AZ-104 Study Plan — A Practical 6-Week Path Through Azure Administration

Use this plan if you want a clean path through AZ-104 without bouncing randomly between Microsoft Learn modules. The goal is to build administrative judgment, not just touch every service once.

Week 1: identity, scope, and governance

Start with Identities & Governance, then work through Users, Groups, and SSPR, Azure RBAC and Scope, and Policy, Tags, Locks, and Cost Control.

Hands-on goal:

• create users, groups, and a guest account
• assign RBAC at resource group and subscription scope
• build one policy assignment and one budget alert

Week 2: storage administration

Work through Storage, then study Storage Account Design, Redundancy, and Encryption and Storage Access, Private Connectivity, and Data Protection.

Hands-on goal:

• deploy one storage account with deliberate redundancy settings
• configure blob versioning, lifecycle rules, and soft delete
• test a private endpoint or storage firewall path and verify the DNS result

Week 3: deployments, VMs, and scale

Work through Compute, then cover ARM, Bicep, and Deployment Workflows and Virtual Machines, Disks, and Scale Sets.

Hands-on goal:

• read an existing Bicep or ARM template and change a parameter safely
• deploy a VM, resize it, and attach or reconfigure storage
• create or inspect a scale set and understand its scaling signals

Week 4: containers, App Service, and networking

Finish Containers and App Service and then move into Virtual Networking, VNets, Subnets, Peering, Public IPs, and Routing, and Secure Private Access Patterns.

Hands-on goal:

• push an image to Azure Container Registry
• compare ACI, Container Apps, and App Service for one simple workload
• build a VNet with NSGs, peering, and one private-access pattern

Week 5: DNS, load balancing, monitoring, and recovery

Study Azure DNS and Load Balancing, then complete Monitoring & Recovery, Azure Monitor, Insights, and Alerting, and Backup, Site Recovery, and Network Watcher.

Hands-on goal:

• create one metric alert and one log-driven investigation
• inspect Network Watcher or Connection Monitor output
• run one backup and walk through one restore or failover scenario

Week 6: exam consolidation

Use the Cheat Sheet, Glossary, and FAQ to tighten recall. Then switch to timed drills in IT Mastery and review every miss against the Resources page.

Final-week checklist:

• retake the official Microsoft practice assessment from the certification page
• run the Microsoft exam sandbox once so the question formats stop feeling unfamiliar
• re-open the live study guide and compare it with your notes before the booking date

Final review priorities:

• RBAC vs Policy vs Locks
• storage redundancy and private-access decisions
• VM vs VMSS vs App Service vs container choices
• service endpoints vs private endpoints
• metrics vs logs vs backup vs Site Recovery decisions

If you already administer Azure daily, compress this plan into three or four weeks by combining adjacent weeks. Keep the lab work. AZ-104 punishes shallow recognition more than it rewards memorized terminology.

One timing note matters in this cycle: Microsoft says the English-language version of AZ-104 updates on April 17, 2026, so if you are testing near that date, verify the live objective list again on the certification page and study guide.