Azure Virtual Machines 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

Key Exam Topics

•VM series: B (burstable/dev), D (general), E (memory), F (compute), N (GPU), L (storage)

•Availability Sets: fault domains (separate racks) + update domains (rolling restart)

•Availability Zones: physically separate data centers in same region (higher SLA)

•VM Scale Sets (VMSS): autoscaling group; flexible orchestration recommended

•Azure Spot VMs: significantly cheaper than pay-as-you-go, evictable (needs verification — exact discount range against current Azure pricing); use for batch/stateless workloads

•Disk types: Ultra (highest IOPS, mission critical) / Premium SSD v2 / Premium SSD / Standard SSD / HDD

•Azure Hybrid Benefit: use existing Windows Server / SQL Server licenses on Azure (needs verification — exact savings percentage against current Azure pricing)

Must-Know CLI Commands

bash

az vm create --resource-group myRG --name myVM --image Ubuntu2204 --size Standard_D4s_v3 --admin-username azureuser --generate-ssh-keys
az vm start --name myVM --resource-group myRG
az vm stop --name myVM --resource-group myRG
az vm deallocate --name myVM --resource-group myRG  # Stop billing for compute
az vm resize --resource-group myRG --name myVM --size Standard_D8s_v3

Exam Tips

•Deallocate vs Stop: Stop keeps VM running (still charged!); Deallocate frees compute billing

•Availability Zones vs Sets: Zones = datacenter-level isolation; Sets = rack-level within datacenter

•Azure Bastion: connect via browser without public IP or NSG port 22/3389

•VM Extensions: run scripts post-deployment (Custom Script Extension, DSC, OMS Agent)

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:
  VM series: B (burstable/dev), D (general), E (memory), F (compute), N (GPU), L (storage)
  Availability Sets: fault domains (separate racks) + update domains (rolling restart)
  Availability Zones: physically separate data centers in same region (higher SLA)
  VM Scale Sets (VMSS): autoscaling group; flexible orchestration recommended
  Spot VMs: 60-90% cheaper, evictable; use for batch/stateless workloads
  Disk types: Ultra / Premium SSD v2 / Premium SSD / Standard SSD / Standard HDD
  Azure Hybrid Benefit: reuse existing Windows Server/SQL Server licenses on Azure

Virtual Machines — Certification