Prep
What this AZ-104 study guide covers
This AZ-104 study guide is built on the skills measured list that Microsoft publishes on its official AZ-104 study guide page. That list is dated October 26, 2023, and it was still the current version when we checked Microsoft Learn in November 2026. Check the page again before you start, because Microsoft updates its exams periodically and posts the changes there first.
Passing AZ-104 earns the Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate certification, which Microsoft rates as intermediate. Below you will find the exam facts, the weights, an 8-week plan, the labs that matter, and our approach to AZ-104 practice tests.
| Skill area | Official weight | Weeks |
|---|---|---|
| Manage Azure identities and governance | 20-25% | 1, 2 |
| Implement and manage storage | 15-20% | 3 |
| Deploy and manage Azure compute resources | 20-25% | 4, 5 |
| Implement and manage virtual networking | 15-20% | 6 |
| Monitor and maintain Azure resources | 10-15% | 7 |
| Review and timed practice | - | 8 |
AZ-104 exam facts
| Item | AZ-104 |
|---|---|
| Exam time | 100 minutes (Microsoft advises allowing 120 minutes of seat time) |
| Number of questions | Not published. Microsoft says most of its exams have 40-60 questions |
| Passing score | 700 on a scale of 1 to 1,000 (scaled, not 70%) |
| Prerequisites | None formally; AZ-900 is not required |
| Open-book element | On role-based exams you can open Microsoft Learn in a split screen. The clock keeps running and no extra time is added |
| Languages | 10, including English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Portuguese (Brazil) |
| Validity | 12 months; renew free by passing an online assessment on Microsoft Learn |
Microsoft sets prices by country and shows the price when you book. Third-party price trackers list US$165 in the United States.
Microsoft expects candidates to be familiar with operating systems, networking, servers and virtualization, and to have experience with PowerShell, Azure CLI, the Azure portal, ARM templates or Bicep, and Microsoft Entra ID. That is a long list. If several items are new to you, add time to the plan below.
The five skill areas and their weights
- Manage Azure identities and governance (20-25%): Entra users and groups, licences, external users, self-service password reset; built-in roles and role assignments at different scopes; Azure Policy, resource locks, tags, resource groups, subscriptions, budgets and management groups.
- Implement and manage storage (15-20%): storage firewalls, SAS tokens, stored access policies, access keys and identity-based access for Azure Files; redundancy, object replication and encryption; file shares, blob containers, tiers, soft delete, lifecycle management and versioning.
- Deploy and manage Azure compute resources (20-25%): reading and modifying ARM templates and Bicep files; creating, moving and resizing VMs, disks, availability zones and sets, and scale sets; container registry, Container Instances and Container Apps; App Service plans, scaling, TLS, custom domains, backups and deployment slots.
- Implement and manage virtual networking (15-20%): virtual networks, subnets, peering, public IPs and user-defined routes; NSGs and application security groups, Azure Bastion, service and private endpoints; Azure DNS and load balancers, including troubleshooting.
- Monitor and maintain Azure resources (10-15%): Azure Monitor metrics, logs, queries and alerts; Network Watcher and Connection Monitor; Recovery Services and Backup vaults, backup policies, and Azure Site Recovery failover.
Identity and governance plus compute make up 40-50% of the exam. Networking is smaller on paper, but it is the area most people find hardest, because one wrong NSG rule or route breaks everything downstream.
The 8-week AZ-104 study plan
This plan assumes 8 to 10 hours a week and AZ-900-level knowledge. Each week, roughly half the time goes to reading Microsoft Learn modules and half to doing the same tasks in your own subscription.
| Week | Skill area (weight) | Focus and lab |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Identities and governance (20-25%) | Entra users, groups, licences, external users and SSPR. Lab: create users and groups, invite a guest, assign a role at resource-group scope. |
| 2 | Identities and governance | Azure Policy, resource locks, tags, subscriptions, management groups, budgets and Advisor. Lab: assign a policy that denies a VM size, add a delete lock, then try to break both. |
| 3 | Storage (15-20%) | Storage accounts, redundancy, SAS tokens, access keys, firewalls, file shares, blob tiers, lifecycle rules, soft delete and versioning. Lab: create a SAS with an expiry, copy data with AzCopy, set a lifecycle rule. |
| 4 | Compute (20-25%) | VMs, disks, sizes, availability zones and sets, scale sets, moving resources. Lab: deploy a VM with the portal, then again from an ARM template and a Bicep file. |
| 5 | Compute | Container registry, Container Instances, Container Apps, App Service plans, scaling, custom domains, TLS and deployment slots. Lab: deploy a web app and swap a slot. |
| 6 | Virtual networking (15-20%) | VNets, subnets, peering, public IPs, user-defined routes, NSGs, ASGs, Bastion, service and private endpoints, Azure DNS and load balancers. Lab: peer two VNets, block traffic with an NSG and confirm it with effective security rules. |
| 7 | Monitor and maintain (10-15%) | Azure Monitor metrics, logs and alerts, Network Watcher, Backup and Site Recovery. Lab: back up a VM, restore a file, create an alert with an action group. First full timed practice set at the end of the week. |
| 8 | Review | Timed practice, rework every miss against the skills list, repeat the labs you struggled with, try the exam sandbox, then sit the exam. |
Delete resources after each lab and set a budget alert in week 2. A forgotten VM or gateway is the most common way to get a surprise bill while studying.
Our approach to AZ-104 practice tests
Many people search for an AZ-104 practice test before they have studied the material. We recommend a different order:
- Check your foundations first. AZ-104 assumes you know AZ-900 concepts such as resource hierarchy, shared responsibility and the main services. Take our free AZ-900 practice test. If you score poorly, spend a week on fundamentals before week 1.
- Use Microsoft's free Practice Assessment as your main question bank. Microsoft now offers a newer AZ-104 Practice Assessment on AI Skills Navigator that it says is closer to the real exam, and recommends it over the older version on Microsoft Learn, which is no longer being updated.
- Treat every wrong answer as a lab task. If you miss a question on SAS tokens or NSG priority, go and do it in the portal. The exam asks you to apply skills, not to recall definitions.
- Avoid brain dumps. Microsoft's exam candidate agreement forbids sharing exam content, and sites that claim to offer real questions are often wrong anyway. Memorised answers also fail when the scenario is worded differently.
Book the exam when you pass timed practice sets you have not seen before, and can do each lab in the plan without notes.
How long to study for AZ-104, and how hard is it?
Microsoft does not publish recommended study hours. As a rough guide: with Azure work experience, 4 to 6 weeks may be enough; with AZ-900 knowledge but little hands-on time, allow the full 8 weeks; if you are new to IT, start with AZ-900 and expect 12 weeks or more for AZ-104.
AZ-104 is much harder than AZ-900. Fundamentals questions ask you to describe services; AZ-104 asks what to configure, in what order, and why something does not work. The Microsoft Learn split screen helps for looking up a detail, but Microsoft warns that you will run out of time if you use it for every question. Microsoft does not publish pass rates.
Renewal and what comes next
Unlike fundamentals certifications, the Azure Administrator Associate expires after 12 months. Renewal is free: you take a shorter, unproctored, open-book assessment on Microsoft Learn during a six-month window before expiry, and a pass extends the certification by one year.
After AZ-104, many administrators move toward architecture, security or networking specialisations. Our best IT certifications guide compares the main options, and our guide to studying for exams covers the study methods behind this plan.