AZ-204 Develop Azure compute solutions Practice Test 12 — 15 Questions

Question 1

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?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

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

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The blob container does not exist

Question 2

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 3

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. 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

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Windows container with 8 GB memory and 4 vCPUs

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

Question 4

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 5

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 6

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. Option B is correct because continuous deployment from GitHub requires a build provider to detect commits and run the build/deploy pipeline — either GitHub Actions (workflow YAML in the repo) or the built-in Kudu (App Service build engine) that App Service uses to pull and build the source. Option C is correct because the Deployment Center in the App Service blade is where you authorize the GitHub connection, select the repository and branch, and choose the build provider, which wires up the deployment source. Option A is not required because an App Service plan is the underlying compute resource that is created or already exists when you create the web app; it is not part of configuring continuous deployment. Option D is not required because Application Insights is an APM/monitoring service and has nothing to do with source control deployment. Option E is not required because a custom domain is a DNS/hostname binding for user access, not a deployment mechanism.

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 7

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 8

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

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

Question 9

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 10

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"). 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

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Use Azure.Identity.DefaultAzureCredential and Key Vault

Answer

Read from appsettings.json using IConfiguration

Question 11

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

Switch from Consumption plan to Premium plan. Switching to the Premium plan provides faster scale-out capabilities, including pre-warmed instances and more scalable infrastructure, which helps the function scale out more quickly under high load compared to the Consumption plan.

Answer

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

Answer

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

Answer

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

Question 12

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 Microsoft Entra ID 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

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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

Question 13

Refer to the exhibit. You run this Azure CLI command to configure an Azure Web App for Containers. The web app fails to start, and the logs show 'unauthorized: authentication required'. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The command did not include admin credentials or managed identity configuration. The Azure CLI command `az webapp config container set` without specifying `--docker-registry-server-user` and `--docker-registry-server-password` (or a managed identity configuration) means the web app cannot authenticate with a private container registry. The 'unauthorized: authentication required' error indicates the registry requires credentials, and the web app has none configured, so it fails to pull the image.

Answer

The image tag 'latest' does not exist

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The web app is configured to use a deployment slot, but the slot is not specified

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The --docker-registry-server-url is incorrect

Question 14

Refer to the exhibit. You have an HTTP-triggered Azure Function that writes the request body to a blob in the 'samples-workitems' container. The function runs successfully but does not create a blob. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The storage account connection string is not set in the function app settings. The most likely cause is that the storage account connection string is not set in the function app settings. Azure Functions require the connection string for the storage account to be configured via the `AzureWebJobsStorage` app setting (or a custom connection setting referenced in the binding). Without it, the runtime cannot authenticate or communicate with Blob Storage, so the output binding silently fails to write the blob, even though the function executes successfully.

Answer

The container name 'samples-workitems' is invalid

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The blob name pattern {rand-guid} is not supported

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The blob output binding syntax is incorrect

Question 15

You are developing a background job that runs every hour on Azure App Service. The job must be resilient to restarts and should not affect the web app's performance. Which technology should you use?

Accepted Answer

WebJobs (triggered). WebJobs (triggered) are designed specifically for running background tasks on Azure App Service. They run as separate processes from the web app, ensuring they do not affect the web app's performance, and they are resilient to restarts because the Azure WebJobs SDK automatically handles restart and retry logic. This makes them the ideal choice for a scheduled hourly job that must survive App Service restarts.

Answer

A background thread in the web application

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Azure Logic Apps

Answer

Azure Functions (Consumption plan)