Microsoft Azure Cloud Administration Training Course

Course overview

Organisations depend on Azure administrators to provision reliable services, control cloud spend, protect identities and data, and resolve incidents before they affect users. Yet many teams have Azure subscriptions configured inconsistently: resource groups lack ownership, access is assigned too broadly, monitoring is incomplete, and recovery procedures have not been tested. This five-day course equips professionals to administer Azure environments using repeatable operational practices rather than one-off portal changes.

Participants work through the core responsibilities of an Azure administrator: managing subscriptions and resource groups, configuring Microsoft Entra ID access, deploying virtual machines and storage, designing virtual networks, applying governance controls, monitoring workloads, and planning backup and recovery. They use the Azure portal, Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell and Azure Monitor to perform administration tasks, interpret operational data and automate routine configuration. The course also addresses practical decisions around role-based access control, Azure Policy, tagging, budgets, network security groups, availability and service health.

Instruction combines demonstrations with guided labs based on a realistic departmental Azure environment. Participants configure resources, troubleshoot access and connectivity issues, apply governance rules, create alerts and document an operational approach for a defined workload. They leave with a completed Azure administration runbook and resource-management plan that can be adapted for their own organisation, including access controls, monitoring alerts, backup choices, tagging conventions and day-to-day administration activities.

The course is suited to IT professionals moving into cloud operations, infrastructure administrators responsible for Azure services, and technical staff who need a practical foundation before taking on wider cloud architecture or DevOps responsibilities. Managers gain staff able to apply consistent controls and make informed operational decisions across Azure subscriptions.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Configure Azure subscriptions, management groups, resource groups and tags to organise cloud resources.
• Administer Microsoft Entra ID users, groups, service principals and role-based access control assignments.
• Deploy and manage Azure virtual machines, managed disks, availability options and update configurations.
• Create Azure virtual networks using subnets, network security groups, private connectivity and DNS settings.
• Apply Azure Policy initiatives, resource locks, budgets and cost-analysis views for governance control.
• Configure Azure Storage accounts, access tiers, shared access signatures and lifecycle management rules.
• Build Azure Monitor alerts, Log Analytics queries and dashboards for operational monitoring.
• Produce an Azure administration runbook covering access, monitoring, backup, incident response and routine tasks.

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Systems Administrators — who are assuming responsibility for Azure-hosted infrastructure and identity controls
• Cloud Administrators — who need repeatable methods for operating subscriptions, workloads and governance settings
• Infrastructure Engineers — who migrate, maintain or troubleshoot virtual machines, networks and storage in Azure
• IT Support Leads — who need to diagnose Azure service issues and establish escalation-ready operational procedures
• Network Administrators — who manage connectivity, DNS, network security groups and hybrid access to Azure resources
• Technical Team Leaders — who need to set practical cloud administration standards for their operational teams

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should be comfortable using a Windows or Linux workstation, navigating a web browser, and working with basic IT concepts such as IP addresses, DNS, user accounts, groups, virtual machines, storage and permissions. Familiarity with PowerShell, command-line tools or cloud platforms is useful but not essential. No previous Azure certification, programming experience, infrastructure-as-code experience or advanced networking knowledge is required. This is a foundation-to-intermediate course; complete beginners should expect a focused introduction to Azure terminology before progressing quickly into hands-on administration, configuration and troubleshooting activities.

Training methodology

The course is delivered through instructor-led explanation, live Azure demonstrations and structured hands-on labs completed in a sandbox subscription. Each day uses an operational scenario, such as onboarding a business unit, securing administrator access, restoring a workload or investigating a connectivity failure. Participants work individually and in small groups to make configuration decisions, compare approaches and troubleshoot deliberately introduced issues. The final day includes an application-planning workshop in which participants convert their lab decisions into an Azure administration runbook for a realistic organisational workload.

Course outline

Day 1: Azure foundations and resource organisation

• Azure global infrastructure, regions, availability zones and resource providers
• Azure subscriptions, billing scopes and management group hierarchy
• Resource groups, resource naming conventions and resource dependencies
• Azure portal navigation, Cloud Shell and Azure CLI fundamentals
• Azure PowerShell modules and authenticated administration sessions
• Resource tagging strategies for ownership, cost allocation and lifecycle management
• Azure Resource Manager deployments and template-based resource consistency

Workshop: Participants create a governed subscription structure for a new business unit, producing management groups, resource groups, tags and a documented naming standard.

Day 2: Identity, access and governance controls

• Microsoft Entra ID tenants, users, groups and administrative roles
• Azure role-based access control scopes, built-in roles and custom-role principles
• Service principals, managed identities and workload authentication
• Privileged Identity Management concepts and just-in-time role activation
• Azure Policy definitions, initiatives, assignments and compliance results
• Resource locks and change-protection controls
• Azure Cost Management budgets, alerts and cost-analysis dimensions

Workshop: Participants implement least-privilege access for an application team and produce an RBAC matrix, policy assignment and monthly budget alert.

Day 3: Compute, storage and resilience administration

• Azure virtual machine sizing, images, availability sets and availability zones
• Managed disks, disk performance tiers and encryption options
• Azure VM Scale Sets and autoscaling principles
• Azure Storage account types, replication options and access tiers
• Blob containers, Azure Files, shared access signatures and access keys
• Storage lifecycle management policies and immutability concepts
• Azure Backup vaults, recovery points and restore workflows

Workshop: Participants deploy a resilient file and virtual machine workload, then produce a backup configuration and recovery validation checklist.

Day 4: Networking and secure connectivity

• Azure virtual network address planning, subnets and IP allocation
• Network security groups, application security groups and effective security rules
• Azure DNS zones, private DNS zones and name-resolution troubleshooting
• Azure Load Balancer, Application Gateway and traffic-distribution choices
• VNet peering, user-defined routes and network virtual appliances
• Azure VPN Gateway and ExpressRoute connectivity patterns
• Azure Bastion, private endpoints and secure administrative access

Workshop: Participants build and test a segmented virtual network, producing a connectivity diagram, NSG rule set and troubleshooting record for a blocked application flow.

Day 5: Monitoring, operations and administration planning

• Azure Monitor metrics, activity logs and diagnostic settings
• Log Analytics workspaces, tables and Kusto Query Language basics
• Alert rules, action groups and alert-processing rules
• Azure Service Health, Resource Health and planned-maintenance notifications
• Azure Update Manager and virtual machine patch-management schedules
• Azure Advisor recommendations for cost, security, reliability and performance
• Operational runbooks, escalation paths and routine administration schedules

Workshop: Participants investigate a simulated service incident and produce an Azure administration runbook containing alert rules, monitoring queries, recovery actions and ownership responsibilities.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Azure portal, Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell, Azure Monitor

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions