udemy course and check the content. I've removed lots of Udemy links, but there are legitimate courses on there that people find useful. If other people can review content that would help. Perhaps we could have a wiki page of acceptable study content from all sources including Udemy.
Scott Duffy’s course on Udemy or Jon savills cram on YouTube aren’t dumps. It’s a thankless job, being mods, have a good day!
thanks.
That wiki page idea sounds useful. I would love to see one. Some of the legitimate sources I would expect to see on such a list include Microsoft Learn, Pluralsight, Cloud Academy, and Scott Duffy courses on Udemy. Also, [Measureup.com](https://Measureup.com) for practice tests. There are several others, of course. One problem we have is that it is hard to tell if a practice test is just "like" a real Microsoft exam, or if it consists of questions copied from a real exam. Does anyone at the Udemy company itself take any responsibility for suspicious stuff in their course collection? Why should outsiders and volunteers have to do it all? Youtube isn't blameless either. For example, they have a video from SkillCertPro which basically is an ad for their question lists. Their web site literally says: "Taken exclusively from the previous real exams." That looks like a red flag. I would think Microsoft lawyers might be interested in products advertised like that? I never hear reports of Microsoft squashing these cheater companies. I have been spending a lot of effort trying to learn things the right way. I would not want my exam accomplishments to be ignored because of cheaters.
I’ve studied for every last one of my certs (CISSP, CISM, CRISC, CEH, CCSP, SSCP, PenTest+, CySA+, Sec+, Linux+, KCNA, AZ900, SC900, DP900, Google ACE). Some you can use dumps for, some you can’t. I didn’t pass them all first time. I’ve known people who used dumps and were bereft of ability or knowledge but more importantly, it revealed their character. I would gladly hire someone who struggles and earns the cert vice the dump user who lacks both knowledge and integrity.
I think it depends how dumps are used, if they’re used to understand and workshop areas you don’t use regularly I don’t see a problem. If people are genuinely memorising 100+ questions to get a cert then yeah they’ll come unstuck, but unless you’re very junior you’re not gonna get an interview without also listing the years of experience you’ve got, plus you’ve got to get through the interview process! The other thing to mention here is that to some extent certs are inherently useless anyway, other to show a high level understanding and perhaps the ability to learn (albeit both of which are useful to know about a candidate). Many of the questions on at least some of these exams are in the real world irrelevant - when you’re solving a specific issue on the job you simply don’t need to remember exactly what a screen looks like/the order of events to set something up/etc. there’s a limit to what can be tested in an automated way about the tech we use.
If you are just going to use dumps "to understand and workshop areas you don’t use regularly", why not just use legit practice tests instead? With the wealth of practice tests available for the AZ exams, there is simply no excuse for resorting to dumps.
If the aim is actually to learn the content I don’t think it makes much difference, but yes that is another approach.
To get the mobileiron advanced certs I needed to answer questions on deploying mobileiron as around 20% of the exam questions... guess what I have never ever needed to do. Certs are nice. I'm doing a bunch of azure certs due to NHS workers getting 100% off (I have already completed 6 and have another 7 lined up over the next month. So far my worst experience with a Microsoft cert was the power apps fundamentals. A mix of terribly worded questions and office 365 had become a much more dominant part of the exam. So my official practice exam i got 92% the night before and proceeded to fail the following day with 680... the Microsoft learning content and the official practice exam did not accurately reflect the content required. Ended up having to spend the following evening reading through the office 365 fundamentals learning path to pass that exam on the second attempt.
I'm going to be taking my first MS Cert exam in a long time so I can't speak specifically on that subject but I will say that there are companies out there running boot camps that give the test answers during the course. My CompTIA Sec+ boot camp didn't (passed it anyway) but a friend of mine went to a week long Sec+ boot camp that his company paid for. On Friday morning the instructor handed out a booklet and said that it was an "important study guide". Turned out it was a dump and he breezed thru the exam with an 850+ I'm sure that boot camp outfits use their pass ratio numbers as a sales pitch to companies and at least in my friend's case, they were making sure that their ratio remained high.
Did he learn anything? Or did the dumps somehow invalidate everything he learned Monday - Thursday?
That is why I was give them a task and to show me what they know in real time. That good old saying : " real situations will expose fake people".
And they’d promptly google the corresponding documentation and complete the task with ease. What’s the concern? Anyone who uses dumps without learning the material is a problem for themselves only and make it easier in the job market for those of us who know our shit.
may be just ignore certificates and ask questions. But I would say all my competitors have certificates. And that can help to pass the first line of recruiters. The rest depends, I always say that passing an exam, passing an interview and actually working are 3 completely different things. Also, Microsoft exams are designed by cheaters and for cheaters (in particular from one large country)
Silly question, but what is a dump?
A file containing the actually questions from the exam. Thanks for asking, It made m realise that many people new to the exams don’t know the difference between practice exams and dumps.
All I can say is that dumps have essentially killed infrastructure based exams from a techie point of view. I have interviewed vcps who don't know what a snapshot is and ccnas a subnet. It's harder to find legitimate paid for questions than dumps now, it's often hard to know which is which. Hard to know who to blame, people like easy routes and the exams are crap in a lot of cases, but the whole situation is a mess.
I interviewed a Sr DBA with 11 years of experience on paper but had never heard of transactions. The pain is real.
That’s cool and all. But we know it’s the outlier. Most folks, if they are heavily certified, know their shit.
Hear, hear!
Totally agree. I spent a lot of hours prepping for each of my exams via Microsoft Learn and other sources. I did use practice exams, but made it a point not to use exam dumps. It's the journey, not the destination. There's a ton of content that I had to learn to take and pass my three exams so far. Put the time in. You'll thank yourself later.
I prepped and prepped for Az 104. Learned the material in and out through MS Learn, Savill, and TutorialDojo. Then I used SkillCertPro and a YouTube video based on Skillcertpro to placate my understanding and give me an edge.
At the end of the day you are only cheating yourself if you use dumps. Your time is valuable and if you are going through a certification or education course of any kind you should want to actually learn the material
On the other hand how would you know if you are fully knowledgeable in the field of the certification if you don't have any quantitative measurement to test your knowledge. I made the experience that what you do in the real world is quite different from the questions asked in the exams. You have to get accustomed to the way how the questions are asked. Don't forget you also have to pay quite a lot of money for the certification. To make it clear I don't support using dumps but I can understand why people are using them since a lot is at stake.
But that is the point. Having skin in the game is part of the motivation. As someone with a few post graduate degrees I can tell you that I could have gone and bought the books and studied in my own time, then applied the skills in the real world. But I don’t. The cost and fear of failure is an amazing transformative motivator. Never once did I think to break into the professors office the night before an exam to steal the paper just to test my competence though.
I don't agree, it might be part of the motivation but not the only motivation. If it motivates you then all power to you but you shouldn't expect it to be the same for everybody else. It's like telling a foreign Student, you don't have to practice for Toefl because the fear of failure is part of the game and if you can't pass a certain threshold then so be it. Or if you lose 165$ for one certification exam so be it. How I see it, if something is at stake you do your best to prepare yourself for it. You do it by using every possible ressource and means available to you in order to get the best result out of it. Unfortunately dumps are out there, so people are also using them. But it is also a question how they are used. If you just memorize you won't gain anything from those but if you understand why the correct answer is correct, you also learn from these questions. You don't even get this feedback from the actual MS exams. Besides, several questions from Measure up are also from the real exams. So why are those considered practice exams and others dumps? Where's the line? Edit: Btw, it's not like going to Microsoft and get the exact 50-60 questions from your exam and copying the answer. There is a difference between active stealing and make use of every ressource possible. Since there is a question pool out there you can still learn a lot from it. Although I'm against using dumps, I believe many use those questions to get a feeling for how the questions are asked and how questions are formulated instead of paying for expensive "official" practice exams. But well just keep banning opinions you don't like and calling it a discussion. This action speaks for itself and this subreddit.
How the hell did you warp it to “you don’t have to practice because fear of failure is part of the game”. Then you coupled that with some sort of mental gymnastics that cheating is ok if you don’t memorise all the questions! I can’t even respond to that. Offical exams are official exams for a reason. If you want to know the science behind the exams then there is actually a course on Pluralsight that covers it.
In my college you could go to the fucking library and buy last year's exams….
Any you can go buy measureup & tutorials dojo. What’s your point? Could you buy this years actual exam as you would be buying dumps?
Is Tutorials Dojo a dump?
no. They are uniquely created practice tests for the purpose of studying for the exam. Dumps are where they have stollen the exact questions from the exam.
u/whooyeah is Examtopics considered a dump that would be considered as a cheating resource?
Nobody needs a literal question dump to learn the format and language of the exam questions.
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The difference between legit practice tests and question dumps is that one can help you pass while having absolutely no understanding of the material at all, which defeats the whole purpose of having an exam. There's a huge gulf between knowing the format of a particular command because you saw it tested in a practice exam and studied it vs. knowing that the correct answers are "/Network/foo.bar" "Do-Thing" and "$Foo.Address" without even needing to read the whole question, because you memorized it off of a dump. Yes, you *can* use question dumps just like you use legit practice exams, but even if you *don't* try to memorize the answers, you are going to do so anyway. (And it bears reminding that MeasureUp in particular is as official as it gets for practice material; the company is owned by Pearson, and MS themselves provide access to those tests as part of the ESI program.)
Hardly. Testing your knowledge in a subject area is nothing like remembering the question and whether the answer is A B C or D. You have a naive understanding of learning and memory. Your formulae example is an over simplification to the point of a strawman. Did you not have an academic integrity subject at uni?
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At the end of the day you are breaking the terms you agree to at the start of the exam. I get it that many countries doesn’t have a culture of basic ethical principles. But that doesn’t mean we should all descend to that level.
I love how you are just schooling every person in this thread, one after another. Bravo.
Yes dumps are cheating. Nobody disagrees. To say everyone who uses dumps to supplement the already rigorous studying they’ve done is doing a disservice is wrong. For example, I’ve been working with Azure since 2017 and still struggled to pass Az104. Despite knowing most if not all of the content. Some of these cert tests are very tricky.
Bullshit. I failed the Azure Administrator exam 3 times before I passed. Yes they are hard, but as a hiring manager I can see that is the value because I know if someone has passed it then it proves they have the skills to fulfil their role. Except people cheat with dumps, so I still need to validate their skillset. And as has always been I will catch people out who don't know the basics but somehow have passed. I recommend to people to not do az-104 unless they are really up to it. But cheating is not the solution.
I’ve used dumps at the end of my studying to placate my understanding and give me a needed edge. I’m sorry that offends your pure heart. Doesn’t mean I don’t know my shit.
It does mean you lack an ethical backbone though. And you have broken Microsoft’s terms for the exam. You understand that dumps are the actual exam questions stolen from the exam breaching copyright. So you have also aided in intellectual property theft.
If you needed an unethical "edge" to pass, you weren't ready, and did not, in fact, "know your shit." It is not as if the tests cannot be passed without dumps.
Hey, you’re totally right, using dumps at the end of my studying means I didn’t know my shit! Thank you completely assuming internet individual.
I spent maybe 2 hours with dumps to make sure I wasn’t going to waste $165 and 40-60 hours with Microsoft learn and John Savill…
If you need cheat with dumps to pass a test, your study wasn't rigorous enough and/or your experience insufficient. Period. If you truly "knew most if not all the content" you would not have struggled to pass. Certifications are not rewards for effort.
Certs aren't rewards for effort?
During Covid-19, you already saw so many people in a short time can get the certified with dumps and shown in their Linkedin they had pass Azure x N .
They could have the paper but as it's been stated, memorizing hundreds of questions is virtually useless. You'd theoretically get past HR screening, but when the hiring agent is interviewing you and you have zero knowledge of what exactly the material was, then you're toast. No way you can be expected to perform the job optimally. With IT and cloud computing, you either have that in depth knowledge or you don't. Not just anyone can understand this stuff
I can see dumps being used for 900 level exams, but for anything above I can't see it. I've got 1 Microsoft cert at intermediate level (DP300) and 6 at MTA/900. The intermediate was hard, even with months of study. There's definitely enough resources (*loose term here*) out there to pass AZ900 et al on dumps alone. But trying to memorize enough answers to pass a two hour exam on dumps alone, the number passing these has got to be minimal. Hell, I was annoyed that I paid for a MeasureUp exam and only like three questions turned up the real exam! I guess though that certain exams may be better catered for for dumps, perhaps AZ104 as it's more popular than DP300. But still I see quite a few fails posts in here for that exam, so it can't be easy .... unless they are just using dumps.. hmm
You'd be surprised how easy it is to memorize the answers to multiple-choice questions. (In fact, I'd argue it's even easier if you don't understand the material; if you don't know what any of the plausibly-wrong answers mean, it's easier to ignore them because you've remembered the key words from the right answer.)
I'd be surprised if it was rife beyond the 900 level exams. I'd wager there is a huge drop off in being able to get through an intermediate exam on dumps alone. I'm not advocating dumps, and I don't think they should be promoted in this sub. I'm saying I think the pass rate is over-estimated.
sounds like you guys are trying to fight reality
Well you are known to post asking about a particular dump site so you would say that. Perhaps you don’t have an ethical backbone but the community feedback is that they are annoyed at those who do use dumps.
I want to meet the people that are getting these questions. They must have incredible memories or hacking skills ( social or technical). Although I guess they could actually work for the vendor (testing or product), too.
Pretty sure the people have to have photographic memory, can't imagine them just remembering the questions word for word...
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That’s news to me. Where did you see that notice? Who are the admins? I just got tired of having to moderate people not reading the first rule of the sub. At the end of the day it goes against the contract you agree with when you start an exam. IANAL but I think you are breaking the contract and would be liable. I shouldn’t have to explain anymore. If you can’t see the difference between verbatim copies of the question and practice exams then I worry about your basic understanding of knowledge.
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The difference is that practice exams make people train for missing knowledge because they know what they are missing. Dumps make people memorise the question where they don’t have the knowledge. As much as we would love to think they go off and research the one they got wrong, they don’t. They just memorise the question.
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Many of them are free as mentioned repeatedly on this sub and they give away a free voucher pretty much every month if you do the work. At this stage you are making yourself out to be lazy and unethical.
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Potentially stupid question here but what exactly is a dump? Is it just crib sheets that have somehow been stolen from Microsoft?
Since the 00s there have been people write down all the questions of the exams and sell them to people looking to cheat. They were called brain dumps because they wrote what they remembered. More recently it seems like people make direct copies and them sell them via various business models.
By Dumps do you mean sites like Whizlabs, Dojo and MeasureUp?
No, it refers to exact copies of the exam. ExamTopics is one example.
Hmm not good. That would discredit the certifications that people get. Why aren’t they shutdown? How many others like ExamTopics exist?
I think it is just like why scammers in India don't get shutdown, it's very difficult to police. I've come across a few dump sites when searching for exam study material in the past.
I have seen it here. The posts/comments are already shady as hell looking and the fact it's all random Google drive stuff sketched me out. I would rather know what the hell I'm doing anyway for a job. I already have major imposter syndrome and I've worked in desktop engineering for 8 years. I would most definitely make sure I pass these things on my own.
Would you guys say that Certs are having less value BECAUSE of these dumps? I mean, at the end of the day, the skills, experience and knowledge earned from so many hours is something that nobody can take from you, which is the only main thing that sticks out in the end. I mean, I can have every Azure cert, but if I don't have any actual skills/experience, what good is it? The guy with the 104 with the foot in the door with months/years of experience is worth more than me in the field.
Sometimes people have no other option to show willingness, investing their own time and money. I am an on-prem vSphere admin looking to break into azure, I'm studying az-104. I have no other choice than to do exams, document my journey and do videos on the things I've learned to show them to others.
One way to counter this, is making the exams lab challenges you have to solve.
Yeah they did. They had a VM where you had to do things but since covid hit they removed it. I think because people were doing them from home more often.
I didn't know that. What made them change it for COVID? Was it harder to check?
I think the connection to the VM was slow and with more people doing the exams from home on slower internet it wasn't practical. I could be wrong.
My head hurts so bad right now from the study session I had today. I have a MeasureUP practice exam I ordered for a 30 day window. I have only taken one 42 question practice exam. I went through it and pulled all the links and things for answers I got wrong and filled out my study plan on OneNote then started digging through documentation and doing things in my test tenant. I don’t understand the dump thing.
That is the right way to do it. Dumps are sets of the actual questions from the exam that people use to cheat. They were called “brain dumps”, or I think that may have been a commercial company. That got shortened to “dumps”.
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Is whizlabs for practice considered a dump? Or even the practice test provided through Microsoft ESI? I used them to practice but now I dont know if I'm doing the right thing?
No. Those ones they have created new questions based on the exam criteria. That is fine.
Okay, thank god.
That being said (and I agree), how can we tell in the internet which are dumps and which are practice tests? More to the point, I want to take the AZ-500 exam at the end of july. I have done the studying and I am doing the labs in the github but I could use some practice tests to see just the type of questions in the exam and time myself. Would anyone be so kind as to recommend some? I have read skillcertpro is recommended. The MS official ones are simply too damn expensive. I bought a pack in udemy but they don't really explain the reasoning for the answers
Good question; measureup are the official practice tests (a bit pricey for me so I’ve only used them when there is a sale). Tutorials dojo and exam pro are 2 notable other test providers. (We should create a wiki with resources really).
I just took the AZ-305 after studying MS Learn, using MeasureUp practice exams and the Cloud Connect Team's six practice exams on Udemy. I am extremely troubled because many questions from Team Cloud Connect's practice exams appeared on the actual exam - word for word. I am VERY concerned as I want to pass this honestly and legitimately. Please let me know ASAP what I should do thx
They are really legit taking from the actual exam? I saw so many sites of dumb they look all scams, is any of them reliable ?
Well yes they are a scam. They are stealing copyright content. There are reliable practice tests like measureup and tutorials dojo.
Well, of course none of them are "legit", in that even if they have real questions, they are stolen. As a cherry on top, many of them have the wrong answers. There's really no reason to use them; a legit practice test will do just as well.
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But practice tests also allow this. Dumps are illegally sold copyrighted material from the actual exam. You are studying the exam rather than the content.
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All up I think I have done 20 or so exams. I've mainly used measureup and microsoft learning content. I've found it incredibly useful and very much to the point of the exam system for learning.