Azure AKS Certification Guide

Primary Certification

AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator

Format: check current question count, time limit, passing score, and price on the official Microsoft Certification page before relying on these (needs verification — exam format and price change periodically; previously stated here as 40-60 MCQ, 3 hours, 700/1000, $165 USD)

Related Certifications

•AZ-305 Azure Solutions Architect Expert

•CKA/CKAD (Kubernetes fundamentals)

Key Exam Topics

•AKS managed control plane: free; pay for worker nodes and other resources

•Networking: Kubenet (overlay, node IPs) vs Azure CNI (pod IPs from VNet subnet)

•Workload Identity: federation between K8s ServiceAccount and Azure AD managed identity

•Node pools: System (critical pods) + User (app workloads); spot node pools for cost

•AKS autoscaler: cluster autoscaler (node scale) + KEDA (pod scale by event)

•Container Insights: AKS monitoring via Azure Monitor Log Analytics workspace

•AKS security: Azure Policy add-on (OPA Gatekeeper), Defender for Containers, private cluster

Must-Know CLI Commands

bash

az aks create --name prod-aks --resource-group myRG --node-count 3 --enable-managed-identity --enable-workload-identity --enable-oidc-issuer
az aks get-credentials --name prod-aks --resource-group myRG
az aks nodepool add --cluster-name prod-aks --resource-group myRG --name spotpool --priority Spot --node-vm-size Standard_D4s_v3
az aks upgrade --name prod-aks --resource-group myRG --kubernetes-version 1.29.0
az aks check-acr --name prod-aks --resource-group myRG --acr myregistry

Exam Tips

•Azure CNI recommended: real VNet IPs per pod, better network policy support

•Workload Identity: replaces Pod Identity (deprecated); simpler, more secure

•Upgrade strategy: Blue-green node pools or surge upgrades to minimize downtime

•AKS + ACR: az aks update --attach-acr — grants AKS pull access to container registry

Study Plan

Week 1-2: Read official docs + overview/fundamentals sections in this platform

Week 3-4: Hands-on labs (AWS free tier / Azure sandbox / GCP free tier)

Week 5: Practice exams (TutorialsDojo, ExamTopics, Whizlabs)

Final days: Review weak areas + cheatsheet

Free Study Resources

•AWS: aws.amazon.com/training — free digital courses

•Azure: learn.microsoft.com — Microsoft Learn (free + sandbox labs)

•GCP: cloud.google.com/training — free courses + Qwiklabs credits

•TutorialsDojo: cheat sheets for all exams (best value paid resource)

Revision Notes

PRIMARY EXAM: AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator

TOP TOPICS:
  AKS managed control plane: free; pay for worker nodes and other resources
  Networking: Kubenet (overlay, node IPs) vs Azure CNI (pod IPs from VNet subnet)
  Workload Identity: federation between K8s ServiceAccount and Azure AD managed identity
  Node pools: System (critical pods) + User (app workloads); spot node pools for cost savings

AKS — Certification