AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator

Build real-world expertise in managing core Azure services with AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator. This instructor-led course equips IT professionals with the skills to implement, monitor, and manage Azure identity, governance, storage, compute, networking, and backup solutions. You'll learn how to manage Azure subscriptions, secure resources with role-based access control (RBAC), deploy virtual machines, configure virtual networking, and implement Azure monitoring and automation tools—all aligned with the responsibilities of a modern cloud administrator.

Target Audience

This course is ideal for:

  • Azure Administrators, System Administrators, Cloud Engineers, and IT Professionals responsible for managing Azure infrastructure

  • Individuals preparing for the Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate certification

  • Teams migrating on-premises workloads to the Microsoft cloud or managing hybrid environments

Prerequisites:

  • Basic knowledge of Azure services

  • Familiarity with virtualization, networking, identity, and basic scripting

Category: IT Support and Administration
Level: Intermediate
Course Code: AZ-104
Duration: 20h 30m
Price: $399.99 for 6 months
Exam Prep: 150 Practice Questions
Tokens Required: 4
Access Duration: 6 months
Lab Environment: ✓ Included
AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator Achievement Badge
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Course Curriculum

Lesson 1: Manage Azure identities and governance

Gain hands-on experience managing Microsoft Entra ID, Azure RBAC, and governance features including policies, resource groups, and cost controls. This lesson equips you with the skills to securely manage users, groups, and access while implementing governance strategies to ensure compliance and cost efficiency in Azure environments.

Due to the permissions required, parts of this lesson are taught with an interactive simulator.

Estimated Duration: 1 h 30 m

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1: Manage Microsoft Entra ID Identities
In this exercise, you will learn about users and groups. Users and groups are the basic building blocks for an identity solution.
Estimated Time: 30 minutes
Exercise 2: Role-based Access Control
In this exercise, you will learn about role-based access control. You will learn how to use permissions and scopes to control what actions identities can and cannot perform. You will also learn how to make subscription management easier using management groups.
Estimated Time: 30 minutes
Exercise 3: Azure Governance
In this exercise, you will learn how to implement your organization's governance plans. You will learn how Azure policies can ensure operational decisions are enforced across the organization. You will learn how to use resource tagging to improve reporting.
Estimated Time: 30 minutes

Lesson 2: Implement and manage virtual networking

Learn how to design and configure Azure virtual networks, subnets, and IP addressing while securing connectivity with NSGs, ASGs, Bastion, and private endpoints. This lesson also covers DNS services and infrastructure as code with ARM templates, giving you hands-on skills to implement secure, scalable, and compliant Azure network solutions.

Estimated Duration: 2 h 0 m

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1: Virtual Networking
In this exercise, you will learn the basics of virtual networking and subnetting. You will learn how to protect your network with network security groups and application security groups. You will also learn about DNS zones and records.
Estimated Time: 50 minutes

Lesson 3: Implement Intersite Connectivity

Master Azure intersite connectivity by configuring VNet peering, custom routing with user-defined routes, and hub-and-spoke architectures. Learn how to monitor and troubleshoot connectivity with Network Watcher and NSG Flow Logs, gaining hands-on skills to design secure, scalable, and connected Azure network environments.

Estimated Duration: 2 h 0 m

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1: Implement Intersite Connectivity
In this exercise, you will explore communication between virtual networks. You will implement virtual network peering and test connections. You will also create a custom route.
Estimated Time: 50 minutes

Lesson 4: Implement Network Traffic Management

Learn how to implement high availability and intelligent traffic distribution in Azure using Load Balancer (Layer 4) and Application Gateway (Layer 7). This lesson covers backend pools, health probes, NAT and outbound rules, path-based routing, SSL termination, and Web Application Firewall (WAF) protection. Gain hands-on experience monitoring, troubleshooting, and designing resilient traffic management solutions for real-world applications.

Estimated Duration: 2 h 0 m

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1: Implement Network Traffic Management
In this lab, you learn how to configure and test a public Load Balancer and an Application Gateway.
Estimated Time: 50 minutes

Lesson 5: Deploy and manage Azure compute resources (Virtual Machines)

Learn how to plan, deploy, and manage Azure Virtual Machines for high availability, security, and scalability. This lesson covers VM sizes and families, storage options, availability sets and zones, disk encryption, and VM migrations across regions and subscriptions. You’ll also work with Virtual Machine Scale Sets, autoscaling, and Infrastructure as Code (ARM templates & Bicep), gaining hands-on experience managing VMs with the portal, PowerShell, and CLI.

Estimated Duration: 2 h 0 m

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1: Deploy and Manage Azure Compute Resources (Virtual Machines)
In this lab, you create and compare virtual machines to virtual machine scale sets. You learn how to create, configure and resize a single virtual machine. You learn how to create a virtual machine scale set and configure autoscaling.
Estimated Time: 50 minutes

Lesson 6: Deploy and manage Azure compute resources (Containers)

Master containerization in Azure with hands-on experience using Azure Container Registry (ACR), Azure Container Instances (ACI), and Azure Container Apps. Learn how to create, secure, and manage container registries, deploy single and multi-container workloads, configure scaling rules, and implement serverless microservices. Explore security best practices, monitoring, and troubleshooting to confidently choose the right container service for real-world applications.

Estimated Duration: 2 h 0 m

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1: Deploy and Manage Azure Compute Resources (Containers)
In this lab, you learn how to implement and deploy Azure Container Instances.
Estimated Time: 15 minutes
Exercise 2: Deploy and Manage Azure Compute Resources (Container Apps)
In this lab, you learn how to implement and deploy Azure Container Apps.
Estimated Time: 50 minutes

Lesson 7: Deploy and manage Azure compute resources (Azure App Service)

Learn how to build, configure, and manage web apps using Azure App Service. This lesson covers App Service plans, deployment slots for zero-downtime deployments, SSL/TLS and custom domains, scaling strategies, configuration management, backup/restore, networking, and monitoring. You’ll also practice hands-on tasks like deploying apps, configuring autoscaling, securing applications, and troubleshooting performance issues.

Estimated Duration: 2 h 0 m

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1: Deploy and Manage Azure Compute Servies (Azure App Services)
In this lab, you learn about Azure web apps. You learn to configure a web app to display a Hello World application in an external GitHub repository. You learn to create a staging slot and swap with the production slot. You also learn about autoscaling to accommodate demand changes.
Estimated Time: 20 minutes

Lesson 8: Implement and manage storage

Learn how to configure and manage Azure Storage accounts, Blob Storage, and Azure Files with enterprise-grade security and redundancy. This lesson covers storage account creation, encryption, access keys, SAS tokens, firewalls, redundancy options, lifecycle management, snapshots, soft delete, and Azure File Sync. You’ll also gain hands-on experience using tools like Azure Storage Explorer, AzCopy, and Import/Export Service to manage and optimize storage performance, security, and cost.

Estimated Duration: 2 h 0 m

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1: Implement and Manage Azure Storage
In this lab you learn to create storage accounts for Azure blobs and Azure files. You learn to configure and secure blob containers. You also learn to use Storage Browser to configure and secure Azure file shares.
Estimated Time: 50 minutes

Lesson 9: Monitor and maintain Azure resources

Learn how to proactively monitor, protect, and recover Azure workloads. This lesson covers Azure Monitor metrics, logs, and alerts, Log Analytics with KQL, VM/Storage/Network Insights, and Network Watcher diagnostics. You’ll also configure Recovery Services vaults, Backup vaults, and backup policies, perform restores, and implement Site Recovery for disaster recovery and failover. Hands-on practice includes setting up alert rules and action groups, reducing alert fatigue with processing rules, creating monitoring dashboards, and validating business continuity with failover testing.

Estimated Duration: 2 h 0 m

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1: Monitor and Maintain Azure Resources (Backup and Recovery)
In this lab, you learn about backup and recovery of Azure virtual machines. You learn to create a Recovery Service vault and a backup policy for Azure virtual machines. You learn about disaster recovery with Azure Site Recovery.
Estimated Time: 50 minutes
Exercise 2: Monitor and Maintain Azure Resources (Azure Monitor)
In this lab, you learn about Azure Monitor. You learn to create an alert and send it to an action group. You trigger and test the alert and check the activity log.
Estimated Time: 40 minutes

AZ-104 Practice Sandbox with Skill Me Up Steve!

Use this Azure sandbox to practice concepts from AZ-104. Ask Skill Me UP Steve questions as you go for help!

Estimated Duration: 3 h 0 m