AZ-204 Develop Azure compute solutions Practice Test 16 — 15 Questions

Question 1

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 2

Your Azure Function app uses an Event Hub trigger. Under high load, some events are processed multiple times. You need to ensure exactly-once processing without losing events. What should you implement?

Accepted Answer

Make the function idempotent. Making the function idempotent ensures that even if the Event Hub trigger delivers the same event multiple times (which can happen under high load due to at-least-once delivery semantics), the function's side effects are safe to repeat. Idempotency is the only reliable way to achieve exactly-once processing in a distributed system where the trigger itself does not guarantee deduplication.

Answer

Use Azure Queue Storage instead

Answer

Enable checkpointing

Answer

Increase the batch size

Question 3

You are deploying a Java application to Azure App Service on Linux. The application requires a specific JDK version not available in the built-in stack. You need to provide the JDK without creating a custom container. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Use a startup script to download and set JAVA_HOME. Azure App Service on Linux allows you to use a startup script to download a custom JDK and set the JAVA_HOME environment variable before the application starts. This approach avoids the need for a custom container while providing the specific JDK version required by the application.

Answer

Mount an Azure Files share containing the JDK

Answer

Use the Azure App Service Windows stack with a custom JDK

Answer

Create a custom Docker container and deploy to App Service

Question 4

Your AKS cluster runs a microservices application. You need to expose an internal service only within the cluster virtual network. Which Service type should you use?

Accepted Answer

Internal LoadBalancer (with annotation). An Internal LoadBalancer with the `service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-load-balancer-internal: "true"` annotation creates a load balancer with a private IP address from the cluster's virtual network, making the service accessible only within that VNet. This is the correct choice for exposing an internal service exclusively within the AKS cluster virtual network.

Answer

NodePort

Answer

LoadBalancer

Answer

ClusterIP

Question 5

You have an Azure Function app that uses .NET 8 isolated process. The function must connect to an Azure SQL database using a managed identity. The function app has a system-assigned managed identity enabled. Which code snippet correctly retrieves the access token?

Accepted Answer

var credential = new DefaultAzureCredential(); var token = await credential.GetTokenAsync(new TokenRequestContext(new[] {"https://database.windows.net/.default"}));. It uses `DefaultAzureCredential` to obtain an access token for Azure SQL Database by specifying the resource URI `https://database.windows.net/.default` in a `TokenRequestContext`. In a .NET 8 isolated process function app with a system-assigned managed identity, `DefaultAzureCredential` automatically attempts managed identity authentication as one of its credential sources, making it the recommended approach. The `GetTokenAsync` method requires a `TokenRequestContext` object, not a plain string, to correctly request the token for the Azure SQL resource.

Answer

new SqlConnection(connectionString) using Integrated Security=true;

Answer

var token = await new Azure.Identity.DefaultAzureCredential().GetTokenAsync("https://database.windows.net");

Answer

var credential = new ManagedIdentityCredential(); var token = await credential.GetTokenAsync("https://database.windows.net");

Question 6

Which THREE are valid ways to authenticate an Azure Functions app to an Azure Service Bus namespace?

Accepted Answer

Using an Azure AD token obtained via DefaultAzureCredential. DefaultAzureCredential from the Azure Identity library can authenticate to Azure Service Bus using Azure AD tokens. This credential chain attempts multiple authentication sources (environment variables, managed identity, Visual Studio, etc.) to obtain a token, which is then used to authorize requests to the Service Bus namespace via Azure RBAC.

Answer

Using a client certificate

Answer

Using a SAS key stored in code

Question 7

Your organization runs a critical e-commerce application on Azure App Service. The application uses a Standard App Service plan with three instances. During a flash sale, traffic spikes cause some requests to fail with HTTP 503 errors. The operations team reports that the app's CPU usage reaches 95% during spikes. You need to ensure the application remains responsive without manual intervention. The solution must minimize cost while handling unpredictable traffic patterns. You evaluate the following options: A) Enable autoscale to scale out based on CPU usage threshold of 70%, with a maximum of 10 instances. B) Change the App Service plan to Premium v3 and enable zone redundancy. C) Implement a queue-based load leveling pattern using Azure Queue Storage and a background process. D) Use Azure Front Door with a Web Application Firewall (WAF) policy to distribute traffic. Which option should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Enable autoscale to scale out based on CPU usage threshold of 70%, with a maximum of 10 instances.. Enabling autoscale on the Standard App Service plan allows the application to automatically scale out from 3 to up to 10 instances when CPU exceeds 70%, handling traffic spikes without manual intervention. This minimizes cost by only adding instances when needed, and the Standard plan supports autoscale natively, making it the most cost-effective solution for unpredictable traffic patterns.

Answer

Use Azure Front Door with a Web Application Firewall (WAF) policy to distribute traffic.

Answer

Implement a queue-based load leveling pattern using Azure Queue Storage and a background process.

Answer

Change the App Service plan to Premium v3 and enable zone redundancy.

Question 8

You are designing a serverless data processing pipeline. The pipeline receives JSON messages from an Azure Event Hubs instance. Each message must be enriched with data from a Cosmos DB database and then written to a Parquet file in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. The enrichment step involves a lookup that takes approximately 2 seconds per message. The pipeline must process up to 1000 messages per second. You need to choose the most cost-effective and scalable compute option. Consider the following options: A) Use a single Azure Function with Event Hubs trigger and output to Data Lake Storage. B) Use a Durable Functions orchestration with fan-out/fan-in pattern. C) Use Azure Stream Analytics with a reference data input from Cosmos DB and output to Data Lake Storage. D) Use an Azure Databricks notebook with structured streaming. Which option should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use Azure Stream Analytics with a reference data input from Cosmos DB and output to Data Lake Storage.. Azure Stream Analytics with a reference data input from Cosmos DB is the most cost-effective and scalable option because it can handle high-throughput streams (up to 1 GB/s) with sub-second latency, and it natively supports enriching incoming events with static or slowly-changing reference data (like Cosmos DB) without requiring custom code. The enrichment lookup is performed in-memory within the Stream Analytics job, avoiding per-message function invocation overhead and enabling linear scale-out across streaming units to meet 1000 messages/second with a 2-second lookup.

Answer

Use a single Azure Function with Event Hubs trigger and output to Data Lake Storage. [wrong]

Answer

Use a Durable Functions orchestration with fan-out/fan-in pattern.

Answer

Use an Azure Databricks notebook with structured streaming. [wrong]

Question 9

Your company develops a multi-tenant SaaS application hosted on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Each tenant has isolated compute resources. You need to ensure that no single tenant can consume all cluster resources and affect others. You also want to optimize resource utilization by packing pods efficiently. You evaluate the following approaches: A) Use namespace resource quotas per tenant and let the Kubernetes scheduler handle packing. B) Deploy each tenant to a separate AKS cluster. C) Use Azure Policy to enforce pod resource limits. D) Use a service mesh to control traffic between tenants. Which approach should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use namespace resource quotas per tenant and let the Kubernetes scheduler handle packing.. Namespace resource quotas per tenant provide hard limits on compute resources (CPU, memory) and object counts, preventing any single tenant from exhausting cluster resources. The Kubernetes scheduler then efficiently packs pods within those quotas, optimizing utilization without manual intervention. This approach balances isolation and resource efficiency in a multi-tenant AKS environment.

Answer

Use a service mesh to control traffic between tenants.

Answer

Use Azure Policy to enforce pod resource limits.

Answer

Deploy each tenant to a separate AKS cluster.

Question 10

Your company runs a critical web application on Azure App Service (Windows) that experiences intermittent high CPU usage. The application uses the Standard tier with auto-scaling based on CPU percentage. During auto-scale events, there is a delay of several minutes before new instances become available, causing temporary performance degradation. You need to reduce the latency of scaling out. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Enable the 'Always On' setting in the App Service application settings.. The 'Always On' setting prevents the App Service from being unloaded after periods of inactivity, which reduces the cold-start latency when new instances are added during auto-scale events. Without 'Always On', idle instances may be recycled, causing delays of several minutes as the application re-initializes on new VMs.

Answer

Configure auto-scaling to use HTTP queue length as the metric.

Answer

Upgrade the App Service plan to the Premium tier.

Answer

Change the auto-scale metric to memory percentage instead of CPU.

Question 11

You are developing a serverless application using Azure Functions that processes order messages from an Azure Service Bus queue. Each order message is approximately 64 KB in size. The function must process messages in order and exactly once. The current implementation uses a Service Bus trigger with batch processing enabled. You notice that occasionally duplicate messages are processed. You need to ensure exactly-once processing while maintaining message ordering. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Enable sessions on the Service Bus queue and update the function trigger to use sessions.. Enabling sessions on the Service Bus queue and using a session-enabled trigger guarantees message ordering and exactly-once processing. Sessions group related messages into a logical sequence, and the Service Bus trigger locks the entire session, ensuring that messages within a session are processed in order and that no other consumer can process the same session concurrently. This prevents duplicate processing while maintaining the required ordering.

Answer

Disable batch processing in the function trigger and process messages one at a time.

Answer

Increase the lock duration on the Service Bus queue to 5 minutes.

Answer

Set the maxDeliveryCount property on the queue to 1.

Question 12

Your company is deploying a multi-container application using Azure Container Instances (ACI) in a virtual network. You need to ensure that containers can communicate with each other using localhost. Which TWO actions should you take?

Accepted Answer

Deploy all containers in the same container group.. Containers within the same container group in Azure Container Instances share the same network namespace, including the same IP address and port space. This allows them to communicate over localhost (127.0.0.1) without additional configuration, as they are essentially running on the same virtual machine. Option E is incorrect because using the container group's FQDN does not enable localhost communication; the FQDN resolves to the group's IP address, which is not localhost. Containers in the same group can communicate via localhost directly, without needing the FQDN.

Answer

Define environment variables on each container with the hostnames.

Answer

Assign different private IP addresses to each container.

Answer

Deploy containers in separate container groups and use service discovery.

Answer

Use the container group's fully qualified domain name (FQDN) to communicate.

Question 13

You are designing a background job processing solution using Azure Batch. The job runs a large number of tasks that are CPU-intensive and require access to large input files stored in Azure Blob Storage. You need to minimize the time to process all tasks while controlling costs. Which THREE actions should you take?

Accepted Answer

Mount Azure Blob Storage as a file system using blobfuse to allow tasks to access files directly.. Mounting Azure Blob Storage as a file system using blobfuse allows tasks to directly access large input files without downloading them first, reducing data transfer time and eliminating local disk bottlenecks. This is critical for CPU-intensive tasks that need fast, concurrent access to shared data, minimizing overall processing time.

Answer

Set the task slots per VM to 1 to avoid contention.

Answer

Use a pool of small-sized VMs (e.g., Standard_A1_v2) to minimize cost per node.

Question 14

You are deploying an Azure App Service that uses a Linux container to host a custom web application. You need to configure continuous deployment from a GitHub repository. Which TWO actions should you take?

Accepted Answer

Use the App Service built-in CI/CD feature to connect to GitHub.. Azure App Service provides a built-in CI/CD feature that directly integrates with GitHub, enabling automatic deployment of code changes without additional configuration. Option C is also correct because the Deployment Center in App Service allows you to configure GitHub Actions as the CI/CD pipeline, which builds and deploys the container to the App Service on each push.

Answer

Set up an FTP trigger to poll the GitHub repository for changes.

Answer

Use the Kudu service to sync with GitHub.

Answer

Push the container image to Docker Hub and configure webhook.

Question 15

You are developing an Azure Functions app that processes events from an Event Hubs instance. The function must scale out automatically based on the number of partitions in the Event Hub. You need to ensure that each function instance processes events from at least one partition. Which TWO configurations should you use?

Accepted Answer

Set the function app to use the 'Event Scale' mode with a target of one instance per partition.. The 'Event Scale' mode with a target of one instance per partition ensures that the function app scales out to match the number of Event Hub partitions, with each instance processing events from at least one partition. Option C is correct because an event processor host with blob storage for checkpointing enables load balancing across multiple instances, ensuring each instance handles one or more partitions. Option E is incorrect because 'PartitionKey' is used when sending events to Event Hubs to assign a partition, not in the trigger binding; the trigger automatically distributes partitions across instances.

Answer

Set the 'MaxBatchSize' property to 1 to ensure even distribution.

Answer

Select the Premium App Service plan for the function app.

Answer

Use the EventHubs trigger with the 'PartitionKey' parameter set to the partition ID.