About two weeks into studying for the Microsoft Azure Administrator Exam now. I figured I’d share where I’m at in case it’s useful for anyone else starting out, and honestly I could use some input too.
Background: I have used Azure at work for maybe a year, but always someone else’s setup. Never had to build networking or manage identity from scratch. So this exam is pushing me into territory I hadn’t really touched.
Most of my time right now is going into labs. Sandbox subscription, building things and breaking them on purpose. Set up a couple VNets and peered them together, messed with NSGs until I actually understood why a rule was blocking traffic instead of just copying a solution. I also spent a chunk of time on RBAC and resource locks since I kept mixing up which role does what.
Alongside that I’m keeping notes, nothing fancy, just a running doc per domain from the exam guide: networking, compute, identity, storage, monitoring. Whenever a lab teaches me something the hard way, it goes in the doc. Whenever I get a practice question wrong, the why goes in there too. It’s messy but it’s mine.
This week I started mixing in practice questions rather than waiting until the end. Going through the Microsoft Azure Administrator Exam questions on CertBoosters, mainly to get used to how AZ-104 phrases things. A lot of “does this meet the goal” scenario setups where the situation repeats but the proposed solution changes slightly. That style takes some getting used to on its own, separate from actually knowing Azure.
Where I’m weak so far is networking, specifically DNS and peering scenarios. Where I feel solid is storage and compute.
If anyone’s already through this, curious how you split your time between labs and questions, and whether you did them separately or mixed them like I’m doing. Also curious if two more weeks is realistic or if I’m underestimating this.
