MSAP study guide
MSAP · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate credential validates the day-to-day skills needed to implement, manage, and monitor an organization's Azure environment. It is aimed at administrators who already work with Azure-or are moving into that role-and who need to prove they can handle identities, governance, storage, compute, virtual networking, and monitoring in the portal, with the Azure CLI, and with Azure PowerShell. The associated exam is organized around five weighted domains: manage Azure identities and governance; implement and manage storage; deploy and manage Azure compute resources; implement and manage virtual networking; and monitor and maintain Azure resources. Questions are scenario-based and often ask you to choose the least-privilege or most cost-effective option, so memorizing menu paths is not enough. The MSAP study guide has 5 sections and about 1,745 words.
01Manage Azure identities and governance
This domain tests how you establish identity, authorization, and governance boundaries before workloads are deployed. Expect questions on Microsoft Entra ID objects, role assignments, Azure Policy, management groups, resource locks, and cost controls.
378 words, about 2 min02Implement and manage storage
This domain covers storage account selection, replication, access control, and data movement. Questions often hinge on durability, tier cost, and whether a client can read the secondary endpoint.
389 words, about 2 min03Deploy and manage Azure compute resources
This domain tests selecting and operating compute: virtual machines, scale sets, App Service, and containers, plus repeatable deployment with ARM or Bicep. Availability sets protect against host failure using fault domains and update domains, with a 99.95% SLA; availability zones place VMs in separate datacenters for 99.99%.
327 words, about 2 min04Implement and manage virtual networking
This domain focuses on designing and securing connectivity: VNets and subnets, peering, routing, name resolution, and load balancing. Plan non-overlapping address spaces; overlapping ranges block peering and VPN.
332 words, about 2 min05Monitor and maintain Azure resources
This domain tests whether you can observe, alert on, protect, and recover Azure workloads. Azure Monitor collects metrics and logs.
319 words, about 2 min