AZ-104 Study Guide: Azure Administrator
Tags: azure, certification, cloud, cloudskills
Published: 2021-06-07 15:05:33

Hello amazing people 👋

Hope you all are safe out there. I recently sat my AZ-104 exam and glad to share that I passed 🥳.
I took around 4 weeks to prepare for the exam and I am gonna be honest, I was not that confident about it.
I have sat some fundamental certification for Azure but didn't had much practical experience, so doing some hands-on labs was the way to go. Here is a project that I did, which helped for the preparation, along with some Microsoft Azure labs:

[Acloudguru Azure Resume Challenge 2021](https://blog.rishabkumar.com/a-cloud-guru-azure-resume-challenge-2021)
{% github MicrosoftLearning/AZ-104-MicrosoftAzureAdministrator %}

Also, I realized that I sat 11 certification exams in the last 12 months

{% twitter 1397158152806744067 %}

I know a lot of these are fundamentals and associate level, but I am progressing so, this year my focus is on some expert/pro certifications.

### Here is my AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator Exam Study Guide

The high-level view of the skills measured in the exam according to Microsoft:

> Candidates for this exam should have subject matter expertise implementing, managing, and monitoring an organization’s Microsoft Azure environment.

> A candidate for this exam should have at least six months of hands-on experience administering Azure, along with a strong understanding of core Azure services, Azure workloads, security, and governance. In addition, this role should have experience using PowerShell, Azure CLI, Azure portal, and Azure Resource Manager templates.

- Manage Azure identities and governance (15-20%)
- Implement and manage storage (15-20%)
- Deploy and manage Azure compute resources (20-25%)
- Configure and manage virtual networking (25-30%)
- Monitor and back up Azure resources (10-15%)


### Free resources to prepare:

Azure Administrator Certification (AZ-104) - Full Course by [Andrew Brown](https://twitter.com) on freecodecamp.

{% youtube 10PbGbTUSAg %}

Microsoft Learn path:
- [AZ-104: Prerequisites for Azure administrators](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/az-104-administrator-prerequisites/)
- [AZ-104: Manage identities and governance in Azure](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/az-104-manage-identities-governance/)
- [AZ-104: Implement and manage storage in Azure](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/az-104-manage-storage/)
- [AZ-104: Deploy and manage Azure compute resources](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/az-104-manage-compute-resources/)
- [AZ-104: Configure and manage virtual networks for Azure administrators](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/az-104-manage-virtual-networks/)
- [AZ-104: Monitor and back up Azure resources](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/az-104-monitor-backup-resources/)

### Resources I used:

- ACloud Guru: [AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator Certification Prep](https://acloud.guru/overview/160303d7-6947-4fbc-9d19-fa304849f92e?_ga=2.112388748.944750847.1622233593-805091676.1622233593)
- [Whizlabs Practice Tests](https://www.whizlabs.com/microsoft-azure-certification-az-104/practice-tests/)

### The experience:

To be honest, I found the exam a bit difficult compared to AWS Associate level exams, but that could be due to the fact that I have been working in AWS for almost 2 years and that is not the case with Azure. I am still glad that I passed. Looking forward towards the AZ-400 DevOps Engineer Expert.