AZ-104 Study Plan

Start with the current outline and your own evidence

The AZ-104 study guide is the plan’s scope boundary. Microsoft’s current English version is marked skills measured as of April 17, 2026. It covers managing identities and governance, storage, compute, virtual networking, and monitoring and maintaining Azure resources. Use the domain ranges as guidance for study emphasis, not as a fixed question allocation. The exam has no official number of preparation hours because candidates begin with different work and learning backgrounds.

Before scheduling study blocks, take a short diagnostic that samples each domain. This can be a set of original practice questions, a task checklist, or an oral explanation exercise. For each objective, mark one of three states: can explain and apply; recognize but cannot apply; unfamiliar. Add an error label such as service confusion, scope mistake, missing procedure, or rushed reading. This gives you a personal plan instead of a generic calendar.

A candidate who has managed virtual machines may need more time on storage roles, governance, and backup. A candidate from an identity background may need more compute and networking practice. A learner new to Azure may need to build a foundation across all five domains. These are different plans even if the candidates have the same test date.

A six-week illustrative schedule

The following six-week plan is an example, not an official Microsoft recommendation or required duration. It assumes a candidate has several focused study sessions each week. If you have less time, stretch it; if you already administer Azure, use diagnostics to shorten topics you can perform reliably. Keep at least one rest or catch-up block each week so one missed session does not collapse the plan.

Each week should include more than reading. A practical rhythm is: learn one objective from the official outline; perform or reason through a task; close the reference and recall the steps; answer fresh questions; then write down the distinction you learned. Short sessions spread across days usually make it easier to retrieve information than one long cram session.

Weeks 1 and 2: identity, governance, and storage

In the first week, practice Azure resource hierarchy, users and groups, role assignments, scope, policy, locks, and tags. For every access scenario, write the principal, role, and scope. Explain why the selected scope is sufficient and why a broader role is risky. Then separate management-plane permissions from data-plane access. A user who can create an account may not have permission to read the data inside it.

Use a small exercise: create or inspect a resource group, identify inherited permissions, assign a limited role in a learning environment, and confirm what actions are available. If you cannot access Azure, use a diagram and a procedural walkthrough. Predict what the user should be able to do before reading the result. This tests understanding of scope rather than memory of a portal location.

In week two, focus on storage access, data protection, redundancy, and management. For each scenario, list the data type, access method, availability boundary, recovery objective, and cost constraint. Compare replication with backup and explain what each protects against. Practice reading the requirement carefully: availability during a zone failure is different from recovery after accidental deletion. Avoid choosing the most expensive protection simply because it sounds safest.

Weeks 3 and 4: compute and networking

For compute, practice the lifecycle of a resource: choose an image and size, deploy with the needed disks and network interface, configure access, monitor it, and plan maintenance or recovery. Understand how availability requirements affect placement and design. Practice reading deployment failures and identifying whether the issue involves permissions, an unsupported configuration, capacity, or a dependency.

One useful exercise is to draw a VM deployment before creating it. Include the resource group, virtual network, subnet, network interface, disk, identity, administrative access path, monitoring, and backup. Then change one requirement: the VM must not have public exposure, the workload must recover after a failure, or an operator may restart it but not change network rules. Identify which controls need to change and which should stay the same.

For networking, trace packet flow and name resolution. Learn the role of virtual networks, subnets, route tables, network security groups, DNS, peering, VPN or other connectivity, and private endpoints where they appear in the current outline. Do not memorize isolated settings without understanding the path. A connection can fail because the route is wrong, a rule blocks traffic, a name resolves incorrectly, or the endpoint is not reachable.

Practice a private service example: an application must reach storage without using a public route. Explain the private endpoint, required network path, and DNS behavior. Then compare it with an NSG rule. The endpoint changes how the service is reached; the NSG filters traffic. Neither automatically solves every other layer.

Week 5: monitoring and operational recovery

Study how administrators detect problems, respond to Azure service incidents, and protect or recover workloads. Distinguish Azure Monitor signals and alerts from Service Health notices, Advisor recommendations, and backup configuration. For each tool, write the question it answers and the action it can take. An alert may notify the team but will not automatically prevent a deletion unless a separate control is configured.

Practice from the incident backward. If a user cannot reach a service, what evidence would show whether the issue is platform-wide, a resource fault, or a configuration error? If data was deleted, what recovery point and retention policy apply? If an alert fires repeatedly, what threshold and action need review? Explain how you would validate a restore instead of assuming that a successful backup job proves recoverability.

Use a mixed case that crosses domains. An application uses a VM and storage account, must restrict administrator access, remain available during a failure, and alert the operations team when a threshold is exceeded. List identity, network, compute, storage, monitoring, and recovery decisions separately. Then check dependencies and trade-offs. This is closer to administrator reasoning than answering five unrelated definition questions.

Week 6: review and readiness

In the final week, do not try to learn every Azure service for the first time. Use a timed mixed set, but leave enough time to review the logic behind every answer. For each miss, say whether the cause was a knowledge gap, a confused service boundary, a misread requirement, or poor time management. Repair the cause with a short focused activity and retest with a fresh scenario.

Read the official study guide one last time and ensure every task has some evidence behind it. A task may be supported by hands-on execution, an explanation from memory, or a correctly reasoned scenario. If a task is still unfamiliar, prioritize it rather than taking another large mock immediately. Microsoft does not publish a raw percentage cutoff for the 700 scaled pass score, so do not treat a commercial practice-test result as a guaranteed outcome.

Use the final day for light recall and logistics. Confirm the appointment time, location or remote setup, name on identification, and allowed test instructions. For role-based exams Microsoft permits restricted Learn access without extra time, but it is not open internet search. Do not plan to learn a large domain during the exam by searching documentation.

A shorter or longer plan

If you need a four-week plan, combine domains only when you already have familiarity. For instance, pair identity with governance, storage with backup, and compute with networking, but still use separate practice for each. Keep diagnostic and mixed review time. If you need a longer plan, add spaced review sessions and more hands-on work rather than rereading the same notes repeatedly.

A working administrator may spread study over a few weeks while mapping daily tasks to the outline. A new Azure learner may need several months of learning and practice. Those are illustrative possibilities, not official averages or promises. Use actual diagnostic results and available study time to set the pace. The appropriate date is the one that leaves time to close material gaps and comply with registration conditions.

How to make practice more useful

Keep an error notebook with four fields: scenario requirement; your chosen response; the deciding rule; and the reason the closest alternative was wrong. For example, ‘the app needs to read blob data’ points to data access for the workload identity, not a broad management role. ‘The operator must not delete the resource’ points toward a lock, not merely a tag or alert. Writing the distinction helps you apply it when the names are changed.

After a few days, revisit the notebook without looking at the answer. Explain the scenario aloud, choose a response, and identify what additional fact would change your choice. If a new constraint changes the answer, you understand the trade-off. If you repeat the same choice without understanding why, return to the official documentation or a guided exercise.

Readiness criteria

You are reasonably prepared when you can explain and apply the tasks across all five domains, solve scenarios you have not memorized, and identify risks in an overbroad or incomplete configuration. You should be comfortable with Microsoft’s variable question count and possible case or lab formats, while recognizing that no study plan can promise the exact item mix. Strong readiness comes from repeated reasoning and practical familiarity, not from meeting an invented number of study hours.