Managing Azure Compute
Deploying and managing compute resources is the largest skill area of the AZ-104 exam and covers virtual machines, containers, and Azure App Service web apps. Candidates must demonstrate hands-on ability to automate deployment using ARM templates or Bicep files, create and configure VMs with appropriate availability and scaling options, provision containers in the Azure portal, and create and configure Azure App Service plans and web applications.
Required skill for certification: Azure Administrator Associate
Details
Managing Azure Compute is the third skill area of the AZ-104 exam, and covers the provisioning, configuration, and ongoing management of virtual machines, containers, and application hosting platforms in Azure.
This skill centers on Azure Virtual Machines, the IaaS foundation that supports nearly every workload migration and extension scenario. Administrators must master VM lifecycle management tasks, such as selecting appropriate sizes and images, configuring storage through OS and data disks, implementing availability sets, availability zones, and virtual machine scale sets for resilience and elastic scaling, and automating deployment through Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates or Bicep files. Beyond traditional VMs, this skill extends to Azure Container Instances and Azure Kubernetes Service for modern microservices architectures, as well as Azure App Service for PaaS web hosting with deployment slots, scaling rules, and integrated CI/CD pipelines.
For the AZ-104 certification exam, candidates must demonstrate hands-on proficiency across the full compute stack: automating resource deployment with ARM templates or Bicep, creating and configuring VMs including extensions and custom scripts, provisioning and managing containers in the Azure portal, and creating and configuring App Service plans and web apps.
Courses on Managing Azure Compute
The AZ-104 Certification
Managing Azure Compute is an official required skill for the AZ-104 certification exam. Mastering this skill is important, because it is one of the measured skills you will be tested on during the exam.
The AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate certification is an associate-level credential that validates your ability to configure, manage, secure, and administer cloud services in Microsoft Azure, and requires annual renewal to maintain active status
