Get Certified - Pass the Azure Administrator Exam (AZ-104)

#azure

A certification provides competency, shows commitment, professionalism and most importantly: it motivates you to keep learning and gather knowledge. It's also a great way to get a better job.

Currently Microsoft Azure is the number 2 cloud provider behind AWS, and is still growing. Microsoft constantly improves, changes and adds new services and resources to it's cloud platform.

Right now (Aug. 2020) more than 80% of the Fortune 500 companies are extensively using Microsoft Azure. With those numbers, it's easy to assume the huge demand for Azure skilled professionals.

The latest Microsoft Azure Administrator Exam, the AZ-104 is aimed for those software and cloud engineers, interested in master the skills needed to operate a Microsoft Azure-based cloud infrastructure.

In a nutshell, an Azure Administrator is responsible for implementing, monitoring and maintaining Microsoft Azure solutions, including major services related to Compute, Storage, Network and Security. The Azure Administrator will provision, size, monitor, and adjust resources as appropriate.

The exams is divided in 4 major areas:

1) Knowledge and Management of Azure Identity and Security.

2) Management of Azure Storage Services and Solutions.

3) Knowledge and Management of Azure Networking.

4) Management of Microsoft Azure Compute Services and Solutions.

If you're interested in getting the Azure Administrator Certification, download my "AZ-104 Practice and Answers" document. This document covers all the 4 areas of the AZ-104 Exam.

For this exam, you do need to have a solid background and familiarity with the Azure Portal, Azure Services and Azure Resources, if you already work or feel comfortable with the Azure Ecosystem, then just practice, do some reading and use my document to measure your score in order to pass the exam.

If you're new into Azure and you're interested in getting the AZ-104 certification, I highly recommend to practice on your own, read the Microsoft Documentation and also get the Azure Fundamentals certification first, take a look at my AZ-900 document:
https://dev.to/hugoestradas/get-certified-pass-the-azure-fundamentals-exam-az-900-le7

A quick disclaimer worth mentioned it, is that Microsoft currently offers two Azure Administrator Exams: AZ-103 and AZ-104. The topics of my document are specifically designed for the AZ-104 exam exclusively.

The debate on AZ-103 vs AZ-104 is necessary for estimating the suitability of both certification exams for modern Azure Administrator job roles. AZ-104, presents the same second domain, although with an increased focus on the management of data. The second domain dealing with implementation and management of storage in both the AZ-103 and AZ-104 exams shows contrasting differences in both exams.

While the AZ-103 certification exam deals with topics such as creation and configuration of storage accounts in this domain, the new exam additionally deals with the management of storage accounts. The AZ-103 certification exam included topics only on importing and exporting data to Azure. On the other hand, AZ-104 focuses on the management of data in Azure storage.

No matter which exam you choose, if you pass you'll get the Azure Administrator Certification, but since the AZ-104 is the latest version, in my personal opinion it's a better choice.