I’m currently preparing for Microsoft AZ-104 Azure Administrator and trying to avoid the usual read docs → watch videos → forget everything cycle.
The problem I’m facing is simple AZ-104 looks easy at topic level but when I start practice questions the scenarios feel very different from what I studied. Especially networking, identity and storage decisions. they are not direct they are situational.
So I wanted to ask people who have already cleared it:
How did you actually structure your preparation so it matched the real exam mindset?
Did you follow a strict sequence like identity → networking → compute → storage, or did you mix everything and learn through scenarios from day one?
Also, at what point did you feel confident enough to say okay, now I’m ready for exam level questions?
I’m trying to understand the right balance between hands on labs and practice questions. Labs help me understand concepts but exam questions still feel like a different game. I’ve also seen people using structured practice sets like 
for exam style repetition, but I’m not sure how heavily that should be used compared to real Azure hands on work.
If you had to do AZ-104 again today, what would you change in your preparation? and what would you double down on from the start?