GitHub Administration

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Exam at a Glance

GH-100 measures whether you can run a GitHub Enterprise environment: managing identities and access, governing the enterprise, enabling the features that support secure development, administering GitHub Actions, and monitoring usage and cost. It is written for administrators of both GitHub Enterprise Cloud and GitHub Enterprise Server, so expect to decide which setting, policy, or role meets a requirement and at which level (enterprise, organization, or repository) you configure it.

 

What the Exam Covers

The exam has five domains. Secure software development and compliance carries the most weight and GitHub Actions comes next, while identities and access, the enterprise environment, and usage monitoring each carry a smaller share. None of them is small enough to skip, so plan to cover every domain.

 

Manage GitHub identities and access — 15-20%

Managed users versus personal accounts, configuring and enforcing SAML single sign-on and two-factor authentication, SCIM provisioning versus team synchronization, choosing and configuring identity providers, GitHub's authentication and authorization model, organization and repository roles, enterprise teams, auditing access and permissions, and managing settings, policies, rulesets, and roles.

 

Administer GitHub Enterprise environment — 10-15%

Which issues administrators resolve and which go to GitHub Support, generating support bundles and diagnostics, standards for developer processes (workflows, branching, reviews, and releases), the GitHub Enterprise deployment scenarios (Enterprise Cloud with Enterprise Managed Users, Enterprise Cloud with data residency and Enterprise Managed Users, Enterprise Cloud with personal accounts, and Enterprise Server), licensing and billing models, and monitoring license usage and consumption.

 

Implement secure software development and compliance — 25-30%

Organization and enterprise policies, enterprise security posture and data protection, audit logging and reporting, vulnerability alerts, secret scanning and CodeQL, Dependabot and security advisories, a security response plan, personal access tokens, rate limits for tokens and GitHub Apps, GitHub Apps versus OAuth apps, and approving or denying app use by policy.

 

Manage GitHub Actions — 20-25%

Reusing actions and workflows across the enterprise, organization policies for GitHub Actions, runner groups, GitHub-hosted versus self-hosted runners, IP allow lists and networking (including Azure private networking), monitoring and troubleshooting runners, secret scope and access at organization and repository level, and integrating third-party vaults.

 

Monitor and optimize GitHub usage — 10-15%

Analyzing audit logs and API usage, admin versus GitHub Support responsibilities and diagnostics, usage patterns that show adoption, activity, and underutilized features, usage reports for metered products, and strategies for license and resource optimization.

 

The full bullet-level list lives in the official study guide. Treat it as your checklist:

The Official GH-100 Study Guide

 

How This Maps to CertiAce Practice Modules

The CertiAce question bank is organized by the nine modules of the official GitHub Administration learning paths on Microsoft Learn (Part 1 and Part 2), so you can drill each area in isolation. CertiAce GH-100 practice questions are single-choice and multiple-select only. API access and integrations, GitHub Advanced Security administration, and usage and cost monitoring have no module of their own in the course, so they are folded into the modules below:

GitHub Packages is not named in the skills list. Its module is part of the official course, so treat it as supporting practice for Actions permissions and usage rather than as a separate exam area.

 

Where GH-100 Fits

GH-100 has no prerequisite certification, and the other GitHub certifications above do not list one either. GH-900 is not required, but GH-100 builds on the everyday GitHub concepts it covers, so it is a natural first step if you are new to GitHub. If you already work with GitHub daily, go straight to GH-100.

 

Before You Start

The exam is written for people with intermediate experience administering GitHub Enterprise, so it assumes you already use GitHub comfortably. Check yourself against this table. Anything unfamiliar is where your preparation should start:

 

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Step-by-Step Study Plan

How long you need depends on where you start. Treat these estimates as planning guidance and adjust them to your starting knowledge and weekly study hours:

 

Step 1: Read the Official Study Guide

Skim the full skills-measured list once, and mark every bullet you could not explain to a colleague. That marked-up list is your personal syllabus: everything else in this plan exists to clear it. The July 2026 update changed the exam significantly (objectives were added, removed, moved, and reworded), so check any older material against the current list before relying on it. The study guide titles the exam GitHub Enterprise Administrator, while the certification you earn is called GitHub Administration, so expect to see both names.

The Official Study Guide

 

Step 2: Schedule Your Exam

Choose a realistic target date after reviewing the skills list and your available study time. A date on the calendar turns studying into a countdown, so pick one using the prep-time table above and plan backwards from it. You schedule through Pearson VUE and can take the exam online or at a test center.

The exam is currently offered in English only. If the exam is not available in your native language, check the English as a Second Language accommodation and arrange any approved extra time before booking.

Certification and Exam Details Page

Request Accommodations

 

Step 3: Work Through the Official Learning Paths

Complete both GitHub Administration learning paths on Microsoft Learn, Part 1 and Part 2. The CertiAce practice modules follow the same nine modules. Take notes on concepts you cannot explain in simple terms, and try each setting in a trial enterprise as you go. GitHub's product documentation changes faster than the training modules, so when a unit and docs.github.com disagree, go with the documentation. If you prefer instructor-led training, course GH-100T00 is available on Microsoft Learn.

GitHub fundamentals - Administration basics and product features Part 1 of 2

GitHub fundamentals - Administration basics and product features Part 2 of 2

 

Step 4: Watch a Full Video Course

Microsoft Learn's GH-100 video series follows the official course in nine episodes, including demos. Watch it alongside or after the learning paths, and later rewatch the episodes on your weakest areas: a second pass is much faster than the first and surprisingly effective.

GH-100 Video Series (Microsoft Learn on YouTube)

 

Step 5: Get Hands-On Practice

GH-100 rewards people who have actually administered GitHub: the objectives are about choosing and configuring settings, policies, roles, and runners, often at a specific level of the enterprise. A free GitHub Enterprise Cloud trial supports many of the core exercises, including an enterprise account with its own organizations and, on GitHub.com trials, GitHub Secret Protection and GitHub Code Security. Aim for hands-on time with:

• Creating organizations in a trial enterprise, setting base permissions, and assigning organization and repository roles
• Creating teams and reviewing who has access to which repositories
• Enforcing enterprise policies for repositories and GitHub Actions, then checking what an organization owner can still change
• Adding a ruleset next to a branch protection rule and trying the Evaluate enforcement status
• Applying a security configuration with Dependabot, secret scanning, push protection, and CodeQL default setup
• Setting a personal access token policy and installing a GitHub App on an organization
• Creating organization and repository secrets, a runner group, and a reusable workflow
• Searching and exporting the audit log, and reviewing metered usage on the billing pages

Some objectives are hard to try on your own. You choose personal accounts or managed users before the enterprise account is created, so decide which model you want to practice first. SAML single sign-on, SCIM, and team synchronization need an identity provider you can configure. GitHub Connect and larger runners are not included in the Enterprise Cloud trial, and GitHub Enterprise Server topics such as support bundles need a Server instance (GitHub offers a separate Server trial that you install as a virtual appliance). Learn those from the official documentation rather than expecting to try them in a trial.

Setting up a trial of GitHub Enterprise Cloud

GitHub Skills offers free, interactive courses that run inside GitHub repositories, including introductions to secret scanning and CodeQL, securing your repository's supply chain, and reusable workflows.

GitHub Skills

 

Step 6: Benchmark Your Knowledge

Use CertiAce to benchmark your readiness module by module. The practice modules map to the exam domains as shown above, so use the module mapping and the topics behind your missed questions to identify the skills-measured areas to revisit. Microsoft also offers a free official practice assessment. Aim for consistent performance across every module, not one lucky high score.

CertiAce GH-100 Exam Practice

Free Official Practice Assessment

 

Step 7: Take the Exam

The day before, review only your weak topics: no brand-new material. On exam day, read each question for what it is truly asking: many GH-100 scenarios turn on the level a setting lives at (enterprise, organization, or repository) or on which account model the enterprise uses, so settle those first and eliminate the options that do not fit.

Worth knowing before you sit down:

• This is a closed-book exam: Microsoft Learn access is not available on GitHub exams.
• You can take unscheduled breaks, but the clock keeps running and you cannot return to questions you already saw.
• Watch the naming: the exam outline says GitHub Advanced Security and uses abbreviations such as GHEC, GHES, and EMU, while the GitHub documentation now sells GitHub Secret Protection and GitHub Code Security as separate products and, in enterprises with managed users, calls outside collaborators repository collaborators. Learn both the outline wording and the current names.
• Try the GitHub exam sandbox beforehand so the interface holds no surprises: GitHub Exam Sandbox

 

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Additional Learning Resources