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Compute

Core

Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Managed VM groups, flexible orchestration, and scale-out operations.

Key points

  • Manage a group of VM instances with shared orchestration and lifecycle.
  • Support horizontal capacity changes and load-balancer integration.
  • Flexible orchestration is recommended for new workloads and retains VM-style control.

Best-known use cases

  • Autoscale a stateless application fleet.
  • Manage repeated VM instances with coordinated health and upgrades.

What candidates often confuse it with

  • Scale set vs individual VMs: orchestrated fleet vs separately operated servers.
  • Scale out vs resize: more instances vs a different per-instance compute shape.

Key takeaway

Use VM Scale Sets when a workload needs coordinated VM fleet management or horizontal scaling.

Related services

  • Azure Availability Zones
  • Availability sets

Relevant exam tasks

  • D3.2.S6 — Deploy virtual machines to availability zones and availability sets
  • D3.2.S7 — Deploy and configure an Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets

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Free Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate prep

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Exam Weights

Exam snapshot

AZ-104 at a glance

Level
Intermediate
Duration
100 minutes
Questions
No fixed live question count published
Formats
No guaranteed question-type mix
Scoring
1–1,000 scaled score; 700 minimum passing score

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Mode

Exam fidelity: Microsoft does not publish a fixed live question count or guarantee a question-type mix for AZ-104. This lane counts multiple-choice and multiple-response items as exam-style practice. Ordering, matching, and case-study items are supplemental site exercises and do not count toward exam-style accuracy. Practice percentages do not reproduce Microsoft's scaled scoring, and difficulty labels describe this site's Intermediate-level scenario complexity rather than a Microsoft-published question rating.

Reference

AZ-104 topics and reference map

Study links

AZ-104 resources

Official Microsoft resources

AZ-104 official study guide

The live Microsoft guide with the skills-measured date, domain ranges, and detailed objectives.

Azure Administrator Associate certification

Official certification overview, assessment duration, practice assessment, exam sandbox, and scheduling path.

AZ-104T00 Microsoft Azure Administrator course

Official instructor-led course and training path for Azure administrators preparing for AZ-104.