AZ-104 Study Guide

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Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104), yet again one certification that I need to renew so what better than write a study guide as I’m refreshing my memory about the subjects of this certification. This guide is for you who are either renewing your exam like me or taking it for the first time.

This guide includes current certification objectives (as of 10.05.2022) and I have tried to cover each objective with at least link to relevant documentation but of course tried to find some relevant study paths, tutorials etc. Feel free to contact me if you have some material that could be added.

At the end of this post I have added a list of Microsoft learning paths as well as some other resources that I have found to be relevant.

AZ-104? Who should take it?

This certification is for people who are implementing, managing, and monitoring an organization’s Microsoft Azure environment. Microsoft themselves state the following:

Candidates for the Azure Administrator Associate certification should have subject matter expertise implementing, managing, and monitoring an organization’s Microsoft Azure environment.

Responsibilities for this role include implementing, managing, and monitoring identity, governance, storage, compute, and virtual networks in a cloud environment, plus provision, size, monitor, and adjust resources, when needed.

An Azure administrator often serves as part of a larger team dedicated to implementing an organization’s cloud infrastructure.

A candidate for this certification should have at least six months of hands-on experience administering Azure, along with a strong understanding of core Azure services, Azure workloads, security, and governance. In addition, this role should have experience using PowerShell, Azure CLI, Azure portal, and Azure Resource Manager templates.

If you find at least some sort of similarities with description above, maybe it would be worth to look into this certification in more detail. HERE is a link to exam.

Exam AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator – Learn
Exam AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator

Are there prerequisites?

No, there are no prerequisites on associate level certifications. However, you can take Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) up front if you’d like to. 🙂

Skills measured

NOTE: Most questions cover features that are general availability (GA). The exam may contain questions on Preview features if those features are commonly used

Manage Azure identities and governance (15–20%)

Microsoft Learn learning path

Manage Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) objects

Manage role-based access control (RBAC)

Manage subscriptions and governance

Implement and manage storage (15–20%)

Microsoft Learn learning path

Secure storage

Manage storage

Configure Azure files and Azure Blob Storage

Deploy and manage Azure compute resources (20–25%)

Microsoft Learn learning path

Automate deployment of virtual machines (VMs) by using Azure Resource Manager templates

Configure VMs

Create and configure containers

Create and configure Azure App Service

Configure and manage virtual networking (25–30%)

Microsoft Learn learning path

Implement and manage virtual networking

Secure access to virtual networks

Configure load balancing

Monitor and troubleshoot virtual networking

Integrate an on-premises network with an Azure virtual network

Monitor and back up Azure resources (10–15%)

Microsoft Learn learning path

Monitor resources by using Azure Monitor

Implement backup and recovery

Microsoft Learn learning paths

Microsoft provides learning paths towards Azure Administrator Associate on their learning platform. These consist of several modules to go through and once you have completed all of them the path is done. Currently there are 6 different learning paths associated with AZ-104 certification:

Other learning sources

John Savill has made an excellent video series called Azure Administrator Study List on his YouTube channel. There are 28 parts in this series and the playlist can be found HERE.

A Cloud Guru has AZ-104 course HERE and Pluralsights course can be found HERE. Note to mention neither of these are free. A Cloud Guru also has THIS over hour long exam question walkthrough in YouTube which is completely free.

Let’s get certified!

Published by jukka