How to prepare for the AZ-104 exam: a free-first plan

By LearnSome.tech · Published 2026-11-11

TL;DR

To prepare for AZ-104, review its study guide for the topics the exam covers, take the Practice Assessment, and use the exam sandbox to experience the exam before taking it. Microsoft also recommends training with its self-paced learning paths or an instructor-led course, and getting hands-on experience before you take the exam. The exam itself is proctored, and you have 100 minutes to complete it.

What is on the AZ-104 exam?

The exam measures skills in managing Azure identities and governance, storage, compute resources, virtual networking, and monitoring and maintaining Azure resources. Identities and governance carries 20 to 25% of the exam, and deploying and managing compute resources carries the same share. Storage and virtual networking each carry 15 to 20%, while monitoring and maintaining resources carries 10 to 15%.

Skill area	Share of the exam
Identities and governance	Largest band
Compute resources	Largest band
Storage	Middle band
Virtual networking	Middle band
Monitoring and maintenance	Smallest band

Microsoft notes that the bullets under each skill illustrate how it is assessed, and that related topics may be covered in the exam. Most questions cover generally available features, though preview features can appear if they are commonly used. Use the weights to decide where your first study hours go, and treat each bullet as a task you should be able to do.

Is AZ-104 hard?

The Azure Administrator Associate is an intermediate certification, and Microsoft expects candidates to have subject matter expertise in implementing, managing and monitoring an organisation's Azure environment. In our view, that makes it hard for someone who has never run anything in Azure, and fair for someone who already looks after a few workloads there. Microsoft's course page adds that successful Azure administrators start the role with experience in virtualisation, networking, identity and storage.

Sample questions that Microsoft shows for its exams include active screen, build list, case studies, drag and drop, hot area and multiple choice. Microsoft does not publish a list of exams with labs, because labs can be removed at any time due to Azure outages or bandwidth issues. Our advice is to prepare for scenarios that ask what you would configure and why, rather than for definitions to recite. Reading alone rarely carries a candidate through questions like these; doing the task in the portal and again in the CLI does.

What does a good AZ-104 study plan look like?

A good study plan takes one skill area at a time, practises each task in a real subscription, and ends with timed practice questions. That matches Microsoft's own advice, which is to train and get hands-on experience before you take the exam. Microsoft Learn sandboxes are no longer available, so completing the exercises in training modules needs access to an Azure subscription. If you do not have one yet, a free 30-day Azure trial or a pay-as-you-go subscription is available.

# A sample plan, heaviest skill areas first. Adjust the pace to your own weeks.
week-1: prerequisites path, Cloud Shell, read an ARM template and a Bicep file
week-2: identities and governance  # users, groups, roles at scopes, Azure Policy, locks, budgets
week-3: compute resources          # VMs, scale sets, containers, App Service and slots
week-4: storage                    # SAS, redundancy, tiers, lifecycle rules, Azure Files
week-5: virtual networking         # peering, routes, NSGs, Bastion, private endpoints, DNS
week-6: monitoring and backup      # alerts, KQL queries, Recovery Services vault, Site Recovery
week-7: Practice Assessment, review every miss by skill area, then the exam sandbox
# After each week: delete what you built so the trial credit lasts.

Keep a short log of every practice miss, tagged with its skill area, and spend your final week on the areas with the most misses. Delete what each lab created when you finish it.

What is the best course to learn Azure for AZ-104?

Start with Microsoft Learn, because its training is free and available to anyone who wants to learn about Microsoft products. Its AZ-104 Azure Administrator series has learning paths for prerequisites, identities and governance, storage, compute, virtual networks, and monitoring and backup. A learning path is a collection of training modules organised around a role, such as system admin, or a technology. The prerequisites path teaches the basic Azure concepts you need to know as an Azure administrator.

For Microsoft's Azure Administrator course, you can prepare in instructor-led training or in self-paced study.

Is there a free AZ-104 practice assessment?

Yes, Microsoft's Practice Assessments are available at no cost and can be attempted as many times as you like. A new Practice Assessment experience is available on AI Skills Navigator that more closely aligns with the exam experience. With a Practice Assessment, you receive a score report that provides the answer, rationale and links to additional information for every question. The legacy Practice Assessments on Learn are no longer being updated, so Microsoft strongly recommends the new experience. Microsoft is clear that these questions are not the same as those on the exam, and that a Practice Assessment does not replace training or experience with its products.

An exam sandbox lets you experience the look and feel of the exam before taking it, and interact with different question types in the same user interface you'll use during the exam. It shows where the time remaining is displayed, how to move between pages and how to mark questions for review. Take the assessment once early to find your gaps, and again near the end to check that the gaps have closed.

What happens on exam day, and after it?

On exam day you can open Microsoft Learn during an associate exam, but it is meant for questions where you may need to look something up. Breaks are allowed, but the exam timer continues running while you take one. Our advice is to treat each look-up as time taken from other questions, and to practise finding facts on Learn before the day.

Scores are reported on a scale of 1 to 1,000, and a pass is 700 or greater, which may not equal 70% of the points because the score is scaled. If you fail a certification exam, you can retake it 24 hours after the first attempt. Once earned, the certification renews every 12 months, and renewing costs nothing if you pass an online assessment on Microsoft Learn. In our view, a pass shows you studied the material, and production experience of running Azure for real users still matters more.

Free official resources

Start with the study guide, which summarises the topics the exam might cover and links to additional resources. It also offers self-study options and classroom training, with links to documentation, community sites and videos. In the Exam AZ-104 prep videos, Microsoft's experts give tips, tricks and strategies for preparing for this certification exam.

Practice Assessments come from the same team that develops the certification exams and are updated in step with them. Work through these in order: the study guide, the learning paths with your own subscription, the documentation, then the assessment and the sandbox.

From our labs

In our Azure administrator course, you decide in seconds whether a question is worth a look-up and practise finding a fact on Learn quickly. A case study lab has you read the questions before the scenario and tie each one to the requirement and constraint it turns on. The final lab is a timed mock under exam conditions, read by domain and objective, with misses ranked by weight into a review plan.

Start the free lesson: Monday, Five Tickets (Microsoft Azure Administrator (AZ-104) Exam Prep)

The course: Microsoft Azure Administrator (AZ-104) Exam Prep

Terms in this guide

Sources

Written by the LearnSome.tech team with AI assistance; every fact checked against the cited source.