Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate (exam AZ-104) validates that you can implement, manage, and monitor an organisation's Azure environment: identities and governance, storage, compute, virtual networking, and monitoring. It is an operations exam — day-to-day administration, not solution architecture.
Exam format at a glance
| Format | Timed at 100 minutes. Microsoft does not publish a fixed question count; expect roughly 40–60 items in a mix of formats including multiple choice, multiple response, and occasional case studies. Delivered through Pearson VUE, at a test centre or online with a proctor. |
| Cost | Approximately 165 USD; Microsoft prices the exam by the country in which it is proctored. |
| Scoring | Scored on a scaled range up to 1000; 700 is the passing mark. Microsoft does not publish the exact question-to-scale conversion. |
| Validity | Valid for 12 months, renewed for free by passing a short online assessment on Microsoft Learn before it expires. |
Who this exam is for
- System administrators and cloud engineers who run Azure infrastructure and want Microsoft's baseline administrator credential
- AWS-experienced practitioners adding a second cloud — the concepts transfer, the service names and portal workflows are what you are really learning
- IT generalists moving from on-premises Windows Server / networking into a cloud operations role
How to actually study for it
- Weightings to plan around: Manage Azure identities and governance and Deploy and manage Azure compute resources are the two largest domains at 20–25% each.
- Be fluent in Microsoft Entra ID basics — users, groups, licensing, external/guest users, self-service password reset — and in Azure RBAC: built-in roles and assigning them at management group, subscription, resource group, and resource scope.
- Know the storage redundancy options by name and what each protects against: LRS, ZRS, GRS, RA-GRS, GZRS.
- Practise the networking core — VNets and subnets, peering, NSGs and effective security rules, Azure Bastion, service endpoints vs. private endpoints, load balancer vs. Azure DNS — and take timed attempts to get used to the pace.
Where to go next
Start with the free 10-question diagnostic to see where you actually stand, read 15 sample questions with answers, or go straight to the one-page AZ-104 cheat sheet. The full AZ-104 practice exam covers every domain at the real exam's weighting, with every answer explained.