AIFEDERS LEARNING GUIDE
Azure Certification Study Plan: AZ-900, AZ-104 and How to Use Practice Tests
Azure courses and practice tests are among the most searched items in our catalog. The pattern that works is simple: choose the exam that matches your job, learn by doing in a real subscription, and use practice tests to find weak areas rather than to memorise questions. This guide explains how to tell the exams apart and what a good preparation course must include.
By Aifeders
Which exam first
AZ-900 (Azure Fundamentals) covers cloud concepts, core services, pricing and governance at an overview level. It suits people who need to speak about Azure with confidence: sales, project management, support, or developers new to cloud. AZ-104 (Azure Administrator) is a hands-on exam about identities, storage, virtual machines, networking and monitoring; it expects you to have operated these services.
If you have never used Azure, start with AZ-900 or at least the free Microsoft Learn fundamentals path, then move to AZ-104. Going straight to AZ-104 is possible for people with on-premises administration experience, but plan more lab time. Always read the current skills outline on Microsoft Learn, because exam objectives are updated several times a year and older courses may not cover new items.
What a preparation course must include
Check that the course maps its sections to the official skills outline and states the month it was last updated. Prefer instructors who work in the Azure portal and the command line on screen, explain why a setting exists and show the cost of what they create. Slides alone do not prepare you for scenario questions.
A free Azure account or a low-cost pay-as-you-go subscription is part of the course cost. Budget for it and delete resources after each lab. Courses that never ask you to create anything are reference material, not preparation.
- Sections aligned to the current exam skills outline
- Portal and CLI demonstrations with cleanup steps
- Scenario-based questions with explanations
- A stated update date within the last year
Using practice tests correctly
Take the first practice test before you study, note the areas with the lowest scores, and study those areas first. Then take a different test after each study block. The goal is a stable score across new question sets, not a perfect score on one set you have seen before.
Read every explanation, including the ones for questions you answered correctly, and write down the rule in your own words. Practice tests that sell themselves as copies of the real exam are both unreliable and against the exam rules; good tests teach the reasoning behind each answer.
A four-week routine
Week one: fundamentals and the portal, with a daily 30-minute lab. Week two: identities, storage and compute, one practice test at the end. Week three: networking and monitoring, second practice test, review all weak areas. Week four: full-length timed tests, lab repetition for anything under 70 percent, and a final read of the skills outline.
Keep a one-page notes file with the commands and portal paths you used. On exam day you will remember what you did far better than what you watched.