Creating a Microsoft 365 trial account
For those people who are new to Microsoft cloud services such as Azure and Microsoft 365, it is important to get hands-on experience, not only for the exam you are taking but also for professional development. You must understand the admin portals and how they work if you are looking to get certified. In this book, we will provide exercises that will get you familiar with how to work within the Microsoft 365 and Azure portals and how to navigate when in them. In order to follow along with the steps, we recommend you get a subscription to both Microsoft 365 and Azure Active Directory Premium P2. We will detail the steps required to obtain a 30-day trial in the next section.
Microsoft 365 or Office 365 trial subscription
The features and abilities discussed within the SC-400 exam objectives need a Microsoft 365 enterprise-level license, which E3 and E5 licenses are classed as. Microsoft offers a 30-day trial license for both. Therefore, as you prepare for the exam, you can create these subscriptions and follow the exercises.
You can navigate to the following link to get started, and select Try for free, as shown in Figure 1.9 under the Office 365 E5 plan: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/compare-office-365-plans:
Figure 1.9 – Office 365 E5 trial subscription
To create an account, follow the process as shown in Figure 1.10. If you have created an account before, you will need to use a different email address to obtain a free trial again:
Figure 1.10 – Office 365 trial sign-up process
Once you have completed the process and created the Microsoft 365 tenant, you will have access to the full Microsoft 365 suite of services as well as all the different admin panels. In the next section, we will walk you through the process of setting up an additional service that will be required to follow along with the exercises within this book and complete the hands-on labs to prepare you for the exam.
Obtaining the relevant license
You will need an Azure Information Protection (AIP) Premium P2 license for the advanced information protection features that are discussed within the SC-400 exam objectives. The best way to get these features is by obtaining an Enterprise Mobility + Security E5 license. As with most Microsoft 365 licenses, you can also get a 30-day trial of this. Let's perform the following steps:
- Navigate to the following link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise-mobility-security/compare-plans-and-pricing.
- Once you have navigated to this web page, select Try now under the Enterprise Mobility + Security E5 plan, as shown in the following screenshot:
Figure 1.11 – EMS E5 trial subscription
Please note that this is an add-on license to Microsoft 365, so you should enter the details of your email address that you used to sign up for the Office 365 subscription earlier in this chapter, as shown in the following screenshot:
Figure 1.12 – EMS E5 sign-up form
The topics you have learned about so far in this chapter have enabled you to understand the different types of questions you can expect in all Microsoft's role-based certification exams, where you can find free study resources, and finally, how to obtain a free trial of the relevant Microsoft subscription and add-on license to allow you to follow the hands-on lab assignments within this book.