I was able to pass the AZ-104 exam with minimal resources and minimal time dedicated to studying. Over the course of a couple months, I studied part-time - mostly when I had free time at night. I used this certification path as an outline to get more familiar with Azure. Although the exam is all multiple choice, and the benefit you get from those types of exams isn’t much, it does point you in the right direction on which areas to focus on if you want to learn about Azure administration.
Here are the main resources that I used to study for, and pass, this exam:
- AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator Exam Certification 2021 by Scott Duffy
- Microsoft Learn
- Free Azure account for labs referenced in Udemy course
That’s really it. I considered doing some practice exams, but I was reading many mixed reviews on the different sites that offer them (ie. some people love Whizlabs, other say they are inaccurate questions and waste of time), so I ultimately decided against it. The MS Learn training paths have some built in quizzes in them that I feel provide a good general overview on the important topics. They aren’t as detailed as the real exam, but are certainly pertinent to the real thing.
My background
I have over 10+ years in IT performing system administration type duties. This exam aligned with those same principles from on-prem type administration. I mainly had to learn about what Azure called certain things, and any resource types that are native to cloud and don’t exist on-prem. If you’re studying for this exam without any type of on-prem type system administration experience, you may have to use additional resources and dedicate additional time for studying. Practice exams may also help you more as it may point you to areas of weakness before you take the real exam.
Now to learn all the same stuff, but on AWS!