How to Pass the Microsoft AZ-104 Exam in 2026: An 8-Week Azure Administrator Study Plan

If you want to pass the Microsoft AZ-104 exam in 2026, the difference between a first-time pass and an expensive retake is almost never raw intelligence. It is structure. AZ-104 (Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate) is a hands-on exam that punishes people who only watch videos, and it rewards people who actually click around the Azure portal. This 8-week study plan gives you a realistic, week-by-week path to passing AZ-104, built around the current 2026 objectives and designed to fit alongside a full-time job.

AZ-104 is the certification that turns "I know a bit about the cloud" into "I can run Azure in production". It is the first Azure credential that consistently appears as a concrete requirement in cloud operations and infrastructure job adverts, which is exactly why it is worth doing properly.

Is AZ-104 Worth It in 2026?

Short answer: yes, if you want an infrastructure, cloud operations or systems administration career on Azure.

AZ-104 is widely treated as the real starting line for an Azure career, sitting one step above the AZ-900 fundamentals exam. Where AZ-900 proves you understand cloud concepts, AZ-104 proves you can manage identities, storage, compute, networking and monitoring in a live Azure environment. That is a meaningful jump, and recruiters know it.

The financial case holds up too. Azure administrator and cloud operations roles in the United States commonly sit in the region of 110,000 to 135,000 US dollars, and AZ-104 is named as a requirement in a large share of Azure admin listings. In the UK, equivalent roles regularly fall in the 45,000 to 65,000 pound range depending on seniority and location.

Exam Tip: If you have not yet sat AZ-900, you do not strictly need it before AZ-104, but the fundamentals knowledge makes the first two weeks of this plan far easier. If you are brand new to Azure, read our AZ-900 study plan first.

AZ-104 Exam Format and 2026 Facts

Before you build a study schedule, you need to know exactly what you are walking into. Here are the current AZ-104 exam facts for 2026.

• The AZ-104 exam contains roughly 40 to 60 questions.
• You get around 120 minutes of total appointment time, with about 100 minutes of actual exam time after the survey and instructions.
• You need a score of 700 out of 1000 to pass.
• The exam costs approximately 165 US dollars (around 115 pounds in the UK), with regional pricing variations.
• Question types include multiple choice, multiple response, drag and drop, and case study style scenarios.

The passing mark is scaled, so 700 out of 1000 does not mean 70 percent of questions correct. Microsoft weights questions by difficulty, which is one reason rote memorisation alone tends to fail.

Exam Tip: AZ-104 may include a performance-based lab section where you complete real tasks in a live Azure environment. Labs are not guaranteed on every sitting, but you should prepare as if they will appear, because they are heavily weighted when present.

The Five AZ-104 Domains and Their Weightings

The AZ-104 objectives are split across five domains. The weightings below reflect the current 2026 blueprint.

Identity, governance and storage together can make up nearly half your score, so do not treat them as the boring bit to rush through. They are where many candidates quietly lose the marks that push them under 700.

What Changed in the April 2026 Refresh

Microsoft applied a minor objectives refresh to AZ-104 in April 2026. The headline changes were more emphasis on Microsoft Entra ID (the current name for what many people still call Azure Active Directory), expanded coverage of Azure Container Apps and Azure Kubernetes Service scenarios, and more questions involving Azure Arc and hybrid management. Networking questions also lean more heavily on Private Link and Private Endpoints than older study material suggests.

If you are revising from a guide written in 2024, assume some of the terminology and emphasis is out of date. Cross-check anything Active Directory related against the current Entra ID naming.

The 8-Week AZ-104 Study Plan

This plan assumes roughly 10 to 12 hours of study per week, which works out at around 1.5 hours on weekdays plus a longer hands-on session at the weekend. Microsoft itself recommends two to three months of preparation, so eight weeks at this intensity is a sensible target for most working professionals. If you have heavy hands-on Azure experience already, you can compress this; if you are new to the cloud, stretch it to twelve weeks.

The golden rule across all eight weeks: for every hour of reading or video, spend at least an equal amount of time in the Azure portal actually doing the thing.

Weeks 1 and 2: Identity and Governance

Start with the highest-weighted foundation domain.

• Create and manage Microsoft Entra ID users and groups.
• Configure role-based access control (RBAC) and understand the difference between Entra roles and Azure RBAC roles.
• Work with subscriptions, management groups, resource locks and Azure Policy.
• Practise assigning least-privilege access and reading the effective permissions on a resource.

By the end of week 2 you should be able to explain, without notes, how a user gets access to a specific resource and where you would look to troubleshoot it.

Weeks 3 and 4: Storage and Compute

These two weeks carry a lot of marks, so do not rush them.

• Create storage accounts and configure redundancy options (LRS, ZRS, GRS and so on).
• Configure blob containers, access tiers, lifecycle management, and shared access signatures.
• Set up storage firewalls and private endpoints.
• Deploy virtual machines, configure availability sets and scale sets, and manage VM disks.
• Get comfortable with Azure App Service and a basic container deployment.

Spend your weekend lab sessions building and then deliberately breaking these resources, then fixing them. That troubleshooting muscle is exactly what the case study questions test.

Weeks 5 and 6: Virtual Networking

Networking is where many otherwise strong candidates lose confidence. Slow down here.

• Build virtual networks and subnets, and configure network security groups (NSGs).
• Configure VNet peering and understand when to use it versus a VPN gateway.
• Work with Azure Load Balancer, Application Gateway and Azure DNS.
• Practise Private Link and Private Endpoints, which carry more weight in the 2026 objectives.

Exam Tip: Draw your network topologies on paper before building them in the portal. AZ-104 networking questions frequently describe a scenario and ask which single change fixes connectivity. If you can sketch the traffic flow, the answer usually becomes obvious.

Week 7: Monitoring, Backup and Hybrid

• Configure Azure Monitor, metrics, alerts and Log Analytics workspaces.
• Set up Azure Backup and Recovery Services vaults, and run a test restore.
• Review Azure Arc and hybrid management scenarios added in the 2026 refresh.

This domain is the smallest by weighting, but it is also the easiest to score well on, so treat week 7 as free marks you are not going to leave on the table.

Week 8: Practice Exams and Weak Spots

The final week is not for learning new material. It is for proving you are ready.

• Take full, timed practice exams under exam conditions.
• Review every wrong answer and trace it back to the underlying concept.
• Re-do hands-on labs for any domain where you scored under 80 percent.
• Read the official Microsoft Learn study guide one final time to catch any objective you skipped.

Candidates who complete at least five timed practice tests before exam day consistently report higher confidence and better results. The aim is for the real exam to feel familiar rather than surprising.

Free and Paid Study Resources for AZ-104

You do not need to spend a fortune to pass AZ-104, but you do need the right mix of theory, practice questions and hands-on time.

• Microsoft Learn: the official AZ-104 learning path and free sandbox labs are the backbone of any plan and cost nothing.
• John Savill's AZ-104 study cram: a widely respected free video resource that many passers credit.
• Hands-on labs: Microsoft Learn sandboxes plus a free Azure trial account let you practise for real.
• Practice questions: timed, exam-style questions are non-negotiable for week 8 readiness.

The single biggest mistake is over-investing in passive video courses and under-investing in practice questions and labs. You cannot memorise your way through AZ-104; you have to do it.

Common Reasons People Fail AZ-104

Knowing the failure patterns is half the battle.

• Skipping hands-on practice. Watching someone else configure a VNet is not the same as configuring one yourself.
• Underestimating identity and storage. They are the highest-weighted domains, yet candidates often spend most of their time on compute because it feels more interesting.
• Studying from outdated material. Anything that still calls Entra ID "Azure Active Directory" throughout may be missing 2026 changes.
• Not sitting timed mocks. Running out of time on the case studies is a common, avoidable failure.

For a deeper look at why exams go wrong and how to fix your approach, read why most people fail certification exams.

What to Take After AZ-104

AZ-104 opens several clear next steps depending on your goals.

• Security focus: move on to AZ-500 or SC-500 for Azure security engineering.
• Architecture focus: AZ-305 builds directly on AZ-104 toward the Azure Solutions Architect Expert credential.
• AI focus: with AZ-204 retiring in mid 2026, the developer and AI track increasingly runs through the new AI-series exams.

AZ-104 is the hub that the rest of the Azure certification map branches out from, which is exactly why it is worth the eight weeks.

Ready to Start Practising?

Reading about AZ-104 will only take you so far. The candidates who pass first time are the ones who drill realistic, exam-style questions until the format feels routine and every weak domain has been exposed and fixed.

CertCrush gives you exam-accurate AZ-104 practice questions with full explanations, so you can find your gaps long before exam day rather than discovering them in the test centre. Work through the Azure courses on CertCrush, track your scores domain by domain, and walk in knowing you are ready.

Create your free CertCrush account and start your AZ-104 preparation today.