AZ-204 Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize Azure solutions Practice Test 7 — 15 Questions

Question 1

Which TWO approaches can help you optimize the cost of Azure Storage accounts that store infrequently accessed data? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Use Cool or Archive storage tier. Option A is correct because Cool and Archive access tiers are specifically designed for infrequently accessed data: Cool offers lower storage costs than Hot (with higher access costs), and Archive provides the lowest storage cost of all tiers for data that can tolerate hours of rehydration latency, directly reducing the cost of storing rarely used blobs. Option D is correct because lifecycle management policies can automatically transition blobs from Hot to Cool or Archive (or delete them) based on rules such as last-modified or last-accessed time, ensuring data that becomes infrequently accessed is moved to cheaper tiers without manual intervention. Option B is not appropriate because Premium storage tiers (premium block blobs, files, etc.) are optimized for high performance and low latency and carry a higher cost per GB, which is the opposite of cost optimization for cold data. Option C does not reduce cost because RA-GRS replicates data to a secondary region and is priced higher than LRS or GRS, adding redundancy rather than lowering storage expense. Option E does not affect cost because Azure Storage encryption (SSE) is enabled by default at no additional charge and does not change billing for capacity or transactions.

Answer

Use Premium storage tier

Answer

Enable geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS)

Answer

Enable Azure Storage encryption

Question 2

Your team monitors Azure Functions with Application Insights. After a recent deployment, cold start latency increased. Which feature should you enable to mitigate this?

Accepted Answer

Migrate from Consumption plan to Premium plan. Cold start latency occurs when a function app is idle and needs to be loaded from scratch. The Consumption plan can cause cold starts because it scales to zero when idle. Migrating to the Premium plan eliminates cold starts by keeping instances warm, as it provides pre-warmed workers and always-on instances, reducing latency after deployment.

Answer

Set FUNCTIONS_WORKER_RUNTIME to 'dotnet-isolated'

Answer

Enable Azure Monitor alerts on function execution count

Answer

Enable Always On in the function app configuration

Question 3

You deploy a microservices architecture on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Some pods report OOMKilled errors. Which diagnostic step should you take first?

Accepted Answer

Review container resource requests and limits in the pod YAML. The OOMKilled error indicates that a container exceeded its memory limit. The first diagnostic step is to review the container's resource requests and limits in the pod YAML to determine if the memory limit is set too low for the workload. This directly addresses the root cause before scaling or checking node-level metrics.

Answer

Enable cluster autoscaler to add more nodes

Answer

Check node memory utilization with kubectl top nodes

Answer

Configure horizontal pod autoscaler based on memory

Question 4

You need to diagnose why an Azure App Service web app returns HTTP 503 errors during peak traffic. Which Application Insights feature should you use?

Accepted Answer

Live Metrics. Live Metrics (D) is the correct choice because it provides real-time monitoring of server-side performance metrics, including HTTP 503 errors, as they occur during peak traffic. This allows you to immediately correlate the errors with spikes in CPU, memory, or request rates, enabling rapid diagnosis of resource exhaustion or throttling issues in the App Service plan.

Answer

Availability tests

Answer

Log Analytics query for failed requests

Answer

Application Map

Question 5

You are optimizing an Azure SQL Database that runs a heavy reporting workload. Queries are slow due to high logical reads. Which index strategy should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use columnstore indexes on fact tables. High logical reads in a heavy reporting workload are often best addressed by columnstore indexes. Columnstore indexes provide significant data compression, reducing the number of pages that need to be read from disk. They also enable batch mode processing and segment elimination, which dramatically improve performance for analytical queries involving large scans and aggregations, thereby directly reducing logical reads across the workload.

Answer

Create nonclustered indexes with included columns

Answer

Disable auto-update statistics

Answer

Rebuild clustered indexes with higher fill factor

Question 6

Your Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster experiences node failures. Which Azure service provides automated node repair?

Accepted Answer

AKS node auto-repair. C is correct because AKS node auto-repair is a built-in feature that automatically detects unhealthy nodes (based on Node Conditions like 'NotReady' or 'DiskPressure') and initiates repair actions such as reimaging the node. This feature is specific to AKS and operates at the cluster level without requiring external services.

Answer

Azure Sentinel

Answer

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Answer

Azure Monitor

Question 7

You deploy a web app to Azure App Service. Users report intermittent 500 errors. How should you enable detailed error logging?

Accepted Answer

Enable Application Insights for the web app. Application Insights provides built-in server-side telemetry for Azure App Service, including detailed error tracking, stack traces, and request logs. Enabling it captures the full exception details for intermittent 500 errors, which are typically unhandled exceptions or crashes in the application code. This is the most direct and integrated way to get detailed error logs without additional infrastructure.

Answer

Configure Azure Storage account diagnostics

Answer

Set up Azure DNS logging

Answer

Enable Azure Front Door logging

Question 8

You need to reduce costs for an Azure Functions app that runs intermittently. The current Consumption plan bills for execution time. Which change would be MOST cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Migrate to Flex Consumption plan with higher memory. The Flex Consumption plan allows you to configure per-instance memory and concurrency settings, which can reduce costs for intermittent workloads by optimizing resource usage. Unlike the standard Consumption plan, Flex Consumption lets you set higher memory limits without paying for idle time, making it more cost-effective for functions that run sporadically but require more memory when active.

Answer

Switch to Premium plan with pre-warmed instances

Answer

Use an App Service plan with Always On

Answer

Deploy to Azure Container Instances

Question 9

Your Azure Logic Apps workflow fails intermittently with timeout errors. What should you do to improve reliability?

Accepted Answer

Configure retry policies for failed actions. Intermittent timeout errors in Azure Logic Apps indicate that some actions are taking longer than the default timeout to complete. Configuring retry policies for failed actions allows the workflow to automatically reattempt the operation, which can resolve transient failures due to network congestion or temporary service unavailability. This directly improves reliability by handling intermittent timeouts without manual intervention.

Answer

Increase the action timeout to maximum

Answer

Reduce the number of parallel branches

Answer

Use Azure API Management in front of Logic Apps

Question 10

You need to monitor the performance of an Azure App Service web app. Which metric indicates high CPU usage?

Accepted Answer

CPU Time. CPU Time is the correct metric for monitoring high CPU usage in an Azure App Service web app because it directly measures the total amount of CPU processing time consumed by the application. When CPU usage is high, the CPU Time metric will show elevated values, reflecting the actual seconds of processor time used, which is the most direct indicator of CPU load.

Answer

Data In/Out

Answer

Requests per second

Answer

Memory working set

Question 11

Which TWO Azure services can be used to monitor and diagnose performance issues in an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster?

Accepted Answer

Application Insights for AKS. Application Insights for AKS (option C) is correct because it provides application-level monitoring, including distributed tracing, dependency tracking, and performance diagnostics for microservices running in AKS. It integrates with the AKS cluster to collect telemetry from pods and containers, enabling detection of slow requests, exceptions, and dependency failures that impact application performance.

Answer

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Answer

Azure Network Watcher

Answer

Azure SQL Analytics

Question 12

Which TWO Azure Monitor features can help troubleshoot a web app that returns slow response times intermittently?

Accepted Answer

Live Metrics. Live Metrics (C) is correct because it provides real-time, low-latency monitoring of a web app's performance, including CPU, memory, and request rates, allowing you to observe intermittent slow responses as they happen without sampling delays. Application Map (D) is correct because it visualizes the distributed components of your application and their dependencies, helping you identify which downstream service or component is causing latency spikes during intermittent slowdowns.

Answer

Sentinel incidents

Answer

Advisor recommendations

Answer

Policy compliance

Question 13

Refer to the exhibit. You deployed an Azure Storage account with this ARM template. Users outside the allowed IP range receive '403 Forbidden' errors. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The network ACL default action is Deny. The default action for network ACLs in Azure Storage is 'Deny' when no explicit rules match. Since the ARM template only allows traffic from the IP range 203.0.113.0/24, all other IP addresses are implicitly denied, resulting in 403 Forbidden errors for users outside that range.

Answer

The access tier is Cool

Answer

The minimum TLS version is set to TLS1_2

Answer

The IP rule allows only 203.0.113.0/24

Question 14

Refer to the exhibit. You run this KQL query in Azure Monitor Logs. What does the timechart display?

Accepted Answer

Multiple lines, one for each result code, showing request count over time. The KQL query uses `summarize count() by ResultCode, bin(TimeGenerated, 5m)` which groups requests by both `ResultCode` and 5-minute time bins. When rendered with `render timechart`, each distinct `ResultCode` value produces a separate series (line) on the chart, showing the request count over time for that result code. This is why multiple lines appear, one per result code.

Answer

A single line of total requests over time

Answer

Total requests per 5 minutes

Answer

Requests grouped by result code only

Question 15

Refer to the exhibit. You run these Azure CLI commands for an Azure Function app. When the app is accessed from https://app.contoso.com, what is the expected behavior?

Accepted Answer

Requests from the allowed origin are accepted. The Azure CLI commands shown configure CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) for the Function App. The `az functionapp cors add` command adds `https://app.contoso.com` as an allowed origin, and `az functionapp cors show` confirms that this origin is in the allowed list. When a browser-based client at `https://app.contoso.com` makes a request to the Function App, the browser checks the `Access-Control-Allow-Origin` response header. Since the origin matches, the browser permits the request to proceed, and the Function App processes it normally. Therefore, requests from the allowed origin are accepted.

Answer

Only GET requests are allowed

Answer

Requests are blocked because FTPS is required

Answer

All requests are blocked because no origins are allowed