Manage Containers and App Service for AZ-104
Understand Azure Container Registry, Container Instances, Container Apps, and App Service administration for AZ-104.
This part of AZ-104 is about administrative fluency across lighter-weight application hosting options. You are not being tested as an application developer. You are being tested on whether you can provision, connect, scale, and maintain the hosting surface that the scenario calls for.
What Microsoft explicitly includes
The current outline covers Azure Container Registry, Azure Container Instances, Azure Container Apps, sizing and scaling for containers, App Service plans, App Services, certificates and TLS, custom DNS names, backups, networking settings, and deployment slots.
The operational frame to use
ACR stores images. ACI runs simple container workloads quickly. Container Apps adds a managed app platform with scaling and ingress behavior. App Service is the higher-level web app platform with plan-based compute, deployment slots, and common web-hosting controls. If you know which layer each service owns, many exam questions become much easier.
Common traps
The common misses are mixing up the App Service plan and the app itself, assuming every container scenario needs the same platform, and forgetting that networking, TLS, and deployment slots are part of operations, not optional polish.
Lab moves worth practicing
- push an image into Azure Container Registry
- deploy one simple workload to ACI or Container Apps
- create an App Service, attach a custom domain, and inspect the plan and slot configuration
Hosting chooser
| Need | Strongest first fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Store and manage container images | Azure Container Registry | It is the image registry, not the runtime |
| Run a simple container quickly with minimal platform setup | Azure Container Instances | Lightweight container execution |
| Run a containerized app with managed scaling and ingress | Azure Container Apps | Higher-level app platform for container workloads |
| Host a web app with plan-based compute, slots, TLS, and common web controls | App Service | Mature managed web-hosting platform |
App Service admin checklist
If a question leans toward App Service, look for these operational controls:
- the App Service plan decides region, pricing tier, and scale boundary
- the web app carries app-specific configuration and deployment behavior
- deployment slots reduce release risk by giving you a staging path before swap
- custom domains and certificates control the public hostname and TLS posture
- backups and networking settings improve recoverability and connectivity, but they do not replace a full disaster-recovery design
Container runtime chooser
Use ACI when you want the smallest, quickest container runtime with minimal platform scaffolding. Use Container Apps when you need a managed application platform with ingress and scale behavior. Use App Service when the scenario is clearly web-app administration with slots, custom domains, TLS, and the rest of the App Service operating model.
Quiz
The next domain is Virtual Networking, where most of these compute services start interacting with real connectivity and security constraints.