Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate
The AZ-104 exam is designed for professionals who implement and configure Azure. It validates your ability to manage Azure identities and governance, implement and manage storage, deploy and manage Azure compute resources, implement and manage virtual networking, and monitor and maintain Azure resources.
Exam details
- Certification
- Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate
- Exam code
- AZ-104
- Level
- Associate
- Duration
- Approximately 100 minutes
- Questions
- Typically 40–60 questions
- Passing score
- 700 out of 1000
- Cost
- USD $165 — typical price; the exact fee varies by country/region and currency, and local taxes may apply.
- Prerequisites
- None required
- Languages
- English (also available in Japanese, German, French, Spanish and several other languages)
- Delivered by
- Pearson VUE
- Renewal
- Free online assessment, every 12 months
Skills measured
Manage Azure identities and governance (20–25%)
- Manage Microsoft Entra users, groups, licences, external users, and self-service password reset.
- Assign built-in Azure roles and interpret access assignments at different scopes.
- Manage subscriptions, resource groups, tags, locks, Azure Policy, costs, and management groups.
Implement and manage storage (15–20%)
- Configure storage firewalls, SAS tokens, access keys, and identity-based access for Azure Files.
- Create storage accounts and configure redundancy, replication, encryption, Storage Explorer, and AzCopy.
- Configure Azure Files, Blob Storage, tiers, snapshots, soft delete, lifecycle, and versioning.
Deploy and manage Azure compute resources (20–25%)
- Deploy resources with ARM templates or Bicep files.
- Create and configure virtual machines, disks, availability, and Virtual Machine Scale Sets.
- Provision containers, Azure Container Apps, and App Service plans, TLS, backups, and slots.
Implement and manage virtual networking (15–20%)
- Create virtual networks, subnets, peering, public IPs, user-defined routes, and connectivity troubleshooting.
- Configure NSGs, application security groups, Bastion, service endpoints, and private endpoints.
- Configure Azure DNS and internal or public load balancing.
Monitor and maintain Azure resources (10–15%)
- Configure Azure Monitor metrics, logs, alerts, Insights, and Network Watcher.
- Implement Azure Backup, Recovery Services vaults, backup policies, and Site Recovery failovers.
Study resources & practice tests
Disclosure: some links below are affiliate links. If you buy through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. Read our affiliate disclosure.
Frequently asked questions
Who should take AZ-104?
AZ-104 is for Azure administrators, cloud administrators, and infrastructure engineers. Most work in corporate IT, at managed service providers, or at Microsoft partners, in finance, healthcare, government, and technology.
What is the average salary for an Azure Administrator?
As of 2026, ZipRecruiter reports an average US salary for a Microsoft Azure Administrator of about $89,000, with most offers between $70,000 and $104,000. Glassdoor total-pay models for the same title are higher because they include bonuses. In the United Kingdom, IT Jobs Watch shows a median advertised salary of about £65,000 for Azure roles (£57,500 outside London). In Germany, comparable cloud administrator and engineer roles are typically about €60,000 to €80,000. There is no single published EMEA average.
Where do I find exam questions to practice?
You will find websites selling exam dumps or brain dumps that claim to be real AZ-104 questions. Those materials are not official. Microsoft treats using brain dumps as cheating. It can invalidate your score, revoke certifications you already hold, and ban you from future exams. Microsoft publishes a free Practice Assessment for AZ-104 on Microsoft Learn. Those questions are examples only, not the live exam. MeasureUp also sells the official practice test linked in the study resources on this page. You can try the Microsoft exam sandbox to see the question types and timer, but it does not use real exam questions. Practise the skills measured in a real product environment rather than memorising leaked items.
Does the exam include official labs I can use to practice?
Microsoft does not publish a stable list of which certification exams include labs, and a lab can be dropped for a candidate if the live environment is unavailable. Role-based Azure and security exams such as AZ-104 may include performance-based labs in a live cloud environment. You only find out at the start of your sitting. For practice, Microsoft Learn modules for this exam often include a free Azure sandbox, and official instructor-led AZ-104T00 training delivered by a Microsoft Learning Partner includes labs. Those labs are for the course, not a copy of the exam. Applied Skills assessment labs are a separate Microsoft credential, not AZ-104 exam labs. The Microsoft exam sandbox shows traditional question types only. It does not give you the lab virtual machine.