AZ-104 Study Guide: Pass the Azure Administrator Exam

The AZ-104 is Microsoft's Azure Administrator Associate exam, and it's a real step up from the fundamentals level. It costs $165, runs 100 minutes, and you pass at 700 out of 1000. Most people who already touch Azure at work get ready in five to six weeks; if you're coming in cold, plan on more.

This one is for sysadmins, support engineers, and anyone who manages cloud infrastructure and wants the AZ-104 certification to prove it. Unlike the AZ-900, the AZ-104 expects you to know how to do the work, not just describe it. Microsoft recommends hands-on experience with operating systems, networking, virtualization, PowerShell, the Azure CLI, the Azure portal, ARM templates or Bicep, and Microsoft Entra ID before you sit it.

Try realistic AZ-104 questions to see which domains need work before you build your plan.

AZ-104 exam logistics

A scaled score means Microsoft weights questions by difficulty, so 700 is not "70% correct." There's no penalty for a wrong answer, so never leave one blank. If labs show up, treat them as the heaviest part of your time budget.

What's on the AZ-104 exam

Five domains, and the weights tell you where to spend your hours.

Identities and governance (22.5%) is Microsoft Entra ID: users, groups, administrative units, role-based access control, and Azure Policy. Know the difference between an Entra role and an Azure RBAC role, because the exam likes to blur them. Subscriptions, management groups, and resource locks live here too.

Compute (22.5%) covers virtual machines (sizing, availability sets, scale sets), App Service, and containers through Azure Container Instances and Azure Kubernetes Service. Expect questions about VM extensions, custom images, and what happens to a VM across availability zones.

Networking (17.5%) is the domain people underestimate. Virtual networks, subnets, network security groups, peering, VPN gateways, Azure DNS, load balancers, and Application Gateway. The scenarios test whether traffic actually reaches its destination, so trace the path end to end.

Storage (17.5%) is storage accounts, blob tiers and lifecycle rules, Azure Files, shared access signatures, and replication options like LRS, ZRS, and GRS. Know which replication option survives which kind of failure.

Monitor and maintain (12.5%) is Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, alerts, Network Watcher, and Backup and Recovery Services vaults. Smallest domain, but easy points if you've set up a backup and a metric alert at least once.

How hard is the AZ-104 and how long to prepare

It's a fair exam, but it's hands-on, and the labs are unforgiving if you've only read about Azure. If you administer Azure day to day, five to six weeks at an hour a day is realistic. If you know the concepts but haven't built much, eight weeks is closer, and you should spend most of it in the portal, not a book.

The hardest part isn't any single topic, it's that the questions assume you've done the task. A scenario will describe a broken network and ask what to fix. You can't reason your way there from definitions alone. People who pass have clicked through these workflows themselves.

Azure administration also pays, and the numbers vary widely. PayScale puts the average Cloud Operations Engineer around $81,385 in 2026, while Indeed reports cloud engineer roles ranging from about $89,306 to $205,762 depending on seniority and location. Demand is steady too, with cloud roles projected to grow roughly 25 to 26% through 2034 per industry estimates. Treat those as ranges, not promises, but the direction is clear.

A 6-week AZ-104 study plan

Weeks 1 to 2: identities, governance, and storage. Start in Entra ID. Create users and groups, assign RBAC roles, and write a simple Azure Policy. Then build a storage account, upload blobs, set a lifecycle rule, and generate a SAS token. Read the official Microsoft Learn study guide for AZ-104 alongside the hands-on work, not instead of it.

Weeks 3 to 4: compute and networking. Deploy a VM, resize it, attach a data disk, and put it in a scale set. Then build two virtual networks, peer them, add an NSG, and confirm traffic flows the way you expect. Break things on purpose and fix them. This is where the exam lives.

Week 5: monitoring and the glue. Set up Azure Monitor alerts, query Log Analytics, run Network Watcher on a connection, and configure a Recovery Services vault backup. Tie it together by revisiting governance: locks, tags, and cost controls.

Week 6: practice and weak spots. Switch to timed practice questions that match the exam's format. For every question, right or wrong, read why each option is correct or not. Use a free Azure account so you can still verify anything you're unsure about in the portal. Practice with realistic AZ-104 questions until the scenario style stops surprising you.

What trips people up

The biggest one is treating this like the AZ-900. Recognition isn't enough here; if you've only memorized service names, the labs will catch you. Networking is the next trap. It's only 17.5%, but it's dense and the case studies lean on it, so don't save it for last and rush. Two distinctions snag people constantly: Entra roles versus Azure RBAC roles, which control different things and apply in different places, and the storage replication acronyms, where the exam asks which option survives a regional outage rather than what the letters stand for. And don't skip the labs while you prep. If performance-based labs appear, they carry real weight and eat your clock, so practice the actual tasks.

Don't memorize, learn the trade-offs the scenarios test. Most questions come down to "given this constraint, which option is correct," and that only sticks if you've made the choice yourself in the portal.

Practice the right way

Reading gets you to maybe 60% ready. The rest comes from doing the tasks and from answering exam-style questions until the wording feels familiar. Build the resources, break them, and fix them, then drill timed sets so pacing is a non-issue on the day.

When you're ready to test yourself, practice AZ-104 with realistic, exam-style questions, or browse the full catalog to line up your next Azure certification after this one, such as the AZ-305 architect exam.

Frequently asked questions