AZ-104 Azure Administrator: 30-Day Prep Guide That Actually Passes

AZ-104 is Microsoft's flagship cloud administrator certification - the Azure equivalent of AWS SAA in terms of market weight. The exam is 40-60 questions, 100 minutes, 700/1000 pass mark. Five functional groups: identity, storage, compute, networking, and monitoring.

§Prerequisites

You should already have AZ-900 (or equivalent foundational Azure knowledge) and 6+ months of hands-on Azure operations. AZ-104 is doable as a first Azure cert, but the pass rate jumps from 54% to 81% when candidates have AZ-900 first.

§30-day plan

Week 1: Identity + Governance

Entra ID, RBAC, conditional access, management groups. Spend extra time on conditional access policies - they're heavily tested and the question phrasing trips up candidates.

Week 2: Storage + Compute

Storage accounts, blob lifecycle, file shares, VM provisioning, scale sets, App Service. Build a real VM with a scale set in a free Azure account - the hands-on memory beats reading every time.

Week 3: Networking + Monitoring

VNets, NSGs, peering, VPN gateway, Azure Monitor, Log Analytics workspaces, KQL basics. KQL is increasingly tested - learn at least the basics of summarize, where, and project.

Week 4: Practice

Four full-length practice exams. Aim for 80%+ before booking the real one.

§Common pitfalls

• Confusing NSG rules with route tables - they do different things
• Forgetting that storage account naming is global and lowercase only
• Skipping the case study questions in practice - they're worth a lot of points