Unit 3 roadmap — Deploy and manage Azure compute resources

What this unit is really testing

Unit 3 is the widest unit — four sub-areas and twenty-four objectives — and it rewards a single habit: say which compute host the requirement actually needs, then say how it grows. Every sub-area repeats that pair. Reading a stem for the growth requirement, rather than for the technology named in it, resolves a surprising number of items.

The order to work through it

1. Take templates first. They are the smallest sub-area and they teach the vocabulary the other three reuse.
2. Then virtual machines, the heaviest topic in the unit and the one with the most distinct decisions: size, disks, placement, movement and scale.
3. Containers next, as the middle ground between a machine you manage and a platform that manages it for you.
4. Finish with App Service, where the plan and the app are separate objects and almost every trap lives in that separation.

Topic map

Every objective title below is quoted from Microsoft's skills-measured outline, as of 2026-04-17.

Automate deployment of resources by using Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates or Bicep files

AZ104-U3.T1 · 5 objectives

• Interpret an Azure Resource Manager template or a Bicep file
• Modify an existing Azure Resource Manager template
• Modify an existing Bicep file
• Deploy resources by using an Azure Resource Manager template or a Bicep file
• Export a deployment as an Azure Resource Manager template or convert an Azure Resource Manager template to a Bicep file

Create and configure virtual machines

AZ104-U3.T2 · 7 objectives

• Create a virtual machine
• Configure encryption at host for Azure virtual machines
• Move a virtual machine to another resource group, subscription, or region
• Manage virtual machine sizes
• Manage virtual machine disks
• Deploy virtual machines to availability zones and availability sets
• Deploy and configure an Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Provision and manage containers in the Azure portal

AZ104-U3.T3 · 4 objectives

• Create and manage an Azure Container Registry
• Provision a container by using Azure Container Instances
• Provision a container by using Azure Container Apps
• Manage sizing and scaling for containers, including Azure Container Instances and Azure Container Apps

Create and configure Azure App Service

AZ104-U3.T4 · 8 objectives

• Provision an App Service plan
• Configure scaling for an App Service plan
• Create an App Service
• Configure certificates and Transport Layer Security (TLS) for an App Service
• Map an existing custom DNS name to an App Service
• Configure backup for an App Service
• Configure networking settings for an App Service
• Configure deployment slots for an App Service

Traps

Check yourself

Are you ready to move on?

• You can state this unit's published range without looking it up.
• You can name every sub-area and say what separates it from its neighbours.
• You can explain each trap above to somebody else, in your own words.
• You have worked the unit's 99 bank questions and can say why the wrong options are wrong.

When all four are true, take a blueprint-weighted mock rather than more of this unit. A mock is the only asset here that tells you how this unit performs against the other four under time.