In this advanced era of modern technology, the Microsoft Azure Certification exam plays a vital role in the advanced success and a very sparkling future of an individual. AZ 104 is an exam that is a step ahead in becoming a Microsoft Certified Azure Administrator, who is responsible for certain actions in an organization like managing, storage, identity management, implementing, and monitoring the Azure environment.
This exam is a replacement for its predecessor AZ – 103 that used to focus more on azure subscription management while the successor AZ 104 focuses on identities and governance.
Table of Contents
Essentials for the AZ 104 Exam
Here are some of the essentials that you would need for passing the AZ 104 exam and getting the certification:
- Experience: One should have six months of experience in Azure administration, services, security, governance, and workloads to successfully pass the exam.
- Linguistic Knowledge: The Azure certification cost is $165, and it can be taken in any language from English, simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Spanish, and French. Therefore, the applicant must be well-versed in any one of the languages mentioned above.
- Training: Microsoft learning portal, Microsoft documentation, and Microsoft Official Courseware (MOC) are self-learning portals that help applicants in preparing for the exam. You can also take help from an Azure certification training instructor with a structured program who will prepare you for the Microsoft Azure certification exam.
- Configuration knowledge: You should have practical knowledge about the configuration, virtual network, and storage system as most of the questions will be from these areas only.
Exam pattern of the AZ 104
The Azure certification exam has an ‘intermediate’ level of difficulty for checking knowledge, expertise, skills and for testing the advanced technical topics with plus or minus 60 questions, approx passing percentage is 70%, and there are total 5 modules and case studies which are as follow as:
- Module 1: This covers 15-20% of the exams, named Manage Azure identities and governance. As AZ 104 stresses more on identities and governance, this module is very important, and questions stress mainly on the effective and smooth functioning of the organization by ensuring the right digital identity for the right person.
- Module 2: This covers 10-15% of the exam, names Implement and Manage storage. This module emphasizes creating, implementing, and storing knowledge of a person. Questions will be from configuring azure files and storage system.
- Module 3: This covers 25-30% of the exam, named Deploy and Manage Azure Compute Services. This module deals with networking, and hybrid networking issues, and questions focuses mainly on Azure Kubernetes services (AKS) and Azure container services (ACS).
- Module 4: This covers 30-35% of the exam, named Configure and Manage Virtual Networking. A huge amount of questions are mainly from virtual networks, configuring Azure DNS, troubleshooting techniques, public and private IP addresses, virtual Net peering, etc. students should have practical technical knowledge of virtual machines for mastering in this module.
- Module 5: This again covers 10-15% of the exam, named Monitor and back up Azure Resources. For handling Azure infrastructure, one has to be very good at monitoring and backing up resources correctly and efficiently. This module is full of questions related to log analyses, metric interpretation and setting up of charts, etc.
Advice for success
Microsoft Azure certifications include many challenges like lab playgrounds, hand-on labs courses, paths, exams, etc. For that, there are many facilities also available for preparing like libraries, references for modules, sample tests, MCQs, etc. Practice and attempt as many sample tests as you can, as it is very important to reach in the depth of something to prosper it.
The passing marks should be 700 out of 1000, and you should think of scoring as many marks as you can, and this is possible only if you give your best and try hard to attain success.
Conclusion
AZ 104 Microsoft cloud certification exam is beneficial for you if you want better rewards, reputation, understanding, and a bright future. It is proven that top paid personnel are the ones who went through the Microsoft certification process to become certified Azure professionals as compared to those who had not faced this exam. The salary which is suggested for Microsoft Certified Azure Administrator would be around $126,653, as per the Global Knowledge and Skills 2020 salary survey.
