TLDR
It took me 80 hours of studying to gain this certification. Here are my notes and Anki deck: GitHub repo
Introduction
When I did my English degree at University, exams were usually handwritten essays that needed to be done within a 3-hour timeframe. Sometimes we had multiple-choice tests, and I would always consider them a guaranteed pass because multiple-choice was much easier in my experience.
That opinion has changed since I’ve obtained a few IT certifications. These tests are hard! I’m typing this while sitting on the bus on my way home from my AZ-104 exam. I passed with an 860 score of 1000, where 700 or higher is a pass. But it was an astonishingly tough exam. Usually, I finish quickly and spend at least half an hour reviewing my answers. I had only 5 minutes to review my questions this time because I had used up all of the available time. The questions required intense concentration and were time-consuming because I needed to compare many options which were very similar to each other. There were no easy questions.
Preparation
I studied 80 hours for this exam in a month. I work full-time as a DevOps Engineer, so I study in the evenings and on weekends. I have my Azure Fundamentals and CKA, but I only work with Azure occasionally in my current role.
Here is what I did to prepare for my exam:
- Go through all of the Microsoft Learn modules for the AZ-104
- Watch the entire AZ-104 study list by John Savill
- Practice exams on TutorialsDojo until I could pass them with 90%+ scores
- Microsoft ESI practice exams
- Microsoft AZ-104 Exam prep videos
Microsoft Learn
You really need to master all of the subject matter. Only completing the Microsoft Learn modules is not enough preparation. They are more like summaries. At the end of each module, they provide links to the documentation for the subject for further study. Unfortunately, Microsoft does not go easy on you. It expects you to know obscure details of nearly every service this exam covers. Therefore, I advise going beyond the Microsoft Learn modules and studying the linked articles after each module.
YouTube AZ-104 Study Playlist by John Savill
I’m not sure if it’s better to watch this playlist first and then do the Microsoft modules or the other way around. I did the Microsoft modules first, but for my next exam (AZ-400 DevOps Expert), I’ll start with the videos and then do the Microsoft Learn modules.
Tutorialsdojo
These practice exams are excellent. I used them in preparation for my fundamentals exam.
The best thing about them is that they provide extensive documentation and explanation of the questions. So after you finish the exam, you can study a lot with these examples.
ESI Practice Exams
You’re lucky if your organization participates in Microsoft’s Enterprise Skills Initiative. The practice exams provided in the ESI environment give you a good indication of what you can expect at the exam. I first did the Tutorialsdojo exams and then moved on to the ESI exams, and I was humiliated. The ESI questions are very complex and hard to solve, and I learned a lot from these exams.
There are 210 questions total, and I worked through all of them, and whenever I failed a question, I did a deeper dive into the question’s theme.
studying
I take notes in Obsidian, and I use Anki for spaced repetition. I highly recommend keeping a deck of Anki cards and continuously testing yourself. You will need to memorize a lot of details. For example, you are expected to remember that storage accounts of the FileStorage type do not support Geo Redundant Storage. You can find my Anki deck in the GitHub repo.
links
AZ-104 Exam page with learning modules
John Savill’s AZ-104 Study playlist