How to prepare for Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate AZ-104 Exam in 2021?

Everyone needs to make well and attain great heights in their profession. But we often are worried about how and where to start. There are many courses and certifications obtainable in the market. Especially, the usual trending and helpful course is cloud computing. As you got the idea from the title, we are going to discuss Exam AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator.

Microsoft Azure AZ-104 certification exam is the modernized version of the AZ-103 exam. Exam AZ-104 is a new pathway to get certified as a Microsoft Azure Administrator. The exam includes the candidate’s skills as an Azure Administrator to implement, manage, and monitor identity in a cloud environment. Further, being the modernized version, this comes with anew loaded and updated characteristics such as:

• Importance of identities
• Concentrate on the management of data
• New domain for backup and recovery
• Moving from virtual machines to compute resource

Exam AZ-104: Overview

Exam AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator certification provided towards those who maintain Cloud services that span networking, computes, security, storage, and other Cloud capabilities within Microsoft Azure.

The Azure Administrator is often called (IaaS) infrastructure-as-a-service, which usually boils down to driving (VMs) virtual machines in the cloud. To that point, to be a thriving Azure Administrator, you should have an acquaintanceship with either or both of the industry-leading hypervisor platform. Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104) Cheat Sheet really helped me to understand the concept.

Exam Details: AZ-104

For every exam, it is essential to understand and get acquainted with the exam format before starting preparing. This will assist you in generating a summary of the exam and makes it easier to have an excellent study schedule.

• The exam code is AZ-104.
• Also, the time span for the exam is 120 minutes.
• Discussing the AZ-104 exam questions, there will be 40–60 questions in the exam.
• The AZ-104 exam fee is $165 USD.
• In addition, the passing mark for the AZ-104 exam is 700 (on a scale of 1–1000).

Exam AZ-104 Prerequisites

One should always make certain, whether they are an appropriate candidate for the exam or not. In the same vein, the Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate exam is created to promote the planning of an aspirant for a career as an Azure Administrator. Some of the essential details listed for candidates planning to take this exam incorporates–

• A least six months of hands-on experience conducting Azure.
• Strong knowledge of core Azure services, security, Azure workloads, and governance.
• Practice using PowerShell, Azure Portal, the Command Line Interface, and ARM templates.

Preparation Resources for the Microsoft AZ-104 Exam

Let’s start with the preparation resources that’ll help you in passing the exam successfully, and attain the certification on the very first attempt. Follow the following steps:

Step 1: Visit the Official Site

Visiting the official site is the necessary step in the Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate AZ-104 Exam preparatory guide. The official site gives trustworthy information and knowledge regarding every possible thing such as exam basic details, course outline, training programs, etc. Further, this also includes the AZ-104 exam objectives that will provide you in-depth details about the exam topics.

Step 2: Understand the Course Outline

The Exam AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator covers the following topics –

Manage Azure identities and governance (15–20%)

Manage Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) objects

• create users and groups
• create administrative units
• manage user and group properties
• manage device settings
• perform bulk user updates
• manage guest accounts
• configure Azure AD join
• configure self-service password reset

Manage role-based access control (RBAC)

• create a custom role
• provide access to Azure resources by assigning roles at different scopes
• interpret access assignments

Manage subscriptions and governance

• configure Azure policies
• configure resource locks
• apply and manage tags on resources
• manage resource groups
• manage subscriptions
• manage costs
• configure management groups

Implement and manage storage (15–20%)

Secure storage

• configure network access to storage accounts
• create and configure storage accounts
• generate shared access signature (SAS) tokens
• manage access keys
• configure Azure AD authentication for a storage account
• configure access to Azure Files

Manage storage

• export from Azure job
• import into Azure job
• install and use Azure Storage Explorer
• copy data by using AZCopy
• implement Azure Storage replication
• configure blob object replication

Configure Azure files and Azure Blob Storage

• create an Azure file share
• create and configure Azure File Sync service
• configure Azure Blob Storage
• configure storage tiers
• configure blob lifecycle management

Deploy and manage Azure compute resources (20–25%)

Automate deployment of virtual machines (VMs) by using Azure Resource Manager templates

• modify an Azure Resource Manager template
• configure a virtual hard disk (VHD) template
• deploy from a template
• save a deployment as an Azure Resource Manager template
• deploy virtual machine extensions

Configure VMs

• configure Azure Disk Encryption
• move VMs from one resource group to another
• manage VM sizes
• add data disks
• configure networking
• redeploy VMs
• configure high availability
• deploy and configure scale sets

Create and configure containers

• configure sizing and scaling for Azure Container Instances
• configure container groups for Azure Container Instances
• configure storage for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
• configure scaling for AKS
• configure network connections for AKS
• upgrade an AKS cluster

Create and configure Azure App Service

• create an App Service plan
• configure scaling settings in an App Service plan
• create an App Service
• secure an App Service
• configure custom domain names
• configure backup for an App Service
• configure networking settings
• configure deployment settings

Configure and manage virtual networking (25–30%)

Implement and manage virtual networking

• create and configure virtual networks, including peering
• configure private and public IP addresses
• configure user-defined network routes
• implement subnets
• configure endpoints on subnets
• configure private endpoints
• configure Azure DNS, including custom DNS settings and private or public DNS zones

Secure access to virtual networks

• create security rules
• associate a network security group (NSG) to a subnet or network interface
• evaluate effective security rules
• implement Azure Firewall
• implement Azure Bastion

Configure load balancing

• configure Azure Application Gateway
• configure an internal or public load balancer
• troubleshoot load balancing
• Monitor and troubleshoot virtual networking
• monitor on-premises connectivity
• configure and use Monitor
• use Azure Network Watcher
• troubleshoot external networking
• troubleshoot virtual network connectivity

Integrate an on-premises network with an Azure virtual network

• create and configure Azure VPN Gateway
• create and configure Azure ExpressRoute
• configure Azure Virtual WAN

Monitor and back up Azure resources (10–15%)

Monitor resources by using Azure Monitor

• configure and interpret metrics
• configure Azure Monitor logs
• query and analyze logs
• set up alerts and actions
• configure Application Insights

Implement backup and recovery

• create a Recovery Services vault
• create and configure a backup policy
• perform backup and restore operations by using Azure Backup
• perform site-to-site recovery by using Azure Site Recovery
• configure and review backup reports

Step 3: Getting Trained!

Microsoft itself provides its Online Training programs or courses which are very beneficial for those who want to pass the AZ-104 exam so that they get a badge for themselves. The programs or we can say online courses offer a comfortable and flexible environment, live hands-on instructions, and many more. You can refer to the following mentioned programs.

Course AZ-104T00: Microsoft Azure Administrator

Course AZ-010T00-A: Azure Administration for AWS SysOps

AZ-104 Exam Preparation: Microsoft Azure Administrator

How to prepare for the Exam AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator

AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator Certification 2021 By Udemy

Step 4: Taking Practice Tests!

Practice tests play an important role during your exam preparation. They not only help you build your strengths but also direct you to improve the weak areas. They are considered as one of the most efficient sources to study for the exam. Therefore, it is highly advised to perform more and more practice tests. However, to get started with AZ-104 practice tests, their various sources out there like Testprep Training. In addition, you can try the Udemy practice test as well! Also, you can try the free practice test here!

Final Words!

Microsoft Azure AZ-104 exam will assist you to become part of the IT industry as well as getting you an excellent position. You should cover all the important resources which we have mentioned above. So, what are you waiting for? Start preparing for Exam AZ-104 right NOW!