AZ-104 · Domain 3 of 5 by weight
Implement and Manage Storage
By Falakhe Sivela · Updated 2026-07-13
Implement and Manage Storage accounts for 20% of the Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate — roughly 10 of the 50 questions you will see. It ranks 3 of 5 by weight, so it deserves proportionate — not equal — study time.
What this domain actually tests
Storage accounts, and above all redundancy options — which the exam asks as a requirement and expects you to answer with an acronym.
| Option | Protects against |
|---|---|
| LRS | Disk or rack failure inside one datacentre |
| ZRS | A whole datacentre (zone) failing, within one region |
| GRS | An entire region failing — secondary copy exists but is not readable |
| RA-GRS | Same as GRS, but you can read the secondary during the outage |
| GZRS / RA-GZRS | Zone redundancy in the primary region plus geo-replication |
The mapping to learn, because it turns a memory problem into a decoding problem:
- Requirement mentions a regional outage → you need a G.
- Requirement also says readable during the outage → you need RA-.
- Requirement mentions a datacentre or zone failing, in-region → Z.
That is genuinely the whole trick, and it converts five confusing acronyms into two rules.
The traps
GRS is not readable. This is the distinction the entire family exists to test. A GRS secondary sits there for disaster recovery and you cannot read from it until Microsoft fails over or you initiate one. If the scenario says applications must continue reading data during a regional outage, GRS is wrong and RA-GRS is right.
Azure Backup versus Azure Site Recovery. Both sound like disaster recovery and they are not the same thing:
- Backup protects data so you can restore it.
- Site Recovery replicates whole machines so you can fail over to another region.
If the requirement is "restore a file someone deleted," it is Backup. If it is "keep the business running when the region goes down," it is Site Recovery. The exam checks that you know which solves which.
SAS tokens are delegated, time-limited, scope-limited access to storage without sharing the account key. If a scenario needs to give a partner temporary read access to one container, that is a SAS — not a new account key, and not making the container public.
Access tiers and lifecycle management. Hot, cool, archive — with archive requiring a rehydration that takes hours. If the requirement involves immediate access, archive is eliminated regardless of cost.
How to study it
Make the requirement-to-acronym table above your primary artefact and drill it as scenarios, not definitions. Write ten requirements in plain English and label each with an acronym. That is exactly the exam's question format.
Then create a storage account, generate a SAS token, and use it. Then set a lifecycle rule and watch a blob move tiers.
Finally, say the Backup-versus-Site-Recovery distinction out loud until it is instant. It is a single sentence — one restores data, one fails over machines — and it is worth marks on every attempt of this exam.
What this domain covers
- Storage accounts and redundancy options
- Blob access tiers and lifecycle management
- Azure Files and sync
- Backup and recovery for VMs and files
These are the topics Prepa uses to generate AZ-104 practice questions for this domain, so your practice is weighted the way the exam is.
The other AZ-104 domains
- Manage Azure Identities and Governance20%
- Implement and Manage Storage (this page)20%
- Deploy and Manage Azure Compute Resources25%
- Implement and Manage Virtual Networking20%
- Monitor and Maintain Azure Resources15%
For the full exam format, scoring, and a study plan, read the Azure Administrator (AZ-104) Study Guide.