Use Backup, Site Recovery, and Network Watcher for AZ-104

Recovery questions on AZ-104 are about preparedness, not optimism. Microsoft expects administrators to know which vault or recovery feature fits the problem and how to validate that a backup or failover plan will actually work.

What the study guide calls out

The official objectives include creating a Recovery Services vault, creating an Azure Backup vault, configuring backup policies, performing backup and restore operations, configuring Azure Site Recovery, performing failover to a secondary region, configuring backup reports and alerts, and using Azure Network Watcher and Connection Monitor.

The distinction that prevents weak answers

Backup protects recoverable copies of data or workloads. Site Recovery focuses on replication and failover for continuity scenarios. They can support the same business service, but they solve different recovery goals. Network Watcher sits beside these tools as an operational troubleshooter when reachability or path behavior is the real problem.

Common traps

The most frequent misses are confusing backup with replication, ignoring restore testing, and overlooking the difference between vault types. Candidates also waste time troubleshooting network symptoms manually when Network Watcher or Connection Monitor could narrow the problem faster.

Lab moves worth practicing

• create a vault and inspect the policy model
• walk through a backup or restore workflow end to end
• review the inputs and outputs of Site Recovery and Connection Monitor

Recovery chooser

Vault types you should recognize

Microsoft now exposes both Recovery Services vaults and Backup vaults in Azure Backup. For AZ-104, the key thing is not memorizing every workload matrix. It is knowing that they are different vault types and that Recovery Services vaults remain central for many familiar VM and Site Recovery scenarios, while Backup vaults support newer Azure Backup workloads. If a production design depends on vault choice, verify workload support in the live Microsoft docs before implementing it.

Restore versus failover

Restore is about recovering protected data or a workload copy back into service. Failover is about shifting service operation to a replicated target when the primary environment is impaired. AZ-104 often hides this distinction inside outage language. If the question is about continuity during a regional event, think failover. If it is about recovering protected content after deletion, corruption, or routine loss, think restore.

Recovery paths at a glance

    flowchart LR
	  F["Failure or outage"] --> Q{"What happened?"}
	  Q -->|Deleted, corrupted, or missing data| B["Azure Backup restore"]
	  Q -->|Primary region impaired| SR["Azure Site Recovery failover"]
	  B --> R["Recovered data or workload copy"]
	  SR --> S["Secondary-region service"]
	  F -.if path or reachability is unclear.-> N["Network Watcher / Connection Monitor"]

The exam distinction is simple once the failure mode is clear:

• use Backup restore when the problem is recoverable content
• use Site Recovery failover when the problem is continuity during a regional or primary-environment event
• use Network Watcher when the real question is whether the path is broken at all

Azure CLI example: enable VM backup

This is the kind of operational step AZ-104 expects you to recognize even if the exam presents it as a portal workflow.

1# Create a Recovery Services vault
2az backup vault create -g RG -n ops-vault -l eastus
3
4# Protect a virtual machine with the default policy
5az backup protection enable-for-vm -g RG -v ops-vault --vm vm-app-01 --policy-name DefaultPolicy

What matters here is the sequence:

• the vault is the protection boundary
• the policy defines schedule and retention behavior
• enabling protection is not enough by itself; you still need restore confidence and operational review

Quiz

At this point you have the full first-pass AZ-104 scaffold. Use the study plan, cheat sheet, and resources to tighten the areas that still feel slow.