Complete Prep for Exam AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator Certification

Cloud administration is no longer just about keeping servers running. Azure administrators are expected to manage identities, configure storage, deploy computing resources, secure networks, monitor environments, and keep cloud spending under control. That combination makes the Microsoft Azure Administrator certification a practical credential for professionals who want to work directly with Azure environments.

The current Microsoft study guide describes the Azure Administrator role around implementing, managing, and monitoring Azure across identity, governance, storage, compute, networking, security, and related infrastructure. Microsoft also recommends practical experience with the Azure portal, PowerShell, Azure CLI, Microsoft Entra ID, and Azure Resource Manager templates or Bicep.

What You Need to Know Before Starting Your AZ-104 Preparation

The AZ-104 exam is built around five major skill areas: managing Azure identities and governance, implementing and managing storage, deploying and managing Azure compute resources, implementing and managing virtual networking, and monitoring and maintaining Azure resources. Microsoft currently assigns 20–25% to identity and governance, 15–20% to storage, 20–25% to compute, 15–20% to networking, and 10–15% to monitoring and maintenance.

That weighting gives you an immediate clue about how to organize your study time. Identity, governance, and compute deserve particularly strong attention, but the smaller sections should not be ignored. A question about backup, network troubleshooting, or storage access can be just as important as one about virtual machines.

Microsoft's current objectives are measured as of April 17, 2026, so older study material should be checked against the latest skills outline before you rely on it.

Start With Identity and Azure Governance

Microsoft Entra ID and access control

A surprising number of Azure administration tasks come back to identity. You should be comfortable creating and managing users and groups, handling licenses, configuring self-service password reset, and working with external users.

Role-Based Access Control is equally important. Rather than thinking only in terms of “who can access Azure,” learn to reason about what a user can do, where they can do it, and which role is appropriate. Microsoft specifically includes built-in roles, role assignments at different scopes, and interpreting access assignments among the assessed skills.

Governance is more than permissions

Azure governance includes Policy, resource locks, tags, resource groups, subscriptions, management groups, and cost controls such as budgets and alerts. These tools matter because a well-designed cloud environment needs guardrails, not just resources. Imagine an organization with dozens of teams creating resources independently. Without policies or consistent tagging, costs become difficult to track and security standards become inconsistent. Governance is what brings some order to that environment. For tailored guidance on implementing these controls in your organization, feel free to visit our website Contact Us 

Give Storage the Attention It Deserves

Azure Storage covers more ground than simply creating a storage account. The current exam objectives include storage firewalls and virtual networks, SAS tokens, access keys, redundancy, object replication, encryption, Azure Files, Blob Storage, storage tiers, lifecycle management, versioning, snapshots, and soft delete.

Learn the reason behind each configuration

Instead of memorizing settings one by one, connect them to real situations.

A company storing frequently accessed application data may make different choices from one archiving information that is rarely retrieved. Likewise, an organization concerned about accidental deletion may rely on recovery features that would be unnecessary in a disposable development environment.

Microsoft's official training also expects administrators to understand how to configure and manage Azure storage services rather than simply identify them by name.

Master Compute Through Hands-On Practice

Compute is one of the heavier sections of the exam, and it is difficult to master through reading alone. The objectives cover virtual machines, App Service, containers, and deployment automation using ARM templates or Bicep.

Spend time creating resources yourself. Deploy a virtual machine, adjust its configuration, connect it to the right network, and explore how scaling and availability choices affect the environment.

App Service deserves particular attention because the current objectives include deployment, scaling, certificates and TLS, custom DNS, backup, networking settings, and deployment slots.

The same principle applies to infrastructure as code. When you read a Bicep file, try to explain what each resource is creating and how the dependencies fit together. Understanding the structure is much more useful than memorizing syntax.

Think in Networks, Not Isolated Services

Azure networking can feel complicated at first because several services solve different problems. Virtual networks, subnets, peering, public IP addresses, user-defined routes, network security groups, Bastion, private endpoints, DNS, and load balancing all fit into the wider picture.

A useful study exercise is to draw a small environment on paper. Put a virtual network in the center, divide it into subnets, add a virtual machine, then ask how traffic should move between resources.

What happens when a connection fails?
Which security rule could block it?
Does the service need a public endpoint or a private connection?
Would a route change alter the traffic path?

Those questions turn networking from memorization into troubleshooting practice.

Monitoring and Recovery Should Be Part of Your Daily Practice

A cloud administrator does not stop working once resources are deployed. The environment needs to be observed, measured, and recovered when something goes wrong.

Microsoft's current exam objectives include Azure Monitor metrics and logs, alerts and action groups, monitoring insights, Network Watcher, Connection Monitor, Azure Backup, Recovery Services vaults, backup policies, and Azure Site Recovery.

Try to think of monitoring as a story. A virtual machine becomes slow. A metric changes. A log contains clues. An alert is triggered. You investigate, identify the cause, and then decide whether the solution is configuration, scaling, networking, or something else.

That mindset is useful far beyond the exam.

Build a Study Routine That Uses the Azure Portal

Microsoft recommends training and hands-on experience before taking the exam, and its administrator learning paths include dedicated modules for prerequisites, identity and governance, storage, compute, and other administrator skills.

A practical study routine can follow this pattern:

• Learn one Azure service and use it immediately. Read the documentation, then recreate the basic configuration in a test environment so the terminology has a practical reference point.

• Practice troubleshooting rather than only deployment. Deliberately change a setting, observe what breaks, and work backward to identify the cause.

• Review weak areas at the end of each week. Keep a small record of concepts that repeatedly cause confusion instead of rereading everything equally.

Practice questions should support this process rather than replace it. Microsoft provides a free Practice Assessment and an exam sandbox as part of its preparation resources.

Prepare for the Exam With an Administrator's Mindset

The strongest candidates do more than recognize Azure terminology. They can look at a scenario and determine what the environment actually needs.

Suppose a company wants to give a developer access to one resource group but not the subscription. Or perhaps a storage account needs stronger access controls without exposing data publicly. Maybe an application needs private connectivity to a platform service. These are not questions about memorizing isolated features. They are questions about choosing the right Azure capability for a specific requirement.

Microsoft currently requires a score of 700 or greater to pass, according to its official AZ-104 study guide.

The most productive final preparation is therefore a combination of review, hands-on configuration, troubleshooting, and timed practice. Learn the service. Use the service. Break the service. Fix the problem. Then explain why your solution worked.

That is the kind of preparation that makes Azure administration feel less like an exam subject and more like a skill you can actually use.