Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104)

About the AZ-104 exam

Microsoft Azure Administrator is the exam for people who run Azure day to day: creating users and groups, assigning access, building networks, deploying virtual machines and containers, protecting storage, and setting up monitoring and backup. Passing it earns the Azure Administrator Associate certification, which is also the required first step towards Azure Solutions Architect Expert. Microsoft expects you to be comfortable with operating systems, networking and virtualization, and to have used the Azure portal, PowerShell, the Azure CLI, ARM templates or Bicep, and Microsoft Entra ID.

The questions are practical. Instead of asking what a service is, they ask what you would configure, in which order, or why something isn't working: a VM that can't be reached because of an NSG rule, a role assigned at the wrong scope, a storage account that rejects a request because of its firewall. Some items show you a template or a set of settings and ask what the result will be.

Exam format

• Questions: Microsoft doesn't publish an exact count; it says most of its exams have between 40 and 60. Besides multiple choice, it can include case studies, yes/no statement series, drag-and-drop and hot-area items, and the exam may include interactive components.
• Time: 100 minutes. During role-based exams you can open Microsoft Learn in a side panel, but the clock keeps running while you search.
• Passing score: 700 on a scaled score out of 1,000.
• Cost: set by the country or region where you take the exam, booked through Pearson VUE.
• Validity: 12 months. You renew for free by passing an online assessment on Microsoft Learn in the six months before it expires.

What the exam covers

The skills outline, updated on April 17, 2026, has five areas:

• Manage Azure identities and governance (20-25%). Entra ID users, groups, licences, external users and self-service password reset; Azure RBAC role assignments at different scopes; Azure Policy, resource locks, tags, management groups, and cost alerts and budgets.
• Implement and manage storage (15-20%). Storage firewalls, SAS tokens, stored access policies and access keys; redundancy, object replication and encryption; Azure Files and Blob Storage with access tiers, soft delete, snapshots, versioning and lifecycle management.
• Deploy and manage Azure compute resources (20-25%). Reading and changing ARM templates and Bicep files; VM sizes, disks, encryption at host, availability zones and sets, and scale sets; Container Registry, Container Instances and Container Apps; App Service plans, scaling, TLS, custom domains, backup 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; internal and public load balancers.
• Monitor and maintain Azure resources (10-15%). Metrics, logs, KQL queries, alert rules and action groups in Azure Monitor; Network Watcher; Recovery Services and Backup vaults, backup policies, and Azure Site Recovery failover.

How the practice questions here are organised

There are 10 practice tests of 10 questions each, and every test covers all five areas: identity and governance, storage, compute, virtual networking, and monitoring and backup. The questions lean towards the details that trip administrators up in practice, such as the difference between a stopped and a deallocated VM, which resource IDs change when you move a resource, or how a user-defined route interacts with routes learned over BGP. Every explanation says why the right answer works and why each other option doesn't, with a link to Microsoft's documentation.

The full practice exam has 50 questions in 100 minutes, weighted to match the five skill areas, with answers hidden until you submit. It passes you at 70%, since Microsoft doesn't publish how its scaled score maps to correct answers. Real case studies, drag-and-drop and hot-area items are asked here as multiple choice or "choose two".

A study plan that works

• Get a free or pay-as-you-go Azure subscription and build things. This exam rewards having clicked through the portal and run the CLI far more than reading.
• Take Test 1 cold, then build whatever you got wrong: peer two VNets, attach an NSG, assign a role at resource-group scope, and check the result.
• Learn how NSG rules are evaluated and how effective routes are chosen. Networking questions are often the slowest to answer.
• Practise reading ARM and Bicep files until you can tell at a glance what a deployment will create and in which mode.
• Finish with the full practice exam in one timed sitting, and get used to answering most questions without looking anything up.

These questions are original, written from the public Microsoft Learn documentation and the official study guide. They are not real exam questions, and this site is not affiliated with Microsoft.