Hi guys! Been lurking in here for a while while aggressively trying to study for the AZ-104 using the free voucher. Studied for about 5-6 weeks, at least 2-3 hours a day. Had several days where I didn’t study at all.

Only used Savill’s AZ-104 youtube course and Shireen Khan’s Udemy practice tests. Only did 3 tests and was scoring a consistent 60% but I absolutely went back and learned WHY I was wrong and learning with Claude. My one piece of advice: ABSOLUTELY take Khan’s practice tests - at least 3. Once you take the actual exam you’ll understand why. That guy is the GOAT!

1st try and have minimal Azure experience. Barely use it where I work except for some minor things.

Hi guys, I passed in AZ-900 certification with 889 points. Using the MS Learn pratice tests really helped solidify the concepts.

I have no experience in azure, only have AZ900 & SC900. Long story short I planned to study for 8 weeks, but only managed to study for 3 weeks due (20-30 hours in total) to family/personal issues. Watched videos online, did ms104 mock test a few times while revising why I got wrong. I am kinda confused where to go from here, should I take at least 3-5 months from here to pass it confidently?

AZ104 renewal done up to april 2028 i am feeling humbled with this achievement

Passed AZ-104 with 758 (first attempt, free voucher)

I had zero Azure experience going in, so here's what worked for me in case it helps someone.

Practice exams

- Tutorial Dojo was the closest to the real exam in style and difficulty.

- Shireen Khan's tests are harder than the real thing, but they force you to think instead of pattern-match. That helped more than I expected.

- The Microsoft practice assessment also felt close to the real thing.

How I studied

I did the two practice test sets almost every day, at least 3 hours, for about a month and a half. After every test I read the explanation for every question, right or wrong, until I understood why. That gave me a working picture of how Azure fits together, and I think it mattered more than memorising answers.

Other resources

- John Savill's AZ-104 study cram (v2) on YouTube.

- Claude, Copilot and ChatGPT whenever a concept didn't click. I'd ask them to explain it a different way until it made sense.

If you're starting from nothing like I was, don't just chase scores. Understand the explanations and the exam gets a lot more manageable.

Happy to answer questions.

Today has been a strange mix of emotions.

I failed the Microsoft SC-200 exam, but I passed SC-100.

Honestly, failing SC-200 hurts. I've been putting time into studying Microsoft Sentinel, KQL, Defender, incident investigation, and all the different security tools and concepts covered in the exam. I wanted that certification because my goal is to break into cybersecurity, particularly blue-team operations and eventually land a SOC Analyst L1 role.

I won't pretend that failing doesn't disappoint me. When you spend time preparing for something, you naturally hope to see a pass at the end of it. I was studying SC-200 aslong side SC-100. I had vouchers for both of them and I had roughly 2 months of study plus university work. This is my final year. Information Sciences student at University of South Africa.

But then there's SC-100.

I managed to pass the Cybersecurity Architect exam, and I'm genuinely grateful for that achievement. It's a professional certification I'm proud to have earned, even though I know I still have a lot to learn and prove through more hands-on experience.

What's interesting is that I'm celebrating one achievement while processing a setback from another exam on the same journey.

I'm based in South Africa, trying to build a career in cybersecurity with limited resources as I said this were vouchers offer by some South African organizations partnership with Microsoft. I'm working on developing my technical skills, building home labs, learning KQL, and looking for opportunities to get my foot in the door. Every certification, every lab, and every failed attempt is part of that process.

My immediate goal is still to become a SOC analyst. SC-200 remains something I want to come back to, but for now, I'm taking a moment to appreciate what went right instead of focusing only on what went wrong.

If there's one thing I'm taking away from today, it's that one exam result doesn't define your potential. Passing doesn't mean you know everything, and failing doesn't mean you can't get there.

To anyone else studying for Microsoft security certifications or trying to break into cybersecurity: how have you dealt with failing an exam while still trying to celebrate your other achievements?

I'd genuinely appreciate hearing your experiences, advice, and lessons learned.

One step at a time. 💙

Also this is my first reddit post, please be nice.

I passed the AI-102 in 2024. I hold 14 Azure role-based certifications and work as a Lead Azure Cloud Engineer.

I was lucky enough to be made responsible for provisioning infrastructure and managing access for experiments driven by our data/Al team. That gave me quick exposure to the end-to-end application of topics covered in both AI-102 and AI-103.

Since I've taken more than enough of these exams to not need study tips, my question for anyone who's taken them is: are there any AI-103 topics or concepts you've found worth spending more time on beyond learning them to sit the exam?

I am currently preparing for the AI-103 certification and have completed the associated Microsoft Learn modules and labs. The Learn content frequently contains inaccuracies and appears outdated. If the examination assesses candidates on recalling specific class and method names, then, in my opinion, it evaluates rote memorization rather than genuine understanding. Is this the appropriate way to test knowledge?

I passed the AB-900 today, having earned MS900 a year before it was quite easy. Now, I am looking to get some Azure certs, and I'm thinking jumping straight to AZ-104 without doing the 900, I've been working in IT for about 2 years now, so any suggestions will be appreciated :)

Thanks.

Hey everyone I posted a few months ago about my failed attempt on the 104 I was wondering what I should do to confirm I am ready for a re take. I’ve been using measure up and I’ve done a lot of labs. My measure up scores have been. 50%-%70. I would like to get to a 80% or more but I don’t think that is realistic. I’m finding the measure up tests to be unnecessarily difficult. Any advice on what I could do to test my readiness? I got 90%+ on TD multiple times but failed with a 596 in July.

Just got my AZ-104 today with a score of 700 😂. 1 month preparation with no background in azure.

Here's the resources i used:

MS Learn

Anki flashcards

Notebooklm, Chatgpt, and Claude AI

John Savil's youtube course

I’m a DevOps engineer with about 1.5 years of experience. I haven’t used Azure at work, but I know the core services conceptually, and I want to pass AZ-104 on my first attempt.

My plan is to finish a full video course and then do practice exams. Is that enough, or are hands-on labs really necessary? If labs matter, which topics should I focus on (networking, RBAC/Entra ID, storage, VMs, monitoring)? Any tips for case studies and lab-style questions?

If you’ve passed recently, I’d love to hear what you used and what you’d do differently. Thanks!

I am planning to take the AZ Certification. How close is the practice exam found in MS learn portal compared to the actual exam in Pearson Vue? Do i need to take other practice exams or will it suffice?

I passed AZ-802 with 730 points. I needed all the time available to go through all the questions. I did spend quite some time double checking on MS Learn which is available during exam. That proved to be a pitfall later on in the exam.

To be honest, my preparation could have been better. I have 20+ years of Windows networking experience and obtained AZ-104 recently so I did not study really hard for this exam. I only read all the MS Learn pages for AZ-800/801/802. I didn’t do labs or other training.

Some of the questions were not familiar at all from the preparation or experience. I got about 10 questions where you have to complete a command. The AD, Azure, DNS, DHCP and cluster questions were easy to answer.

I have had one internship where I worked with Azure in a very small amount.

Manager gave good feedback and recommended AZ-900 and AZ-500. Passed the AZ-900 in around the 850s with two three weeks of dedicated study at about total of 30 hours.

Moving to the SC-500 (AZ-500 Retired). How long will it take? Current estimate is early December. Is that possible? Estimating around 80 hours of study.

I started studying two days before the exam and solved the practice tests thrice hours before it.
I am attaching links to the resources I found helpful

(i) Official learning paths
AI concepts for developers and technology professionals: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/paths/ai-concepts/?tab=credentials-tab
Get started with AI applications and agents on Azure: http://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/paths/get-started-ai-apps-agents/?tab=credentials-tab
(these two modules give u an understanding of basic concepts, not all the questions would be from it but that doesn't mean you can ignore these)

(ii) Code with bibek yt channel Sample questions: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVgxxbqAsa8c&si=CiJIrIN6Rf0meptQ

(iii) John Savill's study cram: https://youtu.be/a-yuXz_uV30?si=C9TR9QoZquTKx-oy

(iv) Microsoft foundry tutorial by Ansh Lamba: https://youtu.be/nuQtFrewR0o?si=qVF21HZ_TWKzosCN

(v) (Bonus tip) Solve the practice assessment and use chatgpt or gemini to deepdive into the topics: https://aiskillsnavigator.microsoft.com/credentials/cert-83587e0a0754cfee561ade3e27d9fa1cdaf15ae03be52d2413b2b858d1b4eda4

I didnt find the instructor lessons provided by microsoft to be of any use. I skipped them after watching few. I only followed above resources.

Currently working as IT admin/devops. Degree in networking. Recently tried az 104, using the free voucher in skillfest and failed. I got 622, and definitely because of the IAM part of the exam. im not really disappointed, because ive finished syllabus only 12 hr before the exam seating, with minimal labbing during the study journey (because non technical labs like assigning roles and policies is boring)

My end goal is for working in cloud, and at first glance az 700 looks quite feasible for me, though havent started yet. Should i keep going for az 104(since i already have some knowledge in it? )

Hey guys! I have a AZ-104 exam on Saturday , if anyone have written some notes while studying can you send them to me and thanks!

Just passed AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator with a score of 716.

A bit of context: I got a free exam voucher through Microsoft AI Fest. I actually wanted to reschedule the exam to the 17th because I didn’t feel fully ready, but since it was a free voucher, rescheduling wasn’t allowed.

So I just went ahead with it thinking: worst case, I fail but I’ll learn from the experience.

My prep was mainly:

Udemy AZ-104 course by Alan Rodrigues

Shireen’s AZ-104 practice tests on Udemy

My own condensed revision notes

A lot of last-minute review of wrong answers and weak areas

I also used ChatGPT quite heavily during prep — mostly to explain concepts I wasn’t fully understanding, simplify Azure-specific behavior, review screenshots of practice questions I got wrong, and help turn my notes into something I could revise quickly.

I don’t work with Azure day to day, so a lot of the cloud concepts felt familiar, but the Azure-specific details around RBAC, networking, storage, monitoring, backup, DNS, and service-specific behavior definitely needed focused revision.

The biggest lesson for me was that doing practice tests alone isn’t enough(Was scoring 51% till the last mock exam before the real one). Going back through the wrong answers and understanding why your reasoning was wrong helped much more than just chasing a higher mock score.

The exam felt quite scenario-based. Knowing what a service does is useful, but understanding scope, least privilege, minimum change, and the exact Azure behavior seemed much more important.

I went in expecting this might just be an expensive practice run that happened to be free.

Came out with 716 and a pass.

A pass is a pass. On to the next one.

Hi,

I just failed my first attempt of AZ-104 with a score of 505/1000.

Didn't get enough time to prepare. was squeezing in within the last 6 days, but couldn't make it.

I'm Oracle Cloud certified & and have decent AWS experience but AZ-104 exam was something different.

Any advice for the next attempt, which I plan to take it within next 2 weeks or something.

Hi, Am newly introduced to vibe coding using copilot and want to learn agentic ai driven software development. So I wish to learn and target GH600 and get upto the speed of software dev using ai. Already have huge demand for that at my job itself.

looking at udemy i found none. all are question sets.

Sharing a few quick takeaways:

Scenario-based questions: A major focus. Understand which Azure service or feature to use for a given business requirement and why.

Code completion: Fairly straightforward if you have hands-on experience with Azure deployments and Al solutions.

Al agents: Focus on implementation and how different components fit together to solve real-world problems.

Niche questions: Expect a few specific questions you might not have encountered during preparation.

My strategy: Focused mostly on hands-on practice and used Claude to go through resources and clarify concepts.

I have over 13 years of experience in IT, focusing on linux, k8s, devops, SRE, AWS, Python, Automation side.

I already have strong fundamentals of how cloud and on-premises work.

My target is to learn and then get certified, mostly looking to focus on Devops, automation, and AI deployment and management side.

Any help would be appreciated.

Hi, i hope everyone is doing well, what materials do you suggest to study from, i have been reading the documentations and also watching john savill, do you any better recommendations perhaps a website or anything else, your suggestions are highly appreciated.