Azure administrator AZ-104

Explore the fundamentals of cloud computing, the delivery of computing services over the internet, and the pay-as-you-go model. Understand elasticity, agility, redundancy, disaster recovery, global reach, latency, and security.

Explore CapEx vs OpEx and how cloud shifts spending from upfront capital to ongoing, consumption-based expenses with pay for resources as you use them.

Compare public, private, and hybrid clouds, highlighting hosting providers, multi-organization access in public clouds, single-organization private clouds, private networks, and pay as you use versus capex costs.

Explore cloud service models IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS with pay-as-you-go economics. See how VMs, storage, and backup fit these models and enable quick deployment.

A region is a geographical area with data centers delivering low-latency services. Region pairs replicate resources across geography to boost resilience and disaster recovery.

Describe availability zones as three or more physically separate locations within an Azure region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking, connected by private fiber to ensure resiliency.

Learn how availability sets use update domains and separate workloads across racks to keep virtual machines online during maintenance, hardware failures, and outages with load balancing.

Learn to connect to Azure subscriptions with PowerShell or Azure CLI, using Cloud Shell or local module installation, and sign in as a global admin using Connect-AzAccount or az login.

Access Azure services via a single unified portal, manage subscriptions and credits, and create resources like VMs and web apps; manage settings, notifications, and use the Azure mobile app.

Cloud Shell provides browser-based access to manage Azure resources with bash or PowerShell, automatic authentication, an integrated editor, per-session hosting, and a 20-minute timeout plus a 5 GB storage share.

Install and use the Azure PowerShell module, check installed modules, install az, and connect to Azure to manage resources like creating a resource group in a specified location.

learn to install the Azure CLI on Windows, run it from PowerShell or a bash-like shell, and manage Azure resources with interactive mode, creating and listing resource groups.

Resource groups organize resources by subscription and region, housing VMs, storage, web app, and networks. Use templates, manage access, view activity, apply policies, and move resources between groups or subscriptions.

Learn how to use Azure resource locks to prevent deletions and changes, and how to move resources between resource groups or subscriptions, then delete resources and resource groups safely.

Learn how to use Azure templates to deploy virtual machines quickly and consistently from quick start templates, using parameters, variables, and resource group deployments.

Resolve a JSON deployment issue by demonstrating real-time creation of a resource group, location, and storage via a deployment template.

Learn to create a virtual machine in Azure administrator AZ-104 using templates, uploads, or CLI. Select region and VM size, including HPC options, and perform deployment steps.

Designing a vm starts with network setup and vnet, then naming, location, size, pricing, storage, and the operating system to balance access, connectivity, and cost.

Explore Azure VM size families to match workloads: general purpose, compute optimized, memory optimized, storage optimized, GPU, and high performance computing.

Identify and compare VM disk types, including the operating system disk, temporary disk, and data disks, and learn how premium storage and managed disks optimize performance for Azure VMs.

Learn how to create a windows vm in the Azure portal by selecting a resource group, naming the vm, choosing size and os, and configuring networking, security groups, and extensions.

Connect to a Windows VM via downloaded RDP, using the public IP and firewall settings, then install IIS and automate with DSC, custom script extension, partial script, and PowerShell.

Learn to create an Azure VM with PowerShell by scripting a resource group, VM name, location, virtual network, and public IP, using reusable prompts.

Understand Azure data center locations worldwide and how unplanned maintenance uses live migration to keep virtual machines running, while planned maintenance and zone-aware deployment reduce downtime with load balancing.

Azure VM scale sets deploy and manage identical virtual machines behind a load balancer, automatically scaling up or down with demand using min and max VM counts.

Discover how to automate virtual machines with the vm extension, using the custom script extension to install software and configure web server tasks via portal or PowerShell.

Explore using the Azure VM custom script extension to install a Windows web server with a PowerShell script, including progress checks and DSC as an option.

Demonstrate how to use the desired state configuration (DSC) to deploy and manage Windows features like web server on VMs, via automation account, gallery configurations, modules, and compile-and-push workflows.

Solves a DSC issue and confirms the web server is installed correctly and always working, showing how to configure the server for reliable operation.

Explore storage types, including blob for persistent block storage, files, queue, and table for unstructured and structured data, and compare HDD magnetic drives with premium storage for VM latency.

Explore blob storage types and replication options in Azure, including lrs, zrs, grs, and ra-grs, to understand durability, accessibility, and disaster recovery for block blob and file storage.

Create a storage account by selecting a resource group and location and choosing V2 blob storage with hot or cool tiers. Manage blobs, files, queues, and tables with storage explorer.

Azure blob storage stores unstructured data as objects in containers, offering block, page, and append blobs, with private or public access and hot, cool, or archive tiers.

Learn how to manage Azure blob storage access with policies and access levels, configure start and expiration times, and understand pricing, data transfer, replication, and tiering.

Learn to use azcopy to copy blobs between two Azure storage containers. Create containers, obtain access keys, and use a sas token to perform the transfer.

Explore Azure Files, an smb-based storage service with file shares for cloud and on-premises apps, enabling SMB mounting and file synchronization with Azure File Sync.

Learn how to create and restore Azure file share snapshots, understand their incremental nature, and secure data with encryption at rest and in transit, access keys, and SAS.

Explore Azure virtual networks, segmenting into subnets with non overlapping address spaces for security and performance, and connect VNets through VNet peering or site-to-site VPN for hybrid cloud.

Explore IP addressing in Azure: distinguish public and private IP spaces, and learn dynamic vs static assignment for VMs, gateways, and load balancers, with practical VM creation and IP configuration.

Learn to set up a custom domain in DNS, verify ownership with DNS records, and manage DNS zones and record sets to support private and organizational domains.

Define and enforce network security groups to allow or deny inbound and outbound traffic for VMs, with basic or advanced rules, associated with subnets or network interfaces.

Learn how to create and configure a virtual network peering between VNets in France and the UK, enable traffic flow, and troubleshoot connectivity.

Learn how to set up Azure vnet peering between France and UK, configure virtual networks, firewall settings, and test connectivity with ping across VMs.

Resolve a network peering issue by reconfiguring and enabling bidirectional traffic forwarding between virtual machines, resulting in successful pings from the UK VM and confirmed connectivity.

Connect virtual networks using vnet to vnet or site-to-site vpn gateways, configure gateway resources, and choose between route-based and policy-based vpns for encrypted traffic over the public internet.

Explore express route, a private, direct connection to Microsoft cloud services via a connectivity partner, offering encrypted traffic, scalable bandwidth, metering data, and a strong SLA.

Explore setting up a log analytics workspace in Azure, connect your VM sources with agents, and run queries to analyze Windows and Linux logs and performance data.

Explore Azure network watcher to view topology, monitor connections, and diagnose performance with IP flow verify, network performance monitor, and deep packet capture for VM communication.

Learn Azure storage replication options, including local redundant storage, zone redundant storage, and geo or read-access geo-redundant storage, with RPO and RTO considerations for disaster recovery.

Master Azure Backup by provisioning a Recovery Services vault, configuring backup for virtual machines, installing the backup agent, and managing restore and disaster recovery workflows.

Discover how Azure Site Recovery protects virtual machines by replicating them to a secondary site. Learn about regional constraints, setup, and testing using replication items and snapshots.

Explore Azure network routing with route tables and next hops to control traffic between subnets, VMs, and the internet, including user defined routes and network virtual appliances.

Demonstrate that virtual machines across three subnets within the same network automatically communicate via system routes, even with firewalls temporarily disabled, using ping to verify connectivity.

Create and configure a virtual network with public, private, and dmz subnets, route tables, and a virtual network appliance to route traffic, enable ip forwarding, and test connectivity with icmp.

Demonstrates creating user routes to direct traffic from a private vm to a public vm by configuring trust settings and public routing tables.

Explore how a load balancer distributes traffic across backend pools and VMs using health probes and rules, maps public IPs to private targets, and supports internal and public setups.

Learn to create an Azure load balancer, configure a backend address pool, health probe, and zone-redundant public IPs, and attach virtual machines with security rules for port 80.

Configure a two VMs load balanced setup using a traffic manager, set up front-end and back-end pools, NAT rules, and health checks, then test connectivity with the public IP.

Learn how Azure Traffic Manager enables global load balancing by routing traffic to service endpoints using priority routing, weighting, and geography routing methods.

Create an Azure traffic manager profile to route traffic between two web apps in US and West Europe using endpoint priority, enabling automatic failover to the backup site.