AZ-104 · Microsoft
AZ-104 changed in April. What that means for your prep
AZ-104 objectives changed in April. Which groups moved, what the five skill areas weigh, and the services that are easy to confuse on exam day.
Microsoft Azure Administrator (AZ-104) is the exam for the person who implements, manages and monitors an Azure environment day to day: identity, governance, storage, compute, networking and recovery.
The study guide describes the role as part of a larger team. You work with the people who own networking, security, databases, application development and DevOps, so the exam cares about how the pieces connect, not only about each piece. Microsoft expects you to be familiar with operating systems, networking, servers and virtualization, and to have used PowerShell, the Azure CLI, the Azure portal, and Azure Resource Manager templates or Bicep files.
What the exam measures
| Skill area | Weight |
|---|---|
| Manage Azure identities and governance | 20 to 25% |
| Implement and manage storage | 15 to 20% |
| Deploy and manage Azure compute resources | 20 to 25% |
| Implement and manage virtual networking | 15 to 20% |
| Monitor and maintain Azure resources | 10 to 15% |
Identity and compute are the two heaviest areas. Monitoring is the lightest, but it carries backup and Site Recovery, which are easy to underestimate.
Which version you will sit
The study guide lists "Skills measured as of April 17, 2026". Check the current study guide for later updates before your exam. Microsoft updates the English exam first; localised versions usually follow about eight weeks later.
The guide includes a change log against the previous version. It rates the audience profile and five groups of objectives as "minor" changes (Azure Files and Blob Storage, virtual machines, containers, virtual networks among them) and says where they are, not what the new wording is. Compare that date with the current study guide before relying on your material.
How the exam is scored and delivered
- Time: 100 minutes.
- Scoring: Microsoft requires a score of 700 or greater.
- Delivery: proctored, and it may include interactive components.
- Languages: English, Chinese Simplified, Korean, Japanese, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese Traditional and Italian. If yours is not available, you can request an extra 30 minutes.
- Certification renewal: The Azure Administrator Associate certification expires every 12 months. You can renew it by passing an online assessment on Microsoft Learn.
Where the objectives are easy to confuse
AZ-104 is less about knowing that a service exists and more about picking the right one and configuring it. These are the objectives where that choice is sharpest:
- ARM templates and Bicep. You interpret, modify and deploy both. The guide also asks you to export a deployment as an ARM template or convert an ARM template to a Bicep file, so you need to read one format and recognise the same resource in the other.
- Two container services. Containers are provisioned with Azure Container Instances and with Azure Container Apps, and sizing and scaling is its own objective. Know which service fits which requirement.
- Files and blobs. Azure Files gets file shares, snapshots and soft delete; Blob Storage gets containers, storage tiers, soft delete for blobs and containers, versioning and lifecycle management. The features overlap in name and differ in where they apply.
- Scopes of access. You assign built-in roles at different scopes and interpret access assignments. Check both the role and its scope.
- Reaching PaaS from a virtual network. Service endpoints and private endpoints both appear in the guide, next to network security groups, where you evaluate effective security rules. Know what each one changes about the path traffic takes.
A study plan that follows the guide
Use the study guide as a checklist and weight your time by the table above. This exam rewards doing the task, so for each line, check that you can do it in the portal and with the command line.
- Identity and governance (20 to 25%). Users and groups, licenses and external users in Microsoft Entra ID; role assignments and scopes; Azure Policy, resource locks, tags, resource groups, subscriptions and management groups; costs with alerts, budgets and Azure Advisor recommendations.
- Compute (20 to 25%). ARM templates and Bicep; virtual machines, their sizes and disks; the two container services; App Service plans, scaling, custom DNS names, TLS and deployment slots.
- Virtual networking (15 to 20%). Virtual networks, peering, public IP addresses, NSGs and application security groups, Azure Bastion, service and private endpoints, load balancers, and troubleshooting connectivity.
- Storage (15 to 20%). Access keys and shared access signatures, redundancy, Azure Files and Blob Storage features, and moving data with Azure Storage Explorer and AzCopy.
- Monitoring and maintenance (10 to 15%). Azure Monitor metrics and querying logs, alert rules, action groups and alert processing rules; Azure Backup, backup policies and restores; Site Recovery and failover to a secondary region.
Every date we track for this and the other exams we cover is in the exam calendar.