AZ-204 Develop Azure compute solutions Practice Test 11 — 15 Questions

Question 1

You need to deploy a containerized application to Azure that must be restarted automatically if it crashes. The solution should minimize management overhead. Which compute service should you use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Container Instances. Azure Container Instances (ACI) is the correct choice because it provides a serverless container platform that automatically restarts containers if they crash when configured with a restart policy of 'Always' or 'OnFailure'. This minimizes management overhead by eliminating the need to manage underlying infrastructure, orchestration, or virtual machines, making it ideal for simple, stateless containerized applications that require automatic recovery.

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Azure Functions

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Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

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Azure Virtual Machines

Question 2

A company runs a critical web app on Azure App Service that must handle traffic spikes without downtime. They set up autoscaling rules based on CPU percentage. However, during a spike, the app becomes unresponsive before new instances are added. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Use pre-warming instances with a scheduled scaling rule. Pre-warming instances with a scheduled scaling rule ensures that additional instances are already running and ready to handle traffic before the CPU spike occurs. This avoids the cold-start delay inherent in reactive autoscaling, where new instances take time to provision and initialize, causing unresponsiveness during rapid spikes.

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Switch to memory-based autoscaling

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Decrease the scale-in cooldown period

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Increase the CPU percentage threshold for scale-out

Question 3

You are designing a solution to process thousands of images uploaded to Azure Blob Storage. Each image must be resized and metadata extracted. The processing must be serverless and cost-effective. Which Azure service should you use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Functions with Blob Storage trigger. Azure Functions with a Blob Storage trigger is the correct choice because it provides a serverless, event-driven compute model that automatically scales to process thousands of images as they are uploaded to Blob Storage. The trigger binds directly to a blob container, invoking a function for each new blob, which allows you to resize images and extract metadata without managing infrastructure, making it both cost-effective and efficient for high-throughput workloads.

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Azure Container Instances with Blob Storage SDK

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Azure Logic Apps with Blob Storage connector

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Azure Event Grid with Webhook to a custom service

Question 4

A company has an Azure App Service web app that occasionally returns 500 errors. You need to diagnose the root cause without impacting production traffic. Which feature should you use?

Accepted Answer

Application Insights. Application Insights is a powerful diagnostic tool that provides detailed telemetry and performance monitoring for your web app. It can automatically detect and analyze 500 errors, showing stack traces, request details, and dependencies. This allows you to identify the root cause without impacting production traffic, as it works passively by collecting data.

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Kudu console

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Deployment slots

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Autoscaling rules

Question 5

You are migrating an on-premises .NET Framework app to Azure. The app uses Windows authentication and requires persistent storage. You want to minimize rework. Which Azure compute service should you choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure App Service on Windows. Azure App Service on Windows (D) supports Windows authentication natively via its built-in integration with Microsoft Entra ID and on-premises Active Directory through Microsoft Entra Domain Services or hybrid identity setups. It also provides persistent storage options like Azure Files or blob storage attached to the web app, minimizing rework by allowing the existing .NET Framework app to run with minimal code changes in a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) environment.

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Azure Spring Apps

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Azure Functions

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Azure Container Instances

Question 6

A company uses Azure Functions to process messages from Azure Service Bus. The function currently uses the Consumption plan. They notice that during high load, messages are processed slowly due to scaling latency. Which change would improve throughput most?

Accepted Answer

Switch to the Premium plan. The Premium plan for Azure Functions provides pre-warmed instances and faster scaling, eliminating the cold start and scaling latency inherent in the Consumption plan. This directly addresses the bottleneck during high load by ensuring that new instances are allocated instantly, thereby improving message processing throughput from Service Bus.

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Set the maximum instance count to 20

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Increase the function's batch size to 100

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Enable Service Bus sessions

Question 7

You need to deploy a microservice that runs a long-running background job (up to 30 minutes). The job should not be affected by App Service recycling. Which Azure technology should you use?

Accepted Answer

Azure WebJobs with Always On enabled. Azure WebJobs with Always On enabled ensures the WebJob runs continuously on a dedicated App Service instance, preventing it from being unloaded during idle periods or App Service recycling. This allows the long-running background job (up to 30 minutes) to complete without interruption, as the WebJob runs in the same process as the web app and is not subject to the 5-minute timeout of the Consumption plan.

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Azure Automation Runbook

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Azure Functions (Consumption plan)

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Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Question 8

A company is designing a serverless application using Azure Functions. They need to orchestrate multiple functions in a workflow, handle errors, and manage state. Which TWO features should they use?

Accepted Answer

Fan-out/Fan-in pattern. The Fan-out/Fan-in pattern is a core feature of Durable Functions that allows you to execute multiple functions in parallel (fan-out) and then aggregate their results (fan-in). This pattern is essential for orchestrating workflows, handling errors via retry policies, and managing state across function executions. Durable Functions provide built-in state management and checkpointing, making them ideal for serverless orchestration scenarios.

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Azure Event Grid

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Azure Logic Apps

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Azure Data Factory

Question 9

A company deploys a containerized application on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). They need to ensure high availability and disaster recovery across regions. Which THREE actions should they take?

Accepted Answer

Use Azure Front Door for global load balancing. Option D is correct because deploying AKS clusters in multiple Azure regions is the foundational step for cross-region high availability and disaster recovery, ensuring the workload survives a regional outage. Option A is correct because Azure Front Door provides global HTTP/HTTPS load balancing with anycast, health probes, and failover across regional AKS endpoints, improving availability and latency for the containerized application. Option C is correct because Azure Traffic Manager is a DNS-based global traffic router that can distribute and fail over traffic between AKS clusters in different regions using priority, weighted, or performance routing methods. Option B is not correct here because Pod Disruption Budgets only protect pod availability during voluntary disruptions such as node drains within a single cluster, not cross-region DR. Option E is not correct because Cluster Autoscaler only scales node pools within a cluster based on resource demand and does not provide regional redundancy or disaster recovery.

Answer

Configure Pod Disruption Budgets

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Enable Cluster Autoscaler

Question 10

You are developing an Azure App Service web app that must authenticate users via Microsoft Entra ID. Which TWO components are required to set up authentication?

Accepted Answer

Client ID and Client Secret. To authenticate users via Microsoft Entra ID in an Azure App Service web app, you must register the app in Entra ID (Option C) to establish an identity and configure authentication. The Client ID and Client Secret (Option B) are then used as credentials in the OAuth 2.0 authorization code flow to verify the app's identity and obtain tokens. These two components are mandatory for the standard OpenID Connect authentication flow.

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A managed identity

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An Azure AD B2C tenant

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Azure Front Door

Question 11

You are developing an Azure Functions app that processes orders. The function must scale out automatically during peak hours but should not incur costs when idle. Which hosting plan should you use?

Accepted Answer

Consumption plan. The Consumption plan is correct because it automatically scales your function app based on demand, including scaling out to handle peak loads, and you only pay for execution time and resources consumed when your functions are running. When idle, there are no costs because the plan does not reserve any instances; it relies on a dynamic, event-driven scale model that can scale down to zero.

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Premium plan

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Container Instances

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App Service plan

Question 12

You have an Azure App Service web app that uses a custom domain with TLS/SSL binding. You need to migrate the app to a new App Service plan in a different region. What is the correct order of steps?

Accepted Answer

Export the current plan, create the new plan, deploy the app, bind the domain and certificate. The proper sequence for migrating an Azure App Service web app with a custom domain and TLS/SSL binding to a new plan in a different region is: first, capture the existing web app's configuration (e.g., by exporting its ARM template, which includes custom domain and certificate binding details), then create the new App Service plan in the target region, deploy the app (which involves creating the new web app resource and deploying its code, potentially using the captured configuration), and finally bind the custom domain and certificate to the new web app. This ensures the custom domain and TLS/SSL binding are correctly associated with the new web app after it's deployed, avoiding downtime or misconfiguration.

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Create the new plan, deploy the app, export the current plan, bind the domain

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Export the current plan, create the new plan, bind the domain, deploy the app

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Bind the domain to the new plan, export the current plan, create the new plan, deploy the app

Question 13

You are designing a solution that runs background jobs to process images. The jobs can run up to 10 minutes each. You need to ensure the jobs are resilient to failures and can be retried automatically. Which Azure service should you use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Queue Storage with an Azure Function trigger. Azure Queue Storage with an Azure Function trigger is the correct choice because it provides a reliable, message-based architecture for background job processing. Queue messages persist until processed, and the Azure Function trigger automatically retries on failure (up to 5 times by default, with configurable policies). This handles the 10-minute job duration via the queue's visibility timeout, which can be set to match the job's maximum runtime, ensuring messages are not prematurely reprocessed.

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Azure Logic Apps with a recurrence trigger

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Azure Service Bus with a WebJob

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Azure Event Grid with a Logic App

Question 14

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). 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.

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CPU percentage scaling rule

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Memory percentage scaling rule

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Custom scaling rule using Azure Monitor metrics

Question 15

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.

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Azure App Configuration service

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ARM template parameters

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Azure Key Vault references in App Service