AZ-103 Study Guide: Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate Certification

The certification “Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate” is intended for IT administrators who have been administering Azure workloads spanning across compute, storage and networking features in Azure. Candidates should be proficient in using Azure Powershell, Azure CLI and ARM templates as well.

For Certification details check out this link

Here are the skills that the exam AZ-103 measures –

• Manage Azure subscriptions and resources (15-20%)
• Implement and manage storage (15-20%)
• Deploy and manage virtual machines (VMs) (15-20%)
• Configure and manage virtual networks (30-35%)
• Manage identities (15-20%)

Rather than mapping each of the skills mentioned above, I am going to list the different concepts that a candidate should be aware of and preferably, should have hands-on experience as well. I believe this will simplify the preparation path for the candidates who are looking forward to earn this certification.

1. Azure Data centers
   • Different regions
   • Regional Pairs
2. Managing Azure Subscriptions
   • Blueprints and policies
     • Policy definition
   • Management Groups
   • Quotas and Limits
   • Resource Tagging
   • Add or Change Administrators
3. Managing Resource Groups
   • Move resources to a different resource group
   • Resource Locking
   • Policies
   • Delete Resource Groups
4. ARM templates overview
   • ARM best practices
   • ARM deployment modes
   • Deploying ARM Templates using CLI / Powershell / Portal
   • What-if deployment
5. Creating and Setting up Virtual Machines in Azure
   • Different VM sizes
   • Windows vs Linux VMs
   • Assigning NICs and Public IPs to VM
   • RDP/SSH connections to VMs
   • Azure Bastion
   • Setting up extensions
     • Deploy VM extensions using ARM
   • Managed disks for VMs
   • OS disk vs Data Disk
   • HDD vs SSDs
   • Azure Disk Encryption
   • Dedicated Hosts
   • What are VM scalesets?
   • Monitor VM
6. High Availability in Azure
   • Availability Zones vs Availability Sets
7. Azure Backup & Azure Site Recovery
   • Backing up Azure VMs
   • Setting up Recovery Services Vault
8. What are Virtual Networks in Azure?
   • Setting up a VNET and SubNets under it
   • Planning VNets
   • Connecting two or more VNets
     • VNET Peering
   • Configuring Site-to-site VNet connectivity
9. What are Virtual Network Gateways?
   • Setting up VNET Gateways
10. What are Express Routes?
11. Public vs Private IP addresses in Azure
    • Assign public IP to an existing VM
12. What are network Security Groups?
    • Allowing or Denying traffic to VMs or subnets
13. What are Application Security Groups?
14. Public & Private Azure DNS Zones
    • Setting up Azure DNS Zones – Public vs Private DNS zones
15. Different load balancing options in Azure
    • Azure Load Balancer
      • Internal vs External Load Balancer
    • Azure Application Gateway
      • Configuring WAF
    • Azure Traffic manager
      • Different routing options within Traffic manager
    • Azure FrontDoor
      • Create a FrontDoor
16. Monitoring Network using Network Watcher
17. What is Azure Active Directory?
    • Setting up AAD tenant
    • Connecting AAD with on-prem Active Directory using AD Connect
      • Azure AD connect sync
      • Password hash vs pass through authentication
      • Single Sign on
        • How single sign on works?
      • Password Writeback
    • How Multi-Factor authentication works?
      • MFA licensing
      • Configuring Multi-Factor authentication
18. Configuring Diagnostic Settings for Azure Resources
19. Azure Monitor
    • Different types of captured data
    • Application Insights
    • Alerts in Azure Monitor
    • Setting up alert rules and action groups
    • Alerting based on dynamic thresholds for resources
    • Log Analytics and Activity Logs
      • Resource Logs
      • Alert on log data
      • Collect logs – Azure VMs
    • Querying log tables using KQL
20. Cost Management
    • Monitoring unused resources
    • Monitoring spend on Azure resources
21. Role-based Access Control
    • Configuring role based access for Azure Resources
    • Built-in roles vs Custom Roles
22. Managed Identities
    • System assigned vs User assigned
23. Azure Storage
    • Blobs, Tables, Queues and Files
      • Blobs vs Files
      • Different types of Blobs
    • Data Lake Storage
    • Different Access tiers
      • Hot vs Cool vs Archive
    • Performance tiers
    • Types of Azure Storage Account
    • Data Redundancy options
      • LRS vs ZRS vs GRS vs RA-GRS vs GZRS vs RA-GZRS
    • Secure transfer
    • Controlling network access to storage account
    • Authorization mechanisms in Azure Storage
      • Shared Access Signatures
      • Stored access policy
      • Using Azure AD
    • Configuring CDN (Content Delivery Network)
    • Using Azure Storage Explorer
    • Using AzCopy
24. FAQs

Apart from the above information, you can use the following resources as well for your preparation –

• AZ-103 study guide
• Pluralsight learning path

Hope this helps in your preparation!!