AZ 104 Why People Fail Common Mistakes

You scored 685. The passing score is 700. You were 15 points away.

That 15-point gap isn’t random. It’s not bad luck. It’s a pattern—the same pattern that trips up most AZ-104 candidates before they retake.

This article tells you exactly what that pattern is, why it happens, and how to fix it before your next exam.

Why Fail Common Mistakes Trips Everyone Up

The Microsoft Azure Administrator (AZ-104) exam isn’t designed to trick you. It’s designed to separate people who can talk about Azure from people who can manage Azure in production.

The problem: most candidates study the theory. They watch videos about role-based access control, virtual networks, and storage accounts. They understand what these things are. Then the exam asks them when and how to use them in a real scenario, and they freeze.

Here’s what a typical failing score report looks like:

• Skills measured: Identity and Governance (68%), Compute (62%), Networking (71%)
• Passing threshold: 700
• Your score: 685

You didn’t fail identity and governance. You failed the application of it. You could probably define what Azure AD is. You couldn’t figure out why a user couldn’t access a storage account in a scenario that required you to trace through five different permission layers.

That’s why people fail the AZ-104. Not because they don’t know Azure. Because they don’t know how Azure works when everything is connected.

The Specific Pattern That Causes This

There are three specific mistakes that show up in almost every failed attempt:

Mistake #1: You memorize features instead of understanding workflows.

You know what managed disks are. You don’t know when to choose managed disks over unmanaged disks, and why that choice cascades into backup strategy, disaster recovery, and cost.

Mistake #2: You skip the labs.

You’ve done practice tests. Multiple practice tests. You’ve seen questions. You haven’t actually done the thing. You haven’t created a virtual network, deployed a VM, configured NSG rules, and watched traffic get blocked by the wrong rule at the wrong tier. When the exam question asks you to troubleshoot why RDP isn’t working on a VM, you’re guessing based on what you read, not based on what you’ve experienced.

Mistake #3: You don’t read the constraints in the scenario.

The exam question describes a company with 50 branch offices. It mentions they already use on-premises Active Directory. It says they need to reduce administrative overhead. Every word matters. Most candidates read “branch offices” and jump to ExpressRoute. They miss that the real constraint is “reduce overhead”—which points to Azure AD Connect and delegated management, not a faster connection.

These aren’t knowledge gaps. They’re application gaps.

How The Exam Actually Tests This

The AZ-104 exam is mostly scenario-based questions. Not all—there are some straight knowledge checks—but the ones that separate 680 scores from 720+ scores are always scenarios with multiple correct-sounding answers.

Here’s a real example of how this works:

Question type: Multiple choice, single answer

“Your company has 200 users in Azure AD. Finance department users need to access a storage account that contains payroll data. Currently, all users can see the storage account in the portal, but only finance users should. Users are getting confused by the clutter. What should you do?”

The four answers: A) Create a new resource group and move the storage account to it, then restrict resource group access
B) Configure Azure AD group-based access control and assign the finance group to the storage account
C) Use service principals with managed identities for each finance user
D) Enable Azure Information Protection on the storage account

Most failing candidates pick A or C. They’re thinking about isolation and identity. But the question has a constraint you have to catch: “Users are getting confused by the clutter.” That’s a visibility problem, not a permission problem. Answer B is correct because it solves the actual problem—controlling what users see in the portal, not just what they can access.

The exam is full of these. You’ll get a scenario about VMs failing to communicate across subnets. The answer won’t be “add a route.” It’ll be “check if network peering is configured” because there’s a detail in the scenario that tells you the VMs are in different virtual networks, not different subnets.

How To Recognize It Instantly

When you’re taking a practice test or the real exam, here’s how to catch yourself making these mistakes:

Red flag #1: You picked an answer and immediately moved on.

Stop. Go back. Read the scenario again. If you answered in less than 60 seconds on a scenario question, you missed something. These questions require you to extract the actual constraint from the story, not just the obvious one.

Red flag #2: Your answer is technically correct but doesn’t solve the problem in the scenario.

Example: The scenario says “We need to reduce our Azure bill.” You answer “Use Reserved Instances.” That’s a valid way to reduce costs. But if the question also says “We have variable workloads that spike unpredictably,” then Reserved Instances is wrong. You answered the question you studied, not the question you were asked.

Red flag #3: You haven’t actually done this in Azure.

Before you answer, ask yourself: “Have I actually configured this?” If the answer is no, you’re guessing. And on the AZ-104, guessing fails you.

Practice This Before Your Exam

Stop taking full-length practice tests for now. You need focused, scenario-based drilling.

Here’s the process:

1. Take one practice test (just one). Note every question you got wrong.

2. For each wrong question: Recreate the exact scenario in a free Azure sandbox (use the Azure free tier). Actually do the thing. Don’t watch a video. Actually create the resources, configure them, and see what happens.

3. Do this 10 times minimum. Pick 10 common scenarios (virtual network connectivity, storage account access control, virtual machine networking, identity delegation, backup and recovery).

4. Then take another practice test. Your score will jump. Not because you memorized more. Because you’ve trained your brain to see the real constraint hidden in the scenario.

This takes 15–20 hours. It’s faster than retaking the exam twice.

Your next action: Go to the Azure portal right now. Create one new virtual network with two subnets. Deploy two VMs in different subnets. Try to ping from one to the other. See what happens. See what breaks. See what fixes it. Do this today. Don’t wait for your next study session.

That’s how you go from 685 to 720+.