How to pass the AZ-104 Microsoft Certified Azure Administrator Exam

In this quick guide, we´ll share everything that we know to help you prepare and successfully pass the AZ-104 Microsoft Certified Azure Administrator Associate.

The basics

The AZ-104 is a 3-hour exam that has replaced the AZ-103 since March 2020. It is a role-based Microsoft certification that will offer you the specific skills that you need in your job, and it will also serve as objective documentation of your expertise to employers and peers so that you can get the recognition and opportunities that you have earned!

The Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate certification requires just one exam and that is the AZ-104.

The AZ-104 is a certification on an Associate level, and when you have passed that and the Microsoft certified Azure Developer (AZ-204), you can sit the AZ-400 Azure DevOps Solutions on Expert level. To learn more about the role-based learning paths, you can see a complete roadmap of Microsoft Certifications with links to training programs here.

Who is it for?

The ideal candidate for the AZ-104 is a subject expert in implementing, managing and monitoring an organization’s Microsoft Azure environment.

There are no requirements to sit the foundational AZ-900 Fundamentals exam before you sit the AZ-104, but you will need some prerequisites.

According to our experience, the most successful candidates have these prerequisites:

• Understanding of on-premises virtualization technologies, including: VMs, virtual networking, and virtual hard disks.
• Understanding of network configuration, including TCP/IP, Domain Name System (DNS), virtual private networks (VPNs), firewalls, and encryption technologies.
• Understanding of Active Directory concepts, including domains, forests, domain controllers, replication, Kerberos protocol, and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).
• Understanding of resilience and disaster recovery, including backup and restore operations.

Your responsibilities as an Azure Administrator will include implementing, managing and monitoring identity, governance, storage, computing and virtual networks in a cloud environment.

You will often land in a role where you are part of a larger team, responsible for implementing cloud infrastructure.

What skills are measured

Microsoft recently announced that they had suspended performance-based lab questions due to the pandemic situation to reserve Azure capacity for paying customers, so you may want to sit your exam as soon as possible to potentially benefit from that.

The biggest subject areas in the exam are networking and storage, and you can expect a lot of reading and a lot of tabular analysis, so if that´s a weaker area for you – get prepared in advance.

The configuration-related test questions will test if you have real hands-on experience in the Azure portal. If you have the prerequisites, you will recognize the correct answer, but if you haven’t, you will struggle with these questions.

In general, it is fair to say that the new Azure exams do reflect real-world Azure scenarios.

Preparing for the exam

We cannot stress enough that practical experience is essential to help you pass the exam, but other than that, you will need to study long hours and work hard to acquire hands-on experience. This exam is no walk in the park!

We highly recommend spending a lot of time daily on Microsoft Learn https://docs.microsoft.com/ to work through the AZ-104 prep modules that you will find here: https://docs.microsoft.com/da-dk/learn/paths/az-104-administrator-prerequisites/. 

These online courses offer you 6.30 hours of free online content, which will probably take you around 30 hours to properly work through. To measure your knowledge as you work through the online courses, we also recommend that you buy the practice tests.

Another option is to sit an instructor-led training course.

The Microsoft Certified Azure Administrator (AZ-104) is a 4-day instructor-led course.

With Readynez you will study in a dedicated training centre in an immersed environment where you will not be distracted, but you will get the opportunity to immerse yourself in learning.

You will train with an expert instructor for 10-12 hour days and be trained with presentations, labs and lots of hands-on practice.

This is most likely your best chance of passing the exam, first time. Plus, in the unlikely event, that you do not pass the first time, you can sit the course again for free, and only pay for the exam and accommodation.

Learn more: https://www.readynez.com/en/training/courses/vendors/microsoft/microsoft-certified-azure-administrator-course/

If you have any questions at all, please just reach out to us using the website chat.

Have fun with your studies 😊 we wish you the best of luck