AZ-204 Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize Azure solutions Practice Test 3 — 15 Questions

Question 1

Your Azure web app is running in a production environment. Users report that the app is slow. You need to identify the root cause without impacting production traffic. Which approach should you use?

Accepted Answer

Enable Application Insights Profiler. Application Insights Profiler provides detailed, per-request performance traces that pinpoint which code paths are consuming the most time, enabling root cause analysis of slow responses without altering production traffic. Unlike sampling or logs, Profiler captures execution data on-demand or automatically with minimal overhead, making it ideal for diagnosing latency issues in a live environment.

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Enable Application Insights sampling at 100%

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Run a load test in a staging slot

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Review server logs in the web app

Question 2

You are using Application Insights to monitor a web app. You want to automatically analyze and alert on sudden increases in request failure rates, without manually setting static thresholds. Which Application Insights feature should you use?

Accepted Answer

Smart Detection. Smart Detection in Application Insights automatically analyzes telemetry from your web app to detect anomalies, such as sudden increases in request failure rates, without requiring manual static thresholds. It uses machine learning models to adapt to your app's normal behavior and alert on deviations, making it ideal for dynamic monitoring scenarios.

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Application Insights Profiler

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Live Metrics Stream

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Continuous Export

Question 3

You are monitoring an Azure App Service using Application Insights. You notice that HTTP 500 errors are increasing, but the standard server response time metric remains normal. You suspect that the errors are occurring in an external API call made by the application. How can you identify the dependency that is failing?

Accepted Answer

Configure Application Insights dependency tracking and view the Dependency Metrics blade.. Application Insights dependency tracking automatically monitors HTTP calls, SQL queries, and other external dependencies made by your application. By viewing the Dependency Metrics blade, you can see failure rates, durations, and dependency names, allowing you to identify which external API call is failing without modifying code.

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Enable snapshot debugging for the application.

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Use Application Insights Profiler to capture code-level traces.

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Set up a custom event telemetry for each external call.

Question 4

You are monitoring an Azure Function app that processes messages from an Event Hub. You want to be alerted if the function is failing to process messages (e.g., exceptions) and automatically restart the function host. Which Azure service should you use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Monitor alerts with a metric alert on exception count.. Azure Monitor metric alerts on exception count can trigger when the function app throws exceptions during message processing. By configuring an alert rule that fires on the 'Exceptions' metric, you can then set up an action group that includes an auto-remediation step, such as restarting the function app host via a webhook or Azure Automation runbook. This directly addresses the requirement to be alerted and automatically restart the host.

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Application Insights availability tests.

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Azure Service Health alerts.

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Azure Advisor recommendations.

Question 5

You are monitoring an Azure App Service using Application Insights. You notice that the server response time is high for certain requests. You need to drill down to see which external dependencies (like databases or APIs) are causing the delay. Which Application Insights feature should you use?

Accepted Answer

Profiler. Profiler (C) is correct because it provides a detailed, code-level view of request processing, including the time spent on each external dependency call (e.g., SQL queries, HTTP calls to APIs). It captures execution traces that break down the total server response time into individual dependency durations, allowing you to pinpoint which external service is causing the delay.

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Live Metrics

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Application Map

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Snapshot Debugger

Question 6

You are monitoring an Azure Web App using Application Insights. You need to track the duration and status code of an external API call made by the app. Which Application Insights feature should you use?

Accepted Answer

Dependency tracking feature. Dependency tracking in Application Insights is specifically designed to monitor calls made by your application to external services, such as APIs, databases, or HTTP endpoints. It automatically captures the duration, success/failure status, and response code of outbound HTTP requests, making it the correct choice for tracking an external API call's duration and status code.

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Built-in request telemetry (server-side requests)

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Custom events (TrackEvent)

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Page view tracking

Question 7

You have enabled Application Insights on your Azure Web App. You notice that some server-side exceptions are not appearing in the Application Insights portal. What is the most likely reason?

Accepted Answer

The exceptions are being caught and handled in code without being re-thrown or explicitly logged. Application Insights only captures exceptions that are unhandled or explicitly logged via the SDK. If an exception is caught in a try-catch block and not re-thrown or logged using `TelemetryClient.TrackException()`, it will not appear in the portal. This is a common oversight when developers handle exceptions silently without instrumentation.

Answer

The Application Insights SDK is not installed in the application

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The developer forgot to set the Instrumentation Key in the application configuration

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The web app is running on a Free tier App Service plan

Question 8

You are monitoring an Azure Web App with Application Insights. You notice a sudden spike in failed requests. You need to quickly identify which specific URL path is causing the most failures. Which blade in the Application Insights portal should you use?

Accepted Answer

Failures blade. The Failures blade in Application Insights is specifically designed to analyze failed requests, including HTTP 4xx and 5xx errors, and provides a breakdown by URL path, response code, and failure count. This allows you to quickly identify the specific URL path causing the most failures, which directly addresses the need to pinpoint the problematic endpoint.

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Application Map

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Performance blade

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Live Metrics Stream

Question 9

You are monitoring an Azure Web App with Application Insights. You notice that the dependency duration for a SQL database call has significantly increased. You need to identify the specific SQL query that is causing the slowness. Which Application Insights feature should you use?

Accepted Answer

Performance blade and drill into Dependencies. The Performance blade in Application Insights allows you to drill into specific operations, including dependencies. By selecting the SQL dependency with increased duration, you can view the 'Dependencies' tab to see the exact SQL query text, duration, and other details. This directly identifies the slow query without needing to instrument code changes.

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Application Map

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Live Metrics Stream

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Smart Detection

Question 10

You are running an Azure App Service web app on the Basic tier. Users report slow initial responses due to cold starts. You need to keep the app warm without upgrading the hosting plan. Which feature should you enable?

Accepted Answer

Enable 'Always On' in the App Service configuration.. The 'Always On' feature prevents the App Service from being unloaded after periods of inactivity, eliminating cold starts by keeping the application loaded in memory. This is available on the Basic tier and above, so it solves the problem without requiring a plan upgrade.

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Upgrade to a Premium plan to get pre-warmed instances.

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Implement an auto-scaling rule to maintain a minimum instance count.

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Reduce the web app's idle timeout via application code.

Question 11

You are monitoring an Azure App Service with Application Insights. You need to create a custom dashboard that shows the number of requests over time and the average server response time. Which Application Insights feature should you use to create this dashboard?

Accepted Answer

Metrics Explorer. Metrics Explorer is the correct feature because it allows you to create custom charts and dashboards by selecting specific metrics like 'Requests' and 'Server response time' from your Application Insights resource. You can aggregate these metrics over time and pin them to an Azure dashboard for monitoring. Live Metrics Stream shows real-time data but cannot be used for historical charting or dashboard pinning, while Analytics (Logs) requires Kusto queries for custom visualizations and is not optimized for simple metric dashboards.

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Live Metrics Stream

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Analytics (Logs)

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Availability Tests

Question 12

You are monitoring an ASP.NET Core web API with Application Insights. You want to view the SQL queries being executed, including the command text and duration, in the Application Insights portal. Which actions must you take? (Select all that apply.) (Choose 2.)

Accepted Answer

Install the `Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.DependencyCollector` NuGet package.. The `Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.DependencyCollector` NuGet package is required to automatically collect dependency telemetry, including SQL Server calls. Without this package, Application Insights will not capture SQL dependency data at all. Option C is correct because even with the dependency collector installed, SQL command text is not collected by default for security reasons; you must explicitly set `EnableSqlCommandTextInstrumentation` to `true` in the `DependencyTrackingTelemetryModule` configuration to view the actual SQL queries and their duration in the portal.

Answer

Install the `Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Profiler.AspNetCore` NuGet package.

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Enable adaptive sampling to ensure all SQL queries are collected.

Question 13

You are using Application Insights to monitor a web application. You need to create an alert that triggers when the server response time exceeds 5 seconds for more than 10% of requests in a 5-minute window. Which type of Azure Monitor alert should you create?

Accepted Answer

Log alert. A log alert is correct because the condition involves querying Application Insights trace data to calculate the percentage of requests with a server response time exceeding 5 seconds within a 5-minute window. Log alerts run a Kusto query against the `requests` table, allowing aggregation and threshold evaluation (e.g., >10% of requests), which is not possible with simple metric thresholds.

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Metric alert

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Activity log alert

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Application Insights smart detection alert

Question 14

You are monitoring an Azure web application with Application Insights. You notice a sudden increase in the number of failed requests. You want to be notified automatically when such anomalies occur, without manually setting static thresholds. Which Application Insights feature should you use?

Accepted Answer

Enable Smart Detection for failure anomalies.. Smart Detection for failure anomalies in Application Insights uses machine learning to automatically detect unusual patterns in failed request rates without requiring manual threshold configuration. This feature is specifically designed to notify you of anomalies based on historical behavior, making it the correct choice for the scenario described.

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Create a metric alert on the 'failed requests' metric with a static threshold.

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Use Log Analytics to run a query every 5 minutes and trigger an action.

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Create an availability test that periodically pings the application.

Question 15

You are using Application Insights to monitor an ASP.NET Core web API. Users report that a specific endpoint is slow, but you cannot reproduce the issue in development. You need to identify which line of code is causing the delay in production. Which Application Insights feature should you use?

Accepted Answer

Enable Application Insights Profiler.. Application Insights Profiler is designed specifically to trace code-level performance issues in production without requiring code changes or reproducing the problem. It captures detailed call stacks and timing for each request, allowing you to identify exactly which line of code is causing the delay. This makes it the correct choice for diagnosing a slow endpoint that cannot be reproduced in development.

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Use the Application Insights Map to visualize dependencies.

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Use the Snapshot Debugger to capture debug snapshots on exceptions.

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Create a custom telemetry event in the slow endpoint to log timing data.