AZ-204 Practice Exam 4 — 20 Questions

Question 1

You are debugging a performance issue in a live web application monitored by Application Insights. You need to see real-time metrics such as request rate, response times, and any exceptions as they occur, without waiting for the usual telemetry pipeline. Which Application Insights feature should you use?

Accepted Answer

Live Metrics Stream. Live Metrics Stream (option B) is the correct feature because it provides real-time, low-latency telemetry directly from the Application Insights SDK, bypassing the usual ingestion pipeline. This allows you to monitor request rate, response times, and exceptions as they occur, which is exactly what the scenario requires for debugging a live performance issue without waiting for data to be processed.

Answer

Application Insights Analytics (Log Analytics)

Answer

Metrics Explorer

Answer

Application Insights Profiler

Question 2

A production API needs proactive alerting for unexpected exceptions. Which two elements are required for a useful Azure Monitor alert?

Accepted Answer

A signal or metric/log query that detects the condition. A is correct because an Azure Monitor alert requires a signal (such as a metric, log query, or activity log event) to define the condition that triggers the alert. Without a signal, the alert has no basis for evaluation, making it impossible to detect unexpected exceptions proactively.

Answer

A public IP address on the app

Answer

A manually exported CSV report

Question 3

You are using Application Insights to monitor a web application. You notice that a specific request is slow. You want to see the complete end-to-end transaction details, including all dependency calls and exceptions for that single request. Which feature should you use?

Accepted Answer

Transaction Search (End-to-End Transaction Details). Transaction Search (End-to-End Transaction Details) is the correct feature because it allows you to view the complete trace of a single request, including all dependency calls (e.g., SQL, HTTP, Azure services), exceptions, and logs associated with that specific operation. This is achieved by correlating telemetry using the operation_Id field, which groups all telemetry items from the same request into a single end-to-end view. Other features like Metrics Explorer or Application Map provide aggregated or topological views, not per-request drill-down.

Answer

Metrics Explorer

Answer

Application Map

Answer

Live Metrics Stream

Question 4

You are developing a web API that must authenticate requests using Microsoft Entra ID (Microsoft Entra ID) and OAuth 2.0 bearer tokens. You want to validate the token in your API code. Which library should you use?

Accepted Answer

Microsoft.Identity.Web. Microsoft.Identity.Web is the recommended library for integrating ASP.NET Core web APIs with Microsoft Entra ID. It provides built-in token validation, policy enforcement, and handles the OAuth 2.0 bearer token flow, including JWT validation, issuer signing keys, and audience checks, without requiring manual configuration of middleware.

Answer

Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL)

Answer

ADAL.NET

Answer

Azure.Identity

Question 5

You are using Application Insights to monitor a web application. The business team wants to track how many users click a specific button on the page. You need to send custom telemetry data from the client-side JavaScript. Which Application Insights JavaScript SDK method should you call?

Accepted Answer

appInsights.trackEvent. The correct method is `trackEvent` because it is specifically designed for capturing user interactions, such as button clicks, as custom events in Application Insights. Unlike other methods, `trackEvent` allows you to attach custom properties and measurements, making it ideal for business metrics like click tracking. This method sends the data as a custom event telemetry item, which can be analyzed in the Azure portal under 'Events'.

Answer

appInsights.trackTrace

Answer

appInsights.trackPageView

Answer

appInsights.trackException

Question 6

You are monitoring an e-commerce application with Application Insights. You need to analyze all exceptions that occurred in the last 24 hours, grouped by the exception type. You also need to include the URL where each exception was triggered and the number of times each type occurred. Which Log Analytics Kusto query should you use?

Accepted Answer

exceptions | where timestamp > ago(24h) | join kind=inner requests on operation_Id | extend exceptionType = tostring(innermostType) | summarize Count=count() by exceptionType, url. Option A is correct because it uses the `exceptions` table to filter exceptions from the last 24 hours, joins with the `requests` table on `operation_Id` to correlate each exception with the request URL, and then summarizes the count by exception type (extracted from `innermostType`) and URL. This meets all requirements: grouping by exception type, including the URL, and counting occurrences.

Answer

exceptions | where timestamp > ago(24h) | extend exceptionType = tostring(customDimensions.['ExceptionType']) | summarize Count=count() by exceptionType, url = tostring(customDimensions.['Url'])

Answer

requests | where timestamp > ago(24h) and success == false | extend exceptionType = tostring(resultCode) | summarize Count=count() by exceptionType, url

Answer

exceptions | where timestamp > ago(24h) | extend exceptionType = tostring(innermostType) | summarize Count=count() by exceptionType

Question 7

You are using Application Insights to monitor a web app. You want to automatically analyze and alert on sudden increases in request failure rates, without manually setting static thresholds. Which Application Insights feature should you use?

Accepted Answer

Smart Detection. Smart Detection in Application Insights automatically analyzes telemetry from your web app to detect anomalies, such as sudden increases in request failure rates, without requiring manual static thresholds. It uses machine learning models to adapt to your app's normal behavior and alert on deviations, making it ideal for dynamic monitoring scenarios.

Answer

Application Insights Profiler

Answer

Live Metrics Stream

Answer

Continuous Export

Question 8

You need to emit a custom metric in Application Insights that tracks the number of page views per browser. You expect high volume (millions of events per day). Which API should you use to ensure efficient pre-aggregation and avoid performance issues?

Accepted Answer

GetMetric. C is correct because the GetMetric API (previously known as Pre-Aggregated Metric API) is designed for high-volume telemetry scenarios. It pre-aggregates metrics on the client side before sending them to Application Insights, significantly reducing network traffic and storage costs while avoiding performance bottlenecks from millions of individual events.

Answer

TrackEvent

Answer

TrackMetric

Answer

TrackDependency

Question 9

You are using Application Insights to monitor an ASP.NET Core web API. Users report that a specific endpoint is slow, but you cannot reproduce the issue in development. You need to identify which line of code is causing the delay in production. Which Application Insights feature should you use?

Accepted Answer

Enable Application Insights Profiler.. Application Insights Profiler is designed specifically to trace code-level performance issues in production without requiring code changes or reproducing the problem. It captures detailed call stacks and timing for each request, allowing you to identify exactly which line of code is causing the delay. This makes it the correct choice for diagnosing a slow endpoint that cannot be reproduced in development.

Answer

Use the Application Insights Map to visualize dependencies.

Answer

Use the Snapshot Debugger to capture debug snapshots on exceptions.

Answer

Create a custom telemetry event in the slow endpoint to log timing data.

Question 10

You have an App Service web app with Application Insights configured. You want to create an alert that fires when the server response time exceeds 2 seconds for a rolling 10-minute window. Which type of alert rule should you create?

Accepted Answer

Metric alert. Metric alerts in Azure Monitor evaluate resource-level performance counters at regular intervals, making them ideal for threshold-based conditions like server response time. Application Insights automatically collects server response time as a pre-aggregated metric, so a metric alert can check whether the average exceeds 2 seconds over a rolling 10-minute window without needing to query raw log data.

Answer

Log alert

Answer

Activity log alert

Answer

Smart detection alert

Question 11

You manage a web application on Azure App Service. You need to monitor its availability from multiple geographic locations, checking that the homepage loads and returns HTTP 200 within 5 seconds. You want an alert if any location fails. Which type of Application Insights test should you create?

Accepted Answer

Availability test (URL ping test). A URL ping test is the correct choice because it is the simplest availability test in Application Insights, designed to check that a single URL returns an HTTP 200 response within a specified timeout (here, 5 seconds). It can be configured to run from multiple geographic locations, and you can set an alert to fire if any location reports a failure, meeting the requirement exactly.

Answer

Multi-step web test

Answer

Standard test

Answer

Custom metric test

Question 12

You are monitoring an Azure App Service with Application Insights. You need to create a custom dashboard that shows the number of requests over time and the average server response time. Which Application Insights feature should you use to create this dashboard?

Accepted Answer

Metrics Explorer. Metrics Explorer is the correct feature because it allows you to create custom charts and dashboards by selecting specific metrics like 'Requests' and 'Server response time' from your Application Insights resource. You can aggregate these metrics over time and pin them to an Azure dashboard for monitoring. Live Metrics Stream shows real-time data but cannot be used for historical charting or dashboard pinning, while Analytics (Logs) requires Kusto queries for custom visualizations and is not optimized for simple metric dashboards.

Answer

Live Metrics Stream

Answer

Analytics (Logs)

Answer

Availability Tests

Question 13

You are developing a worker role that processes events from an Azure Event Hub. The worker runs on multiple virtual machines to ensure high availability. Each partition of the Event Hub should be processed by only one instance at a time, and events from the same partition must be processed in order. You need to manage partition leasing and checkpointing efficiently. Which Azure SDK class should you use?

Accepted Answer

EventProcessorHost. The EventProcessorHost (EPH) class is designed specifically for scenarios requiring distributed processing of Event Hub partitions across multiple instances. It manages partition leasing to ensure each partition is processed by only one instance at a time, handles checkpointing to track progress, and guarantees ordered processing within a partition. This makes it the correct choice for high-availability worker roles that must avoid duplicate processing and maintain event order.

Answer

EventHubClient

Answer

PartitionReceiver

Answer

EventHubConsumerClient

Question 14

You are monitoring an Azure Function app that processes messages from an Event Hub. You want to be alerted if the function is failing to process messages (e.g., exceptions) and automatically restart the function host. Which Azure service should you use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Monitor alerts with a metric alert on exception count.. Azure Monitor metric alerts on exception count can trigger when the function app throws exceptions during message processing. By configuring an alert rule that fires on the 'Exceptions' metric, you can then set up an action group that includes an auto-remediation step, such as restarting the function app host via a webhook or Azure Automation runbook. This directly addresses the requirement to be alerted and automatically restart the host.

Answer

Application Insights availability tests.

Answer

Azure Service Health alerts.

Answer

Azure Advisor recommendations.

Question 15

You are investigating a slow API call in your Azure web app. Application Insights shows that the request took 10 seconds. You need to view all the dependencies (database calls, external HTTP requests) that contributed to this request. What should you use?

Accepted Answer

Transaction Search. Transaction Search (now part of the 'Search' experience in Application Insights) allows you to query individual requests and drill into their correlated dependency calls, such as SQL queries or external HTTP requests, showing the exact duration and sequence of each dependency. This is the correct tool to identify which specific dependencies contributed to the 10-second request latency.

Answer

Application Map

Answer

Live Metrics

Answer

Usage Analysis

Question 16

Your e-commerce application sends telemetry to Application Insights. You need to reduce ingestion costs while preserving the ability to detect trends in performance metrics. Which sampling type should you configure?

Accepted Answer

Adaptive sampling. Adaptive sampling is the correct choice because it automatically adjusts the volume of telemetry data collected based on the application's activity level, ensuring that performance trends are preserved while reducing ingestion costs. Unlike fixed-rate sampling, adaptive sampling dynamically increases or decreases the sampling rate to maintain a target volume, making it ideal for e-commerce applications with variable traffic patterns.

Answer

Fixed-rate sampling

Answer

Ingestion sampling

Answer

Head-based sampling

Question 17

You are monitoring an Azure Web App with Application Insights. You notice a sudden spike in failed requests. You need to quickly identify which specific URL path is causing the most failures. Which blade in the Application Insights portal should you use?

Accepted Answer

Failures blade. The Failures blade in Application Insights is specifically designed to analyze failed requests, including HTTP 4xx and 5xx errors, and provides a breakdown by URL path, response code, and failure count. This allows you to quickly identify the specific URL path causing the most failures, which directly addresses the need to pinpoint the problematic endpoint.

Answer

Application Map

Answer

Performance blade

Answer

Live Metrics Stream

Question 18

You need to deploy a containerized application to Azure Container Instances (ACI) with a public IP address and a DNS name label. Which YAML property should you configure for the DNS name?

Accepted Answer

dnsNameLabel. The `dnsNameLabel` property in the Azure Container Instances YAML definition is used to assign a custom DNS prefix to the container group's public IP address. When combined with the Azure region's default domain suffix (e.g., `eastus.azurecontainer.io`), this creates a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) like `<dnsNameLabel>.eastus.azurecontainer.io`, allowing clients to resolve the container group via DNS without needing the raw IP address.

Answer

containerGroupName

Answer

ipAddress

Answer

ports

Question 19

An application calls a Service Bus topic through HTTP. The developer must implement retries without overwhelming the remote system during partial outages. Which retry pattern is best?

Accepted Answer

Exponential backoff with jitter and a maximum retry limit. Exponential backoff with jitter and a maximum retry limit is the best pattern because it progressively increases the delay between retries, preventing the client from overwhelming the Service Bus topic during partial outages. The jitter randomizes the delay to avoid thundering herd problems, while the maximum retry limit ensures the system doesn't retry indefinitely, aligning with Azure's recommended retry guidance for HTTP-based calls to Service Bus.

Answer

Disable all timeout settings

Answer

Immediate infinite retries

Answer

Retry only after restarting the application

Question 20

A developer is implementing least-privilege storage access. The application runs on Azure App Service and must avoid stored credentials. Which design should be used?

Accepted Answer

Enable managed identity and grant least-privilege access to the target resource. Managed identity in Azure App Service allows the application to authenticate to Azure Storage without storing any credentials in code or configuration. By enabling a system-assigned or user-assigned managed identity, the app obtains an Azure AD token automatically, which is used to access the storage resource. Granting the managed identity only the required permissions (e.g., 'Storage Blob Data Reader' for read-only access) enforces least-privilege access, eliminating the need for stored secrets.

Answer

Use a shared administrator account

Answer

Disable authentication for the target resource

Answer

Store a client secret in source control