Microsoft AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator Exam Dumps and Practice Test Questions Set 2 Q16-30

Visit here for our full Microsoft AZ-104 exam dumps and practice test questions.

Question 16 

You need to deploy a virtual machine in Azure that requires high availability and automatic scaling based on CPU usage. Which Azure service should you use?

A) Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets
B) Azure App Service Plan
C) Azure Kubernetes Service
D) Azure Functions

Answer: A) Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Explanation:

Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) are a core service for deploying and managing a group of identical virtual machines in Azure. They are designed to simplify large-scale VM deployment while providing both high availability and the ability to scale automatically based on demand. VMSS enables organizations to deploy multiple VMs with uniform configurations, automatically distribute them across fault domains and update domains, and scale the number of instances up or down according to predefined rules or metrics such as CPU utilization, memory usage, or custom performance counters. This combination of uniformity, scalability, and availability makes VMSS an ideal solution for workloads that require consistent performance and resilience without manual intervention.

One of the key advantages of VMSS is its support for high availability. Virtual machines in a scale set are automatically spread across multiple fault domains within an availability zone, which helps protect against hardware failures or localized datacenter outages. Update domains are also leveraged to ensure that maintenance or patching does not impact all VMs at once, further minimizing downtime. By integrating VMSS with Azure Load Balancer or Application Gateway, incoming traffic can be evenly distributed across healthy VMs, ensuring both performance and resilience under varying loads. This architecture ensures that applications hosted on VMSS remain highly available, even during planned updates or unexpected infrastructure failures.

In contrast, other Azure services provide scalability but do not offer the same level of control over individual VMs. For example, an Azure App Service Plan is primarily designed for hosting web apps, mobile apps, and APIs. While it supports automatic scaling based on metrics or schedules, it abstracts away the underlying VMs. Developers and administrators do not have direct control over VM configurations, operating system, or specific VM-level networking, which can be a limitation for applications that require custom VM setups or specialized workloads. App Service Plans excel at hosting platform-managed web applications but do not meet requirements that call for full VM management combined with high availability.

Similarly, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) focuses on containerized workloads orchestrated with Kubernetes. While AKS provides scaling for container pods and high availability for containerized applications, it does not directly manage or expose individual virtual machines in a scale-out scenario. The abstraction of nodes in AKS makes it ideal for microservices architectures, but for applications requiring dedicated VMs that scale automatically, AKS does not provide the same granular control.

Azure Functions, on the other hand, is a serverless compute platform that automatically scales based on events or triggers. While it eliminates infrastructure management and provides event-driven elasticity, it is not designed for scenarios where full VM control, OS-level configuration, or custom networking is required. Functions are best suited for lightweight, event-driven workloads rather than full-scale, highly available VM deployments.

Using Virtual Machine Scale Sets ensures that organizations can meet both high availability and automatic scaling requirements. VMSS provides uniform, managed VM deployments, automated scaling based on CPU usage or other metrics, and integration with load balancing for traffic distribution. By combining these features, VMSS delivers a resilient, scalable, and highly available infrastructure solution that aligns with enterprise requirements for consistent VM management and workload performance.

Question 17

You need to implement role-based access control (RBAC) for a storage account in Azure. Which role should you assign to a user if they only need to read and download blobs?

A) Storage Blob Data Reader
B) Storage Account Contributor
C) Owner
D) Reader

Answer: A) Storage Blob Data Reader

Explanation:

When managing access to Azure Storage, it is essential to assign roles that match the principle of least privilege, ensuring that users have only the permissions necessary to perform their tasks. In scenarios where the requirement is strictly to read and download blobs, understanding the distinctions between different built-in Azure roles is critical. Azure provides several roles related to storage access, each with varying levels of control and responsibility, and selecting the most appropriate role ensures both security and operational efficiency.

The Storage Blob Data Reader role is specifically designed to grant read-only access to the contents of Azure Blob Storage. Users assigned this role can list, read, and download blobs in the storage account or a specified container, depending on the scope of the assignment. This role is particularly suitable for scenarios where users need to retrieve data for reporting, analytics, or processing, without altering or deleting the data. It strictly limits access to reading and downloading content, preventing any modifications, deletions, or changes to the configuration of the storage account. This fine-grained permission aligns with security best practices by minimizing exposure and ensuring that users cannot perform actions beyond what is necessary for their role.

In contrast, the Storage Account Contributor role provides significantly broader privileges. It allows users to manage the storage account as a whole, including creating, updating, and deleting storage resources. Importantly, this role also provides access to the storage account keys, which could allow full access to all storage data, bypassing specific data access restrictions. Assigning this role to a user whose task is simply to read blobs would be excessive and could introduce unnecessary security risks. The wide-ranging permissions in this role go far beyond the requirements for read-only access and could result in accidental or unauthorized changes to storage resources.

Similarly, the Owner role grants full administrative rights over a resource, including the ability to assign roles to other users, configure access policies, and modify any resource within the scope. While powerful, this level of access is generally reserved for administrators responsible for managing the overall environment rather than users who only need to retrieve data. Assigning the Owner role for the purpose of reading blobs would be highly inappropriate because it provides far more privileges than required, increasing the potential impact of human error or malicious activity.

The Reader role, while more restrictive than Contributor or Owner, also does not meet the requirements for accessing blob content. This role allows users to view metadata and properties of Azure resources, such as storage accounts, but it does not grant permissions to read the data stored within the blobs themselves. Users with the Reader role could verify that blobs exist and see high-level properties but would not be able to download or interact with the actual content.

Given these distinctions, the Storage Blob Data Reader role emerges as the optimal choice for scenarios requiring read and download access to blobs. It provides precise, scoped permissions tailored to the task, ensuring that users can access the necessary data without granting unnecessary administrative capabilities. By selecting this role, organizations can uphold the principle of least privilege, maintain security, and reduce operational risks while providing users with exactly the access they need to perform their duties effectively.

Question 18

You are tasked with configuring Azure Backup to protect virtual machines. You need to ensure backups are retained for 180 days. Which feature should you use?

A) Long-term retention policies
B) Recovery Services Vault
C) Azure Site Recovery
D) Azure Monitor

Answer: B) Recovery Services Vault

Explanation:

Azure Recovery Services Vault is a critical component in Azure for managing and storing backup data. It acts as a secure storage entity where backups for virtual machines, workloads, and individual files can be stored reliably. This centralized storage solution allows organizations to implement robust backup strategies, ensuring that data is protected against accidental deletion, corruption, or system failures. 

One of the primary capabilities of the Recovery Services Vault is to support long-term retention policies, which enable backups to be kept for extended periods, including months or even years, depending on regulatory or organizational requirements. These retention policies are configured as part of backup policies and provide organizations the ability to comply with legal, regulatory, or internal governance mandates regarding data preservation. Without a Recovery Services Vault, implementing structured retention for backups is not possible, as this vault acts as the repository that holds and organizes all backup data, ensuring that it is readily available when a restore is required.

Azure Recovery Services Vault integrates with Azure Backup to provide flexible backup management, including scheduling, retention, and restore capabilities. It supports multiple types of workloads, such as Azure Virtual Machines, SQL Server databases, and even on-premises servers, giving organizations a unified approach to backup management. The vault handles encryption of data at rest and in transit, ensuring security and compliance standards are met. Administrators can define backup policies that specify how frequently backups occur and how long each recovery point is retained. These policies can also include long-term retention schedules, which allow critical data to be kept for years, enabling recovery from historical points in time if necessary.

It is important to distinguish the role of a Recovery Services Vault from other Azure services that might appear related but serve different purposes. Azure Site Recovery focuses on disaster recovery by replicating workloads to secondary regions, providing failover and failback capabilities. While Azure Site Recovery ensures business continuity in the event of an outage, it does not manage traditional backup storage or retention policies over long periods. Similarly, Azure Monitor collects metrics, logs, and telemetry data for monitoring and alerting purposes, but it does not provide any backup storage or retention functionality. Therefore, while both Azure Site Recovery and Azure Monitor are valuable for overall operational resilience, they do not replace the Recovery Services Vault when the goal is to store and retain backup data for long durations.

In summary, implementing backups with long-term retention in Azure requires the use of a Recovery Services Vault as the central component. It securely stores backup data, allows configuration of retention policies for both short-term and long-term needs, and ensures that critical data is protected and recoverable. By using the Recovery Services Vault, organizations can centralize their backup management, meet compliance requirements, and have confidence that their data can be restored when needed, making it an essential tool for Azure-based data protection strategies.

Question 19

You need to deploy a new Azure virtual network (VNet) with subnets and want to ensure that VMs in one subnet can reach another subnet. Which feature should you configure?

A) VNet Peering
B) Network Security Groups
C) Route Tables
D) ExpressRoute

Answer: C) Route Tables

Explanation:

In Azure networking, managing the flow of traffic between different subnets within a virtual network (VNet) is a critical aspect of designing secure and efficient architectures. Route tables play a central role in this process by providing the ability to define custom routing rules that dictate how network traffic moves within a VNet and to external destinations. By using route tables, administrators can control the path that traffic takes between subnets, ensuring that data flows through intended network devices such as firewalls, network virtual appliances, or other security controls, instead of relying solely on default system routes. This level of control is essential for organizations that have specific security, compliance, or performance requirements and need to manage internal traffic more precisely.

A common point of confusion is the distinction between route tables and other networking features in Azure, such as VNet Peering, Network Security Groups (NSGs), and ExpressRoute. VNet Peering, for instance, is designed to enable communication between virtual networks, allowing resources in different VNets to interact as if they were part of the same network. However, VNet Peering does not influence traffic routing between subnets within the same VNet. While peering is invaluable for multi-VNet architectures and connecting geographically or functionally separated networks, it is not a solution for defining how traffic flows internally between subnets. Therefore, relying on VNet Peering alone does not meet the need for controlled intra-VNet routing.

Network Security Groups (NSGs) are another fundamental networking feature, but they serve a different purpose. NSGs are primarily used to enforce security rules by allowing or denying inbound and outbound traffic to subnets or individual network interfaces. While they control which traffic can enter or leave a subnet, they do not define the specific path that traffic should take within the VNet. NSGs operate at the security enforcement layer, not at the routing layer. Consequently, NSGs cannot replace route tables when the objective is to manage traffic paths between subnets.

Similarly, ExpressRoute is designed to provide private, high-throughput connectivity between on-premises networks and Azure, bypassing the public internet. ExpressRoute is ideal for hybrid cloud architectures requiring predictable, low-latency connections to Azure resources, but it is unrelated to the task of routing traffic between subnets within a VNet. It does not influence internal routing decisions and therefore cannot be used to control how traffic moves from one subnet to another.

Given the roles of these different networking constructs, route tables remain the essential tool for controlling intra-VNet traffic paths. By associating custom route tables with specific subnets, administrators can define explicit routes for network traffic, directing it through specific virtual appliances or gateways as required. This capability ensures proper traffic flow between subnets, supports segmentation strategies, and aligns with organizational requirements for security, compliance, and network optimization. In essence, route tables provide the granular control needed to manage the movement of traffic within a VNet, enabling a predictable, secure, and efficient network environment.

Question 20

You need to manage users and groups in Azure Active Directory. Which service allows you to create dynamic groups based on user attributes?

A) Azure Active Directory Premium
B) Azure Key Vault
C) Microsoft Entra Permissions Management
D) Azure AD B2C

Answer: A) Azure Active Directory Premium

Explanation:

Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Premium provides advanced identity and access management features that go beyond the capabilities of the free or basic editions. One of the key features it offers is the ability to create dynamic groups, which automatically adjust membership based on user attributes such as department, job title, location, or other directory properties. Dynamic groups eliminate the need for manual group management, ensuring that users are added to or removed from groups automatically as their attributes change. This capability is particularly useful in large organizations where manually updating group memberships can be error-prone, time-consuming, and difficult to maintain consistently. By using dynamic groups, administrators can implement policies, assign licenses, or control access to resources in a way that scales seamlessly with organizational growth.

Dynamic groups in Azure AD Premium are highly configurable. Administrators can define rules using logical operators, multiple attributes, and conditions that determine membership. For example, a dynamic group can include all users whose department is “Sales” and whose location is “New York.” As users are hired, transferred, or leave, the group membership updates automatically without any manual intervention. This ensures that access rights and resource availability are always aligned with current organizational data, reducing administrative overhead and improving security by minimizing the risk of outdated access permissions. Additionally, dynamic groups integrate seamlessly with Azure AD features such as conditional access policies, application assignments, and Microsoft 365 licensing, enabling automated and consistent access management across the organization.

It is important to distinguish Azure AD Premium from other Azure services that might seem related but do not provide the same functionality. Azure Key Vault is designed to securely store and manage sensitive information such as secrets, keys, and certificates. While it is essential for securing credentials and encryption keys, it does not handle user identities, authentication, or group membership management. Similarly, Microsoft Entra Permissions Management focuses on managing and monitoring permissions across cloud resources to enforce least-privilege access and compliance, but it does not offer dynamic group creation or membership automation based on directory attributes. Azure AD B2C is intended for consumer identity and access management scenarios, such as allowing external customers to sign in or register with applications. While B2C handles authentication and identity for external users, it does not manage internal enterprise user groups or dynamic membership rules.

By leveraging Azure AD Premium for dynamic groups, organizations can enforce efficient and accurate access control policies. It reduces the manual effort required to maintain groups, prevents stale or incorrect group memberships, and ensures that resources and applications are always accessible to the appropriate users. Automated group membership also supports compliance initiatives by ensuring that access rights are consistently applied according to up-to-date user information. This integration of dynamic groups with Azure AD’s broader identity and access management capabilities makes Azure AD Premium the ideal choice for organizations seeking to streamline internal user management and enhance security through automated, attribute-based group membership.

Question 21

You need to ensure that Azure VMs are automatically patched for security updates. Which service should you use?

A) Azure Update Management
B) Azure Security Center
C) Azure Automation Accounts
D) Azure Monitor

Answer: A) Azure Update Management

Explanation:

In modern IT environments, keeping systems up to date with the latest security patches and software updates is critical to maintaining operational stability, security, and compliance. Within the Azure ecosystem, Azure Update Management serves as a specialized service that enables administrators to automate the scheduling, deployment, and monitoring of operating system updates for both Azure virtual machines (VMs) and on-premises servers. This capability is especially important in large-scale environments where manually applying updates would be time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to coordinate across multiple systems. By centralizing update management, organizations can ensure that all systems remain compliant with security policies and operational standards while minimizing downtime and the risk of vulnerabilities.

Azure Security Center, now integrated into Microsoft Defender for Cloud, plays a complementary role by continuously monitoring resources for potential security threats, vulnerabilities, and misconfigurations. It provides recommendations and insights to help administrators improve the overall security posture of their environment. However, while Security Center can identify missing updates or suggest patching actions, it does not itself perform the deployment of operating system updates. Its focus is on threat detection, risk assessment, and security compliance rather than directly managing patch installations. Therefore, relying solely on Security Center for update management would not fulfill the need for automated and consistent patch deployment.

Azure Automation Accounts are another important tool within the Azure ecosystem. They allow the execution of scripts, runbooks, and workflows to automate a wide variety of administrative tasks, including maintenance, backup, and deployment processes. While Automation Accounts can be configured to handle updates, doing so requires additional setup, scripting, and maintenance. This approach can be effective for organizations with highly customized automation requirements, but it is not a dedicated update management solution. Azure Update Management, in contrast, is purpose-built for patch deployment and provides pre-configured processes, scheduling, and reporting specifically for OS updates, reducing administrative overhead and the potential for errors.

Azure Monitor is designed to collect telemetry, track performance metrics, and generate alerts for Azure resources. It provides comprehensive monitoring capabilities to detect anomalies, track health, and trigger automated actions based on predefined conditions. However, while Azure Monitor is invaluable for observing the state of systems, it does not offer the ability to install operating system updates. It can indicate that a VM is out of date or missing patches, but it cannot directly remediate these issues without integration with other services like Update Management or Automation Accounts.

Given these distinctions, Azure Update Management emerges as the specialized service designed for automated patching of virtual machines. It enables administrators to define maintenance schedules, target specific groups of VMs, monitor update compliance, and ensure that both Windows and Linux systems remain up to date. By leveraging Update Management, organizations achieve streamlined, reliable, and auditable patch deployment, ensuring that systems are protected against vulnerabilities without placing undue manual burden on IT teams. This makes Update Management the most appropriate and efficient solution for automated VM patching in Azure environments.

Question 22

You need to ensure that an Azure Storage account can only be accessed from a specific IP address range. Which feature should you configure?

A) Firewalls and virtual networks
B) Shared Access Signature (SAS)
C) Private Endpoint
D) Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Answer: A) Firewalls and virtual networks

Explanation:

Azure Storage provides a highly scalable and secure solution for storing data in the cloud, including blobs, files, queues, and tables. Ensuring that this data is protected from unauthorized access is a critical aspect of cloud security. One of the most effective methods for restricting access to Azure Storage accounts is through firewalls and virtual network (VNet) rules, which allow administrators to specify which IP addresses or network segments are permitted to connect to storage resources. By configuring these rules, organizations can enforce strict access control at the network level, limiting exposure to only trusted networks or clients. This approach is particularly important for meeting regulatory requirements and minimizing the risk of data breaches, as it ensures that only authorized network endpoints can reach the storage account.

Firewalls in Azure Storage operate by evaluating incoming requests and only allowing connections from approved IP address ranges. Administrators can define individual IP addresses, contiguous ranges, or even entire subnets that are permitted to access the storage account. This capability is highly flexible, allowing organizations to adapt to changing network topologies while maintaining strong security. For example, access can be restricted to a corporate headquarters network, branch offices, or specific application servers that require storage access. Additionally, firewall rules in Azure Storage can be combined with virtual network service endpoints, which extend the private IP space of a VNet to the storage account, ensuring that traffic from the VNet is trusted and securely routed without traversing the public internet.

While other Azure features like Shared Access Signatures (SAS), Private Endpoints, and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) provide important security and access management capabilities, they do not inherently restrict access by IP address in the same way that firewalls and VNet rules do. SAS tokens allow temporary delegated access to storage resources, specifying permissions, expiration times, and allowed protocols, but by default, they do not limit which IP addresses can use the token unless explicitly configured. Private Endpoints, on the other hand, provide access to the storage account over a private IP in a VNet, ensuring that traffic never traverses the public internet. While this improves security, it does not provide granular control for filtering specific IP ranges outside of the VNet. Similarly, RBAC allows fine-grained control over what actions users or services can perform on a storage account, such as read or write operations, but it does not control network-level access and cannot prevent unauthorized IP addresses from attempting connections.

By combining firewalls and virtual network rules, administrators gain precise control over which IP addresses or network segments can access storage accounts. This ensures that only trusted sources can connect, reducing the attack surface and preventing unauthorized data access. Firewalls and VNets act as a first line of defense, while SAS tokens, Private Endpoints, and RBAC can provide additional layers of security. Together, these tools enable organizations to implement a defense-in-depth strategy for securing Azure Storage.

In conclusion, when the goal is to restrict access to Azure Storage by specific IP addresses or ranges, firewalls and virtual network rules are the most direct and effective solution. They allow administrators to enforce network-level restrictions, control access to trusted sources, and integrate seamlessly with other security features, ensuring that storage accounts remain protected against unauthorized access while maintaining flexibility and compliance in complex cloud environments.

Question 23

You need to encrypt data at rest in Azure Storage. Which encryption method is automatically applied to all new storage accounts?

A) Azure Storage Service Encryption (SSE)
B) Transparent Data Encryption (TDE)
C) Always Encrypted
D) Client-Side Encryption

Answer: A) Azure Storage Service Encryption (SSE)

Explanation:

Azure Storage Service Encryption (SSE) is a fundamental security feature in Microsoft Azure that ensures data at rest in storage accounts is automatically encrypted without requiring any action from the user or application. When data is written to Azure Storage—whether it’s blobs, files, tables, or queues—SSE uses 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256) encryption to protect the data, ensuring that it remains secure even if someone gains unauthorized access to the underlying physical storage media. The encryption and decryption process is fully managed by Azure, which allows organizations to focus on their workloads without worrying about the complexities of key management or implementing encryption manually. By default, SSE uses Microsoft-managed keys, although customers can opt for customer-managed keys stored in Azure Key Vault for enhanced control and compliance. This approach provides both simplicity and strong security, as all data written to the storage account is automatically encrypted and all data read is automatically decrypted by the Azure Storage service, making the process transparent to applications and end users.

While SSE applies broadly to Azure Storage accounts, there are other encryption options in Azure that serve more specialized purposes. Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), for instance, is a feature designed for Azure SQL databases and Azure SQL Managed Instances. TDE encrypts the entire database, associated backups, and transaction logs, providing encryption at rest for relational database systems. Unlike SSE, TDE is specific to SQL databases and cannot be applied to blob storage, file storage, or other storage services. It is managed by the service, similar to SSE, and supports Microsoft-managed or customer-managed keys, but its scope is limited to the SQL environment.

Always Encrypted is another encryption technology available in Azure SQL. It is designed to protect sensitive column data, such as personally identifiable information (PII) or financial data, by encrypting it on the client side before sending it to the database. With Always Encrypted, encryption keys are never exposed to the SQL database engine, preventing even database administrators from accessing the raw data. While this provides strong protection for specific data elements, it requires careful planning, schema changes, and client-side application configuration, making it more complex to implement than SSE.

Client-Side Encryption is a general approach where applications themselves encrypt data before sending it to storage. While this ensures that data is encrypted before leaving the client environment, it places the responsibility of key management, encryption algorithms, and secure storage on the application developer. This approach is prone to errors, adds operational overhead, and is not automatic.

In contrast, Azure Storage Service Encryption (SSE) offers a seamless, automatic, and reliable method for encrypting all data at rest in Azure Storage accounts. It provides immediate protection without any code changes or operational overhead, making it the default and most straightforward choice for organizations seeking to secure their storage data. SSE’s integration with Microsoft-managed keys, along with the option for customer-managed keys, ensures both convenience and compliance with industry security standards. By default, SSE is enabled for all new Azure Storage accounts, guaranteeing that all stored data is encrypted at rest, protecting sensitive information from unauthorized access and ensuring robust, service-level data security across the cloud environment.

Question 24

You need to deploy multiple VMs across different regions to ensure high availability and fault tolerance. Which Azure resource should you use?

A) Availability Zones
B) Availability Sets
C) Virtual Machine Scale Sets
D) Azure Traffic Manager

Answer: A) Availability Zones

Explanation:

In cloud computing, ensuring high availability and fault tolerance is a fundamental requirement for critical workloads. Microsoft Azure addresses this need through multiple constructs, each designed to manage redundancy, reliability, and traffic distribution in different ways. Among these constructs, Availability Zones play a central role in providing robust fault tolerance within a region. Availability Zones are physically separate locations within an Azure region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking. By deploying resources across multiple Availability Zones, organizations can protect workloads against datacenter-level failures, ensuring that an issue in one zone does not impact the availability of applications or services hosted in other zones. This separation provides an additional layer of resiliency beyond what is available in single-datacenter deployments.

While Availability Zones are designed for high-availability scenarios within a region, Availability Sets focus on providing redundancy within a single data center. Availability Sets ensure that virtual machines are distributed across multiple fault domains and update domains, which helps minimize the risk of downtime due to hardware failures or maintenance events. However, Availability Sets are limited to a single data center and cannot provide protection against failures that affect an entire region. Consequently, while they are effective for intra-datacenter redundancy, they do not offer the same level of fault tolerance as Availability Zones when it comes to regional failures.

Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) offer a combination of scalability and availability for compute workloads. VMSS enables automatic scaling of virtual machines based on demand, ensuring that applications can handle fluctuations in traffic and workloads efficiently. They also provide availability within the assigned zones or sets, helping to maintain uptime during localized failures. However, VMSS does not inherently provide cross-region redundancy. Without careful configuration and integration with other services, VMSS alone cannot guarantee resilience against regional outages or catastrophic failures that impact multiple data centers within a region.

Azure Traffic Manager is another important Azure service that contributes to high availability, but it serves a different purpose. Traffic Manager is a DNS-based traffic load balancer that distributes incoming requests across multiple regions, endpoints, or deployments based on configurable routing methods such as priority, performance, or geographic location. While Traffic Manager improves responsiveness and availability at the global level by directing traffic to healthy endpoints, it does not deploy virtual machines or manage their availability. It relies on the underlying infrastructure—such as VMs, VM Scale Sets, or Availability Zones—to ensure the actual workload is resilient and operational.

Given these distinctions, Availability Zones are essential for achieving high availability and fault tolerance within a region. By leveraging multiple independent zones, organizations can design applications that continue to operate seamlessly even in the event of datacenter failures. This approach complements other Azure services such as Availability Sets, VM Scale Sets, and Traffic Manager, creating a layered strategy for redundancy, performance, and global traffic distribution. In scenarios where regional resilience and minimal downtime are critical, deploying resources across Availability Zones provides the strongest safeguard against failures while ensuring business continuity and service reliability.

Question 25

You need to monitor and analyze Azure resource performance and receive alerts for potential issues. Which service should you use?

A) Azure Monitor
B) Azure Log Analytics
C) Application Insights
D) Azure Advisor

Answer: A) Azure Monitor

Explanation:

Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring service in Microsoft Azure designed to collect, analyze, and act on telemetry data from a wide variety of Azure resources, applications, and virtual machines. Its core purpose is to provide real-time visibility into the performance, health, and operational status of applications and infrastructure. By continuously collecting metrics and logs, Azure Monitor allows organizations to track the performance of resources such as virtual machines, databases, storage accounts, and networking components, enabling proactive management and timely detection of issues. Metrics, such as CPU usage, memory consumption, disk I/O, and network throughput, provide quantitative insights into resource performance, while activity logs and diagnostic logs capture operational events and errors, offering detailed context for troubleshooting and root cause analysis.

One of the key strengths of Azure Monitor is its alerting capabilities. Teams can define thresholds and conditions for metrics and logs, and when these thresholds are breached, Azure Monitor can trigger alerts. Alerts can notify the relevant stakeholders through emails, SMS, or push notifications, or they can initiate automated remediation actions via integration with Azure Logic Apps, Functions, or runbooks in Azure Automation. This enables organizations to respond quickly to potential issues, often before end users are affected, thereby improving application reliability and reducing downtime.

Log Analytics is an integral component of Azure Monitor that enables querying and analysis of collected telemetry data. While Log Analytics provides powerful search and analysis capabilities using the Kusto Query Language (KQL), it is primarily a data exploration and reporting tool rather than a monitoring or alerting system. It allows users to correlate metrics and logs, create visualizations, and generate insights, but by itself, it does not trigger alerts or proactively monitor resource health.

Application Insights is another Azure monitoring tool focused specifically on application performance management. It provides deep insights into application behavior, request performance, dependencies, exceptions, and user interactions. While Application Insights is excellent for tracking application-level telemetry, it does not cover the broader infrastructure metrics needed for comprehensive monitoring of all Azure resources.

Azure Advisor, on the other hand, provides personalized recommendations to improve cost efficiency, performance, high availability, and security of Azure resources. Although these recommendations are valuable for optimizing the environment, Azure Advisor does not actively monitor resource performance or provide real-time alerts. It is advisory in nature and cannot replace continuous monitoring.

In conclusion, Azure Monitor is the central service in Azure for real-time monitoring and alerting across all types of resources. Its combination of metrics, logs, alerting, and automated response capabilities makes it the correct choice for organizations seeking to maintain operational health, detect anomalies, and respond proactively. While Log Analytics, Application Insights, and Azure Advisor complement monitoring efforts with data analysis, application insights, and recommendations, only Azure Monitor provides a unified, automated, and real-time approach to monitoring and alerting across the entire Azure environment, ensuring both infrastructure and application reliability.

Question 26

You want to automate the deployment of Azure resources using a JSON template. Which service is designed for this purpose?

A) Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Templates
B) Azure Blueprints
C) Azure Policy
D) Azure Automation

Answer: A) Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Templates

Explanation:

ARM templates provide declarative JSON syntax to define and deploy Azure resources consistently and repeatedly. Azure Blueprints help enforce governance by combining ARM templates with policies and RBAC but are not primarily used for single deployments. Azure Policy enforces compliance rules but does not automate deployment of resources directly. Azure Automation executes scripts and workflows but does not provide declarative JSON-based deployments. Therefore, ARM templates are the standard tool for automated Azure resource deployments.

Question 27

You need to provide temporary, limited access to a storage container for a third-party application. Which feature should you use?

A) Shared Access Signature (SAS)
B) Storage Account Key
C) Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
D) Managed Identity

Answer: A) Shared Access Signature (SAS)

Explanation:

A Shared Access Signature (SAS) generates a temporary URL with limited permissions and an expiration time, ideal for granting third-party access. Storage Account Keys provide full access and are not time-bound, making them less secure. RBAC defines roles and permissions but does not provide time-limited URLs for external users. Managed Identity allows Azure services to access resources securely but is not used for temporary third-party access. Therefore, SAS is the correct mechanism for controlled temporary access.

Question 28

You need to ensure compliance by auditing all administrative actions performed on Azure resources. Which service should you enable?

A) Azure Activity Log
B) Azure Monitor
C) Azure Security Center
D) Azure Policy

Answer: A) Azure Activity Log

Explanation:

Azure Activity Log records all control-plane operations, including who performed actions such as creating, updating, or deleting resources. Azure Monitor collects metrics and logs for performance and health but does not provide a full audit trail. Azure Security Center focuses on security recommendations and threat detection, not auditing user actions. Azure Policy enforces compliance but does not log every administrative action. Therefore, the Activity Log is essential for auditing administrative operations.

Question 29

You need to restrict access to an Azure SQL database to specific on-premises IP addresses. Which feature should you configure?

A) Firewall rules for SQL server
B) Private Endpoint
C) Virtual Network Service Endpoints
D) Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Answer: A) Firewall rules for SQL server

Explanation:

Azure SQL Database firewall rules allow you to specify IP ranges that can connect to the server, effectively restricting access. Private Endpoint allows connections over a private network but does not control specific IP ranges. Virtual Network Service Endpoints extend a VNet to a resource but do not restrict access based on external IPs. RBAC controls user permissions within the database but does not prevent network-level access. Therefore, firewall rules are the correct mechanism for restricting access by IP address.

Question 30

You need to implement a secure method for Azure VMs to access Key Vault without using credentials. Which approach should you use?

A) Managed Identity
B) Shared Access Signature
C) Service Principal with Client Secret
D) Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Answer: A) Managed Identity

Explanation:

Managed Identity allows Azure VMs and other services to authenticate to Azure resources, such as Key Vault, without storing credentials in code. Shared Access Signature is used for storage access, not VM authentication to Key Vault. Service Principal with Client Secret provides programmatic access but requires storing credentials, which is less secure. RBAC manages permissions but does not handle authentication automatically for VMs. Therefore, Managed Identity is the recommended approach for secure, credential-free access.