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Writer's pictureAndrew Kelleher
Mar 18, 20225 min read

AZ-104: Azure Administrator Study Guide

Updated: Sep 12, 2023

I’m excited to announce that this guide is now available as a Notion template! Extended and enhanced for 2023 it provides in-depth notes for all 90+ exam topics, example PowerShell / AZ CLI commands, further tips and the ability to track your study progress. It can be downloaded from Gumroad here.

Exam overview

I passed this exam a while back, but I wanted to share my AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator Exam Study Guide with you.

The content of this exam was updated on October 27, 2022. This study guide has been updated to reflect the latest objectives

The AZ-104 exam is the only exam needed to obtain the Azure Administrator Associate certification. According to Microsoft -


“Candidates for this exam should have subject matter expertise in implementing, managing, and monitoring an organization’s Microsoft Azure environment, including virtual networks, storage, compute, identity, security, and governance.


An Azure administrator often serves as part of a larger team dedicated to implementing an organization’s cloud infrastructure. Azure administrators also coordinate with other roles to deliver Azure networking, security, database, application development, and DevOps solutions.


Candidates for this exam should be familiar with operating systems, networking, servers, and virtualization. In addition, professionals in this role should have experience using PowerShell, Azure CLI, the Azure portal, Azure Resource Manager templates (ARM templates), and Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), part of Microsoft Entra”


The high-level view of the skills measured in the exam are:

  • Manage Azure identities and governance (15–20%)

  • Implement and manage storage (15–20%)

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

  • Configure and manage virtual networking (20–25%)

  • Monitor and maintain Azure resources (10–15%)

More information can be found on the exam’s website. The exam has a passing score of 700.


Free Microsoft Learn resources

Microsoft Learn is an ever-expanding catalogue of free training courses provided by Microsoft. After you’ve reviewed the exam objectives, I’d highly recommend working through these next. They’re in nice bite-sized sections, and you can easily track your progress.


Microsoft Learn contains dedicated learning paths for the AZ-104 exam. Across the 6 learning paths, there are a total of 57 modules (this might sound like a lot, but most of the modules are straightforward!) -

Also highly recommended is John Savill’s AZ-104 Study Cram video on YouTube.


Online Paid Training Courses

In addition to Microsoft’s free resources, there are several paid options for online training courses. These are often more interactive and provide a useful way to fill in any gaps in your knowledge.


Below, I’ve linked to what I think are the best options for the AZ-104 exam -


AZ-104 Books

Some people prefer to use books to study, which is why Microsoft still publishes the Exam Ref series. As exam objectives get updated fairly regularly, make sure that you get the latest edition of any study guides -


Practice Exams

So you’ve studied for the exam and want to assess your readiness? Practice tests are a great way to check your knowledge.


Practice tests are a great way to assess your readiness for the real exam. Here are some links to the most popular ones -

If you’re new to certification exams, Microsoft has also recently announced an “exam sandbox”. The aim is to allow you to experience the look and feel of a certification exam before you sit one for real.


Microsoft Docs for AZ-104

This section steps through each of the exam topics with links to the relevant Microsoft documentation.


Manage Azure identities and governance (15–20%)

Manage Azure AD objects

Manage access control

Manage Azure subscriptions and governance


Implement and manage storage (15–20%)

Configure access to storage

Manage data in Azure storage accounts

Configure Azure Files and Azure Blob Storage


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

Automate deployment of resources by using templates

Create and configure VMs

Create and configure containers

Create and configure Azure App Service


Configure and manage virtual networking (20–25%)

Configure virtual networks

Configure secure access to virtual networks

Configure load balancing

Monitor virtual networking


Monitor and maintain Azure resources (10–15%)

Monitor resources by using Azure Monitor

Implement backup and recovery


Additional tips

For any of the Azure certifications, I find deploying the relevant Azure resources and configuring their features to be hugely beneficial to my learning. You can grab a free Azure trial to receive 12 months of free popular services, $200 free credit, and 25+ always free services.


If you’re working with Azure on a daily basis, then there are likely areas you’re already familiar with. Focus on those areas that are new to you, read and practice!


The exam topics cover a diverse range of topics but with a strong emphasis on networking and storage. Learn when you’d choose one service over another.. and how you’d deploy and configure that service, especially using the relevant PowerShell cmdlets.


I hope you found this study guide useful and good luck! Please let me know of any other resources that you found helpful for the exam.



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