Failed D487 first try, mostly because I underestimated how scenario-heavy the exam is. Studied the course material front to back, felt solid on secure SDLC and OWASP concepts, but got tripped up by questions that dropped you into a specific situation and asked what you'd do next. That style of...
I was solid on backup and restore strategies going in, but HA/DR configurations kept tripping me up in mocks. Auto-failover groups, read-scale replicas, geo-replication setup, I kept mixing up when to use which, and that's exactly where the exam likes to test you with tricky scenario questions...