Chapter 8 of 10 · Microsoft AZ-400
Pipelines: maintain pipelines
Health and flaky tests, optimizing cost, time and reliability, retention, and migrating classic pipelines to YAML.
- 2topics
- 11 minfast track
Topics in this chapter
Take them in order, or jump to the one you need.
- 1Pipeline Health and OptimizationAZ-400 pipeline health: failure rate, duration and flaky test reports, then optimizing cost, time and reliability with caching…5 min
- 2Artifact Retention and Migrating Classic PipelinesAZ-400 retention: project retention settings, leases, release and feed retention, GitHub artifact retention, and migrating…6 min
About this chapter
What this chapter covers
A pipeline is a product with users, bugs and running costs. This chapter is the last part of the build and release pipelines domain, worth 50 to 55 percent of the exam in total. It covers monitoring pipeline health (failure rate, duration, flaky tests), optimizing for cost, time, performance and reliability, retention of runs and artifacts, and migrating classic pipelines to YAML.
The key skill is using data to decide: which pipeline fails most, where the time goes, what to keep and what to delete.
How the topics fit together
- Pipeline health and optimization covers reports, flaky tests, caching, concurrency and cost.
- Artifact retention and migrating classic pipelines covers retention settings, leases and the move from classic to YAML.
Optimize the part of the pipeline that takes the most time or fails most often. Reports tell you which part that is.
How to use these pages
Each topic page has the same shape, so you can skim for what you need.
- What it is: the idea in plain words.
- How it works: the mechanism, with examples and tables.
- What to remember for the exam: the facts to memorise and how questions are phrased.
- Common mistakes: the classic traps.
- Check yourself: three questions to test your understanding.
Ready for more practice?
The full Microsoft AZ-400 question bank has 766 questions, with timed practice exams and an explanation for every answer.
This study guide is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Microsoft. Vendor names, certification names and exam codes are trademarks of their respective owners and are used for identification only.