After having not taken a Microsoft Exam for some time I decided a few weeks ago to learn and gain my Azure Solution Architect Badge.

 

A prerequisite to obtaining this certification is to pass the exam for Azure Administrator AZ-104.   As I was starting out I noticed that this exam was due to change on July 28 2022 so I really wanted to pass it before then.

 

Study

I am lucky that we have access to training via A Cloud Guru so I took the Azure Fundamentals AZ-900 course and then the Azure Administrator AZ-104 Course.  Both of these were good preparation and had the added advantage of sandbox labs to actually play with Azure. In addition they had a couple of tests to practice with.

I ran through the free MS training for AZ-104 but I felt this was high level so would recommend that you don’t just use this alone.

 

The Exam

I wanted to do this on the weekend from home but there seemed to be no slots. So, I booked for 0700 on a Monday.  The first shock was that Pearson Vue are now charging VAT on online exams. WTF!   I cant see why doing the same exam at a testing centre is VAT free but looking around I found some really strange information from Pearson.  This all feels like Pearson scamming a few extra quid from their customers.

Having swallowed the extra cost, the exam check-in process was relatively straight forward. Although they initially said they could not hear me despite the fact I ran through the Pearson system check.    Once the exam started it said I had 51 questions.  That was a surprise as I thought it would be more, and truth be told some of these questions were broken down in to 3 more sub questions, so the real total was perhaps 65.
Despite that though for the most part the training I did helped.  There were around 6 questions were I couldn’t recall much about the topic but gave it my best guess based on what I learnt and common sense.
I finished with about 10 minutes so went through the questions again and actually changed 2 answers as I had earlier marked them for review.

Having estimated that I did OK but not great I expected the worst. To my surprise I aced the test with 923.   Sadly though the Pearson system wouldn’t let me print out the report sheet at the end.

Two hours after the test I got an email from Microsoft congratulating me and awarding the Azure Administrator Badge. This must be a record as it used to be at least the next day before this happened. So points to Pearson for having their system properly integrated with MS and vice versa.

 

 

And now Its onto studying for the Architect exam.