AZ-204 Develop Azure compute solutions Practice Test 6 — 15 Questions

Question 1

You are developing a solution that processes orders from an e-commerce website. The order processing logic is CPU-intensive and can take up to 30 seconds per order. You need to ensure that the web front-end remains responsive and that orders are processed reliably. What should you use?

Accepted Answer

Add orders to Azure Queue Storage and process them using a background worker role.. Option B is correct because Azure Queue Storage provides a reliable, asynchronous message-passing mechanism that decouples the CPU-intensive order processing from the web front-end. By adding orders to a queue and processing them with a background worker (e.g., a WebJob or Worker Role), the web front-end remains responsive, and the queue ensures at-least-once delivery and durability, even if the worker fails or restarts.

Answer

Use Azure WebJobs to process orders in the same App Service plan.

Answer

Use Azure Service Bus Queues with sessions for order processing.

Answer

Use Azure Functions with Durable Functions to manage order processing state.

Question 2

You are building a serverless application using Azure Functions. The function processes large CSV files uploaded to Azure Blob Storage. Each file can be up to 100 MB. The function must parse the file and insert each row into a SQL database. You need to minimize cold start latency and ensure the function can handle the processing within the default timeout. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Use a dedicated App Service plan with Always On enabled.. Option B is correct because a Dedicated App Service plan with Always On enabled eliminates cold starts by keeping the function host loaded continuously, and it provides a default timeout of 30 minutes (configurable up to 230 minutes), which is sufficient for processing 100 MB CSV files. The Consumption plan has a default timeout of 5 minutes (max 10 minutes), which may not be enough for large file processing, and it suffers from cold starts. The Premium plan reduces cold starts with pre-warmed instances but is not necessary when a Dedicated plan with Always On is more cost-effective and meets the requirements.

Answer

Use the Premium plan with pre-warmed instances.

Answer

Use Durable Functions to split processing into smaller chunks.

Answer

Use the Consumption plan and increase the function timeout to 10 minutes.

Question 3

You are deploying a web application to Azure App Service. The application needs to read configuration settings that vary by deployment environment (development, staging, production). You want to minimize application changes and leverage Azure services. What should you use?

Accepted Answer

Use Azure App Service application settings.. Azure App Service application settings are the correct choice because they are natively supported by the App Service platform, allowing you to define key-value pairs that are injected as environment variables at runtime. This approach requires no application code changes, as the settings are automatically available via standard configuration APIs (e.g., `Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable` in .NET or `process.env` in Node.js), and you can configure different values per deployment slot (e.g., development, staging, production) without redeploying the application.

Answer

Use Azure Key Vault secrets for configuration values.

Answer

Use Azure DevOps variable groups and inject them at build time.

Answer

Use Azure App Configuration with feature flags.

Question 4

You are developing a microservices application on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). One of the services needs to securely access Azure SQL Database without storing connection strings in the application code. You need to use managed identities. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Enable Azure AD Pod Identity and assign a managed identity to the pod.. Option D is correct because Azure AD Pod Identity allows you to assign an Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) managed identity directly to a pod in AKS. The pod can then use that identity to authenticate to Azure SQL Database without storing any connection strings or secrets in the code. This is the recommended approach for pod-level managed identity access to Azure resources.

Answer

Store the connection string in Azure Key Vault and use the Key Vault FlexVolume driver.

Answer

Use the AKS cluster's managed identity to access Azure SQL.

Answer

Create a service principal and use its credentials in the pod.

Question 5

You are designing a solution that uses Azure Container Instances (ACI) to run a batch job that processes images. The job is triggered by a message in Azure Queue Storage. Each image takes about 5 minutes to process. You need to ensure that the container runs only when there are messages in the queue and scales automatically. What should you use?

Accepted Answer

Use Azure Logic Apps with a Container Instances connector.. Option A is correct because Azure Logic Apps provides a serverless workflow that can be triggered by a queue message (via the Azure Queue Storage connector) and then use the Container Instances connector to start a container group. This ensures the container runs only when messages are present and scales automatically by creating a new container instance per message, matching the requirement for event-driven, on-demand execution without idle costs.

Answer

Use Azure Functions with a custom container and queue trigger.

Answer

Use Azure Batch to process the images in a pool of VMs.

Answer

Deploy the image processing job as a pod in Azure Kubernetes Service.

Question 6

You are developing an API using Azure API Management (APIM). The API is backed by an Azure Function that processes requests. You need to implement caching for responses that are expensive to compute. The cache should expire after 10 minutes. What should you configure in APIM?

Accepted Answer

Add a cache-lookup and cache-store policy to the API operation.. Option B is correct because Azure API Management (APIM) provides built-in caching policies—`cache-lookup` and `cache-store`—that can be applied directly to an API operation. These policies cache the response from the backend (the Azure Function) and respect the `cache-control` header or a specified duration, such as 10 minutes, without requiring an external cache. This is the simplest and most direct way to implement response caching for expensive-to-compute operations within APIM.

Answer

Configure Azure Redis Cache as an external cache in APIM.

Answer

Implement response caching in the Azure Function code.

Answer

Use Azure Front Door to cache responses.

Question 7

You are developing an application that runs on Azure App Service. The application needs to store session state. The session state must be shared across multiple instances of the app and survive restarts. You need to choose a session state provider. What should you use?

Accepted Answer

Use Azure Redis Cache as a session state provider.. Azure Redis Cache provides a distributed, in-memory data store that can be shared across multiple instances of an App Service application and persists data through restarts. It is the recommended session state provider for Azure App Service when high availability and scalability are required, as it stores session data externally from the application's memory.

Answer

Use Azure Table Storage for session state.

Answer

Use a SQL Database to store session data.

Answer

Use the in-memory session state provider.

Question 8

You are deploying a containerized application to Azure App Service. The application consists of a web front-end and a background worker. You want to run both containers in the same App Service plan to minimize costs. The worker should scale independently from the web front-end. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the web front-end in App Service and the worker in Azure Kubernetes Service.. Option A is correct because Azure App Service does not support running multiple containers that scale independently within the same plan; each App Service plan runs a single container or a multi-container group (via Docker Compose) as a single unit. By deploying the web front-end in App Service and the worker in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), you can independently scale each component based on its own load, while still sharing the same App Service plan for the front-end to minimize costs. AKS provides the necessary orchestration for the worker to scale independently, and the two services can communicate over the internal network or via Azure messaging services.

Answer

Use Docker Compose to run both containers in the same App Service plan.

Answer

Deploy both containers in the same App Service plan using multiple containers.

Answer

Deploy the worker as a separate Azure Container Instance.

Question 9

You are developing a web application that allows users to upload images. The application runs on Azure App Service. You need to ensure that uploaded images are stored in Azure Blob Storage and that the application remains responsive. What should you use?

Accepted Answer

Generate a SAS token for the user to upload directly to Blob Storage.. Option B is correct because generating a SAS token allows the user's browser to upload images directly to Azure Blob Storage without routing the data through the App Service. This keeps the web application responsive by offloading the upload workload to Azure Storage, avoiding blocking the App Service's limited HTTP request threads and reducing latency.

Answer

Upload the image to the App Service and then copy it to Blob Storage.

Answer

Use Azure Files for image storage.

Answer

Make the Blob container public for anonymous uploads.

Question 10

You are developing a solution that uses Azure Functions to process events from Azure Event Grid. The function must handle events reliably. Which TWO options should you implement?

Accepted Answer

Enable retry policy on the Event Grid subscription.. Option B is correct because Event Grid subscriptions support automatic retry policies that can be configured to retry event delivery on transient failures, ensuring reliable processing. Option D is correct because a dead-letter destination (e.g., a storage blob) captures events that cannot be delivered after exhausting retries, preventing data loss and enabling later analysis.

Answer

Use Durable Functions for orchestration.

Answer

Implement manual checkpointing in the function code.

Answer

Use a queue trigger instead of an Event Grid trigger.

Question 11

You are designing a serverless application using Azure Functions. The application processes messages from Azure Service Bus. You need to ensure that processing is idempotent and that messages are not lost. Which THREE actions should you take?

Accepted Answer

Implement idempotency in the function logic.. Option B is correct because idempotency ensures that processing the same message multiple times produces the same result, which is critical for serverless applications where retries or duplicate deliveries can occur. Azure Functions can receive the same Service Bus message more than once due to transient failures or redelivery, so the function logic must handle duplicates safely, often by checking a unique message ID or using a deduplication store.

Answer

Process messages in batches to improve throughput.

Answer

Use the AutoComplete option to automatically mark messages as complete.

Question 12

You are developing a web application that will be deployed to Azure App Service. You need to configure automatic scaling based on CPU usage. Which TWO settings should you configure?

Accepted Answer

Configure a scale in condition based on CPU percentage.. Option D is correct because configuring a scale-in condition based on CPU percentage allows the App Service plan to automatically reduce the number of instances when CPU usage drops below a defined threshold, which is essential for cost optimization. Option E is correct because configuring a scale-out condition based on CPU percentage enables the platform to automatically add instances when CPU usage exceeds a threshold, ensuring the application can handle increased load. Together, these two settings define the autoscale rules that react to CPU metrics, which is the core requirement for CPU-based automatic scaling.

Answer

Configure authentication for the scaling endpoint.

Answer

Set the minimum and maximum instance count.

Answer

Set the Always On setting to On.

Question 13

You are deploying an Azure Functions app using ARM template. The exhibit shows a portion of the template. You notice that the AzureWebJobsStorage connection string includes the account key directly. What is the MOST important security concern?

Accepted Answer

The storage account key is exposed in the template, which could be compromised.. Option C is correct because embedding the storage account key directly in an ARM template exposes a long-lived secret in plaintext. If the template is stored in source control, shared, or logged, the key can be compromised, granting an attacker full access to the storage account. This violates the principle of least privilege and security best practices for infrastructure as code.

Answer

The FUNCTIONS_WORKER_RUNTIME is set to dotnet-isolated, which is outdated.

Answer

The storage account name is hardcoded in the connection string.

Answer

The connection string does not use HTTPS.

Question 14

You are creating an Azure Container Instance using the Azure CLI command shown in the exhibit. The container needs to connect to a SQL database. After running the command, you notice that the DB_PASSWORD environment variable is visible in the container's logs. What is the most likely reason?

Accepted Answer

The container image logs environment variables at startup, exposing the secure variable.. Option D is correct because the `--secure-environment-variables` flag in Azure CLI for Azure Container Instances does not prevent the values from being logged by the container itself. The flag only masks the values in the Azure portal and CLI output, but if the container image explicitly logs environment variables at startup (e.g., via a startup script or application code), the secure variable will be exposed in the container logs. The issue is not with Azure's handling but with the container image's behavior.

Answer

The --secure-environment-variables flag is misspelled.

Answer

The --secure-environment-variables flag is not supported for ACI.

Answer

The DB_PASSWORD value contains special characters that were not escaped.

Question 15

You are reviewing an ARM template snippet for an Azure App Service. The exhibit shows the site configuration. You need to ensure that the app supports WebSocket connections for a real-time feature. Which setting must be added?

Accepted Answer

Add 'webSocketsEnabled': true to siteConfig.. Option D is correct because the 'webSocketsEnabled' property in the siteConfig of an Azure App Service ARM template explicitly enables WebSocket protocol support. WebSocket connections require a persistent, full-duplex communication channel over a single TCP connection, which is not enabled by default in Azure App Service. Setting this property to true allows the app to handle real-time features like chat or live notifications.

Answer

Set alwaysOn to false.

Answer

Set http20Enabled to false.

Answer

Change ftpsState to AllAllowed.