The AZ-104 exam doesn’t just test what you know – it tests what you can actually do. Monitoring and backup represent two of the most operationally critical skill sets for any Azure Administrator and the exam reflects that by embedding both into scenario-based questions that mirror real job tasks.
Candidates who treat these topics as background knowledge often get caught off guard. Understanding how Azure Monitor works, how to protect resources with backup policies and how to recover from failures is the difference between passing and rescheduling.
Azure Monitor Essentials: Metrics, Logs and Alerts
Azure Monitor is the unified observability platform for all Azure resources. It collects two distinct types of data – metrics and logs – and knowing the difference is foundational for the exam.
Metrics are numerical, time-stamped performance values like CPU percentage, memory usage, or network throughput. They’re lightweight, near-real-time and best explored through Metrics Explorer directly in the Azure portal. Logs, on the other hand, capture detailed operational events and are stored in a Log Analytics workspace for deeper analysis.
To query logs effectively, you need a working understanding of Kusto Query Language (KQL). A simple example would be querying CPU utilization across VMs over the past hour. In KQL, that looks something like filtering the Perf table by CounterName == “% Processor Time” and summarizing average values by computer. The exam won’t ask you to memorize syntax, but it does expect you to understand what KQL is used for and when Log Analytics is the right tool.
Alerts are where monitoring becomes actionable. You configure alert rules based on metric thresholds or log query results and then attach an Action Group to define what happens when an alert fires – whether that’s sending an email, triggering an SMS, or calling a webhook. A common exam trap is forgetting to configure the Action Group entirely, which leaves an alert rule with no response mechanism. Always associate an Action Group with every alert rule you create.
Backup & Disaster Recovery: What the Exam Actually Tests
The Recovery Services vault is the central container for all backup and site recovery data in Azure. You create it in the Azure portal by selecting a region and resource group and from that point it serves as the management hub for all protected resources within your environment.
Backup policies are where most of the exam weight sits. A policy defines how frequently backups occur – daily or weekly – and how long each recovery point is retained. The exam frequently tests edge cases like soft delete, which retains deleted backup data for 14 additional days to protect against accidental or malicious deletion. If a scenario involves recovering data after a vault item was removed, soft delete is almost always part of the correct answer.
Initiating a VM backup is straightforward: you navigate to the VM, select Backup under Operations, associate it with a Recovery Services vault, assign a policy and enable backup. Restoring follows a similar path – you can restore an entire VM, restore individual disks, or perform file-level recovery depending on what the scenario requires.
This is also the point in your preparation where practicing with realistic exam scenarios pays off. Reviewing Microsoft AZ-104 Exam Dumps that accurately reflect real question formats helps you recognize how backup and restore scenarios are framed – particularly when the question mixes Recovery Services vault configuration with policy compliance requirements.
Azure Site Recovery (ASR) handles a different problem – not backup, but business continuity. ASR replicates VMs to a secondary Azure region so that if a region fails, you can initiate a failover and keep workloads running. The exam tests ASR at a high level, focusing on when it’s the appropriate solution rather than step-by-step configuration details.
Common Mistakes Candidates Make
Many candidates conflate metrics and logs, assuming they serve the same purpose. They don’t – and selecting the wrong data source in a scenario question costs marks. Similarly, candidates often confuse Backup Vault (a newer, limited-scope resource) with Recovery Services vault (the full-featured option for VMs, SQL and files). On AZ-104, Recovery Services vault is almost always the correct choice for VM-level protection.
The Takeaway
Monitoring and backup are not optional extras in Azure administration – they’re core responsibilities that show up both in the exam and in daily operations. Configure Azure Monitor to capture the right signals, build meaningful alerts with Action Groups and protect your resources through well-defined backup policies and Recovery Services vaults. Run one hands-on lab today, even a simple one and the concepts will solidify faster than any amount of reading alone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: What is the difference between Azure Monitor metrics and logs? Metrics are lightweight, numerical data points collected at regular intervals – ideal for real-time performance monitoring. Logs capture detailed event and operational data stored in a Log Analytics workspace and are better suited for deep troubleshooting and historical analysis. The exam tests both, so understanding when to use each one is essential.
Q2: Can I restore a VM directly from backup in Azure? Yes. From the Recovery Services vault, you can restore a full VM, restore managed disks and attach them to a new VM, or perform file-level recovery to retrieve specific files without restoring the entire machine. The method you choose depends on the recovery scope required – and the exam presents all three as scenario options.
Q3: What is the purpose of an Action Group in Azure Monitor? An Action Group defines the notification and response actions triggered when an alert fires. It can send emails, SMS messages, push notifications, or call webhooks and Azure Functions. Without a properly configured Action Group, an alert rule has no operational impact – a detail the exam frequently uses as a distractor.
Q4: What is the difference between Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery? Azure Backup protects data by creating recovery points you can restore from in case of data loss or corruption. Azure Site Recovery is a business continuity solution that replicates entire workloads to a secondary region, enabling failover when a primary region becomes unavailable. Both use the Recovery Services vault but serve fundamentally different purposes.