Top High-Yield Topics for the AZ-104 Exam
If you are studying for the Microsoft Azure Administrator exam, the real question is not what to read but where to spend your limited hours. The AZ-104 rewards depth in a few areas more than shallow coverage of everything, and knowing the weightings up front is the single cheapest advantage you can give yourself. This is a practical look at the high-yield AZ-104 topics, drawn straight from Microsoft's published study guide.
What the exam actually looks like
Microsoft does not publish a fixed question count for the AZ-104, so the numbers you see for practice runs vary by provider. Our mock test pack runs 50 questions across 100 minutes, which works out to about two minutes per item under linear delivery. The pass standard is Microsoft's own: you need 700 on a scale that runs from 0 to 1000. That 700 is not 70 percent of the questions correct. Microsoft scales scores, so treat it as a target to clear comfortably rather than a line to tiptoe over.
The five functional groups and their weights
The exam is organised into five functional groups. The weightings below come from Microsoft's official AZ-104 study guide, verified on 24 August 2026. Two groups tie for the largest share, and together the top three cover more than two-thirds of the paper.
| Functional group | Weight |
|---|---|
| Manage Azure identities and governance | 24% |
| Deploy and manage Azure compute resources | 24% |
| Implement and manage storage | 20% |
| Implement and manage virtual networking | 18% |
| Monitor and maintain Azure resources | 14% |
Where to put your hours
Identities and governance and compute resources each carry the heaviest weighting, so they deserve first claim on your study time. On the identity side, be fluent with role-based access control, Microsoft Entra ID users and groups, and subscription-level governance. On the compute side, know how to deploy and manage virtual machines, scale sets, containers, and app hosting, because these turn up in both straightforward and scenario-style questions.
Storage is the next tier at a fifth of the exam. Practise the distinctions between account types, redundancy options, access tiers, and the ways you secure and share data. Virtual networking sits just behind it: subnets, network security groups, peering, and name resolution are the recurring themes. Monitoring and maintenance is the smallest group, but it is also the one candidates skip and then lose easy marks on, so give it a genuine pass rather than none.
How a mock test changes your prep
Reading the objectives tells you the shape of the exam. A mock test tells you where you actually stand against it. When people ask how do I pass the AZ-104 without over-studying, the honest answer is to sit a timed run early, see which functional group your score sags in, and steer the rest of your revision there. That feedback loop is worth more than another read-through of the docs.
A good Microsoft Azure Administrator (AZ-104) mock test mirrors the published weightings, so a weak section on the mock maps directly to a weak functional group on the day. Use the two-minute-per-question pace to build timing instinct, and review every wrong answer to the point where you can explain why the right one is right.
What this mock contains, plainly
One thing to be clear about before you buy. The real AZ-104 may include interactive components: tasks you carry out against the Azure product rather than answer as multiple choice. This practise exam for Azure Administrator is multiple-choice and multiple-response only. It covers every functional group at its published weighting, so it is strong for knowledge and timing, but you will not practise the interactive interface here. Pair the mock with hands-on time in a real Azure subscription and you have covered both halves.
If you want a structured way to test yourself against the real weightings, get a mock test pack and start with a full timed run. Work the high-weight AZ-104 topics first, close the gaps the results expose, and walk in knowing exactly where you stand.