Is AZ-104 Hard? What Nobody Tells You About Azure Admin Exam

'Is AZ-104 Hard?' is the question people ask before spending a week's salary on an exam voucher. This piece gives you the honest verdict on AZ-104 - what makes it hard, where beginners get stuck, and a realistic path through it. No vendor marketing, just what actually happens on exam day.

Verdict up top: Moderate → Hard. Everything below is why.

§The honest difficulty scorecard

§Why it's actually hard (or not)

• Case study format eats 20–30 minutes if you're not prepared
• Azure changes UI names quarterly - course screenshots go stale fast
• Networking (VNets, peering, NSGs, private endpoints) is deeper than AWS SAA equivalents
• Identity questions assume you know AD DS vs Entra ID vs Entra Domain Services
• Governance and RBAC scoping traps hit even experienced admins

§Where beginners struggle most

• Route tables + NSG + Firewall interaction
• Storage account access tiers, redundancy options, and firewall
• Backup vs Site Recovery - different products, tested together
• Reading Azure Resource Manager JSON snippets in questions

§How to make it easier

• John Savill's AZ-104 study cram YouTube playlist - free and current
• Hands-on in Azure free tier: build a VNet, VMs, storage, backup end-to-end
• MeasureUp practice tests are closer to real exam wording than Whizlabs
• Practice the case study format 3+ times before the real exam
• Learn Azure CLI basics - 4–6 questions will require reading commands

§Difficulty vs adjacent certifications

§Salary payoff after passing

§Bottom line

AZ-104 is moderate → hard. If you follow the plan above, treat labs as non-negotiable, and book the exam at the score-based checkpoint, you'll pass with margin. The cert is a signal - pair it with real projects and it'll open the doors you're aiming at across Dhaka, Dubai, and Riyadh.