AZ-204 Develop Azure compute solutions Practice Test 10 — 15 Questions

Question 1

You have an Azure Container Apps environment running multiple microservices. One microservice is experiencing high CPU usage and slow response times. You need to configure autoscaling rules to scale based on HTTP requests. Which scaling rule should you add?

Accepted Answer

HTTP scaling rule (KEDA). Option A is correct because KEDA's HTTP scaling rule is specifically designed to scale Azure Container Apps based on the number of concurrent HTTP requests, which directly addresses high CPU usage and slow response times caused by request load. Unlike CPU or memory metrics, HTTP scaling reacts to incoming request volume proactively, allowing the microservice to handle spikes before resource saturation occurs.

Answer

CPU percentage scaling rule

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Memory percentage scaling rule

Answer

Custom scaling rule using Azure Monitor metrics

Question 2

You are deploying a web app to Azure App Service. The app uses environment-specific configuration (e.g., connection strings). You need to manage these settings without redeploying the app. Which feature should you use?

Accepted Answer

App Service application settings. App Service application settings (option B) are the correct feature because they allow you to store environment-specific configuration (e.g., connection strings, app settings) as key-value pairs that are injected into the app at runtime. These settings can be changed in the Azure portal, CLI, or PowerShell without redeploying the application code, making them ideal for managing configuration across different environments (development, staging, production). The settings are automatically encrypted at rest and overridden for the specific App Service slot when using deployment slots.

Answer

Azure App Configuration service

Answer

ARM template parameters

Answer

Azure Key Vault references in App Service

Question 3

You develop an Azure Function that writes to Azure Blob Storage. During testing, you notice that the function fails intermittently with a 503 (Service Unavailable) error. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The storage account is throttling requests due to high volume. A 503 (Service Unavailable) error from Azure Blob Storage indicates that the storage service is temporarily unable to handle the request, typically due to server-side load. The most common cause is throttling when the storage account exceeds its scalability targets (e.g., 20,000 requests per second per account for blob storage). This aligns with intermittent failures under high request volume, not with configuration or existence issues.

Answer

The storage account firewall is blocking the function

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The function does not have proper authentication

Answer

The blob container does not exist

Question 4

Your company has an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster. You need to deploy a containerized application that requires persistent storage across pod restarts. The storage must be backed by Azure Disk and support ReadWriteOnce access mode. Which volume type should you use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Disk. Azure Disk is the correct volume type because it provides a durable block storage device that can be attached to a pod in an AKS cluster. It supports the ReadWriteOnce (RWO) access mode, meaning the disk can be mounted as read-write by a single node, which aligns with the requirement for persistent storage that survives pod restarts. Azure Disk is ideal for stateful applications that need high-performance, low-latency storage and do not require concurrent access from multiple pods.

Answer

Azure Blob Storage

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EmptyDir

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Azure Files

Question 5

You are developing a solution that uses Azure Container Instances to run a batch job. The job requires 8 GB of memory and 4 vCPUs. You need to minimize costs. Which container group configuration should you choose?

Accepted Answer

Linux container with 8 GB and 4 vCPUs in a single container group. Option B is correct because Azure Container Instances bills per container group, not per container within the group. A single Linux container with 8 GB and 4 vCPUs in one container group meets the job's requirements with the lowest cost, as it avoids the overhead of multiple containers or groups. Splitting resources across containers or using separate groups would increase costs without benefit.

Answer

Linux containers split into two containers (4 GB each) in the same group

Answer

Windows container with 8 GB memory and 4 vCPUs

Answer

Linux container with 8 GB and 4 vCPUs, but using two separate container groups

Question 6

You need to monitor the performance of an Azure App Service web app. You want to track the number of HTTP 500 errors over the last hour. Which Azure Monitor metric should you use?

Accepted Answer

Http5xx. The Http5xx metric in Azure Monitor tracks the count of HTTP 500-level server error responses returned by your App Service. Since the question specifically asks for the number of HTTP 500 errors over the last hour, this metric directly provides that count without any aggregation or filtering needed.

Answer

Data In

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Average Response Time

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Requests

Question 7

You are designing a solution that uses Azure Functions to process events from Azure Event Hubs. Which TWO features should you enable to ensure the function processes events in order and exactly once?

Accepted Answer

Implement checkpointing in the function. Option C is correct because checkpointing in Azure Functions allows the function to record the last successfully processed event offset and partition. When the function resumes, it reads from that checkpoint, ensuring that events are processed exactly once within the partition, even if the function restarts or scales.

Answer

Durable Functions

Answer

Process events in batches

Answer

Use a retry policy in the function

Question 8

Your Azure Container Apps solution uses Dapr for microservices communication. Which THREE Dapr building blocks are essential for service-to-service invocation and state management?

Accepted Answer

Service Invocation. Service Invocation (A) is correct because Dapr's service invocation building block enables direct, secure service-to-service communication using gRPC or HTTP, with built-in mTLS, retries, and observability. State Management (E) is correct because it provides a key-value store abstraction for managing state across microservices, supporting pluggable state stores like Redis, Cosmos DB, or SQL Server. Pub/Sub (C) is correct because it enables asynchronous event-driven communication between services, decoupling producers and consumers via message brokers like Kafka, RabbitMQ, or Azure Service Bus.

Answer

Bindings

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Actors

Question 9

You are deploying a web app to Azure App Service. You need to enable continuous deployment from a GitHub repository. Which TWO actions are required?

Accepted Answer

Set up a build provider like GitHub Actions or Kudu. B is correct because to enable continuous deployment from GitHub, you need a build provider that compiles your code and deploys it to Azure App Service. GitHub Actions is a modern CI/CD solution that can build and deploy your application, while Kudu is the legacy deployment engine that can also handle build and sync operations. Without a build provider, the source code cannot be transformed into a runnable application on App Service.

Answer

Create a new App Service plan

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Enable Application Insights

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Add a custom domain to the App Service

Question 10

You are deploying an Azure App Service using an ARM template. After deployment, you find that the application settings are not applied. What is the most likely issue?

Accepted Answer

The resource is missing a dependsOn property for the parent site. When deploying application settings via an ARM template, the 'Microsoft.Web/sites/config' resource (which contains the appsettings) must have a 'dependsOn' property referencing the parent 'Microsoft.Web/sites' resource. Without this dependency, Azure Resource Manager may attempt to apply the settings before the site exists, causing the settings to be silently ignored or not applied. This is a common deployment ordering issue.

Answer

The resource type should be 'Microsoft.Web/sites/appsettings'

Answer

The apiVersion is outdated, use '2021-02-01'

Answer

The property 'MyApp:Setting1' uses a colon, which is not allowed

Question 11

You run the command above to create an Azure Container Instance. The container exits with a non-zero exit code. You need to check the logs to debug the issue. Which command should you use next?

Accepted Answer

az container logs --resource-group myRG --name mycontainer. The correct command is `az container logs` because it retrieves the stdout and stderr logs from a container that has exited, which is essential for debugging exit code failures. Since the container has already exited with a non-zero exit code, you need to inspect its logged output to understand the cause of the failure, and this command directly fetches those logs without requiring an active container.

Answer

az container attach --resource-group myRG --name mycontainer

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az container exec --resource-group myRG --name mycontainer --exec-command /bin/sh

Answer

az container show --resource-group myRG --name mycontainer --query containers[0].instanceView.currentState.exitCode

Question 12

You receive an error when deploying this ARM template: 'The serverFarmId property is required.' What is missing from the template?

Accepted Answer

The server farm resource (Microsoft.Web/serverfarms) is not defined in the template. The error 'The serverFarmId property is required' indicates that the ARM template is missing a reference to an App Service Plan (Microsoft.Web/serverfarms) resource. In Azure, a web app or function app must be associated with an App Service Plan, which defines the compute resources and pricing tier. The template must define the server farm resource and link it via the 'serverFarmId' property on the site resource.

Answer

The 'location' property is missing from the site resource

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The apiVersion should be '2018-02-01'

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The 'kind' property should be 'functionapp'

Question 13

You are developing a web app that runs on Azure App Service. The app needs to read a connection string from configuration. Which is the recommended approach to access the connection string in the app code?

Accepted Answer

Use Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("SQLAZURECONNSTR_MyConn"). Option B is correct because Azure App Service automatically injects connection strings defined in the 'Connection strings' blade as environment variables with a specific prefix. For SQL Azure, the prefix is 'SQLAZURECONNSTR_', so the environment variable name becomes 'SQLAZURECONNSTR_MyConn'. Using Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable is the recommended way to retrieve these values at runtime, as they are securely stored and managed by the platform.

Answer

Call an HTTP endpoint on the App Service instance

Answer

Use Azure.Identity.DefaultAzureCredential and Key Vault

Answer

Read from appsettings.json using IConfiguration

Question 14

You have an Azure Function app that processes orders. The function uses a queue trigger from Azure Storage. Recent load tests show that the function is not scaling out fast enough under high load. What should you do to improve scaling?

Accepted Answer

In host.json, increase the batchSize and increase the newBatchThreshold. Option B is correct because increasing the batchSize and newBatchThreshold in host.json allows the Azure Functions runtime to fetch more messages per polling cycle and trigger more parallel function instances sooner. This directly improves scaling velocity under high load by reducing the latency between message arrival and processing, which is the core issue identified in the load test.

Answer

In the function code, increase the number of retries on failure

Answer

In host.json, increase the batchSize and decrease the newBatchThreshold

Answer

Switch from Consumption plan to Premium plan

Question 15

You are troubleshooting a containerized application running on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). The application logs indicate that it cannot connect to an Azure SQL Database using a managed identity. The pod is configured with a user-assigned managed identity. Which step is most likely missing?

Accepted Answer

The AKS cluster does not have the Azure AD Pod Identity add-on enabled. The AKS cluster requires the Azure AD Pod Identity add-on (or the newer Workload Identity) to enable pods to authenticate to Azure resources using managed identities. Without this add-on, the pod's user-assigned managed identity cannot be used to obtain tokens for connecting to Azure SQL Database, even if the identity is correctly assigned to the pod.

Answer

The Azure SQL Database firewall is blocking the pod IP

Answer

The pod's service account is not linked to the managed identity

Answer

The managed identity is not in the same Microsoft Entra ID tenant as the AKS cluster