AZ-305 Practice Exam 3 — 20 Questions

Question 1

A company deploys a web application across multiple Azure VMs in a single region. They need to distribute incoming HTTP traffic, offload SSL termination, and perform URL-based routing to different backend pools (e.g., /images to one pool, /api to another). Which Azure load balancing solution should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Application Gateway. Azure Application Gateway is a Layer 7 load balancer that can distribute HTTP traffic, offload SSL termination, and perform URL-based routing to different backend pools. This directly matches the requirements for routing /images and /api traffic to separate pools while handling SSL termination at the gateway.

Answer

Azure Load Balancer

Answer

Azure Traffic Manager

Answer

Azure Front Door

Question 2

A company plans to deploy a multi-tier application on Azure. The web tier requires SSL termination and health probes. The application tier must be isolated from the internet. The database tier requires high availability. They want to minimize administrative overhead and use Azure native services. Which architecture should they recommend?

Accepted Answer

Azure Application Gateway for web tier, Azure Load Balancer (internal) for application tier, and Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication. Option A is correct because Azure Application Gateway provides SSL termination and health probes for the web tier, an internal Azure Load Balancer isolates the application tier from the internet, and Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication offers high availability with automatic failover, minimizing administrative overhead by using PaaS services.

Answer

Azure Front Door for web tier, Azure Load Balancer for database tier, and SQL Server on Azure VMs with Always On

Answer

Azure Traffic Manager for web tier, Azure Application Gateway for database tier, and Azure SQL Database with failover groups

Answer

Azure Application Gateway for web tier, Azure Load Balancer (internal) for application tier, and Azure SQL Database with geo-restore

Question 3

A company ingests millions of IoT events per second from sensors around the world. Each event is a JSON message with timestamp, device ID, and readings. They need to support real-time analytics dashboards and also store all raw data for long-term historical analysis. They want to minimize operational overhead. Which Azure data storage solution should they recommend?

Accepted Answer

Azure Event Hubs with Capture to Azure Data Lake Storage.. Azure Event Hubs is designed for high-throughput data ingestion, capable of handling millions of events per second. By enabling the Capture feature, data is automatically and durably persisted to Azure Data Lake Storage in Avro format, providing a serverless, low-latency pipeline for real-time dashboards while storing raw data for long-term analytics. This minimizes operational overhead by eliminating the need to manage separate ingestion and storage infrastructure.

Answer

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 for all data.

Answer

Azure Cosmos DB for both real-time and historical data.

Answer

Azure Time Series Insights (TSI) Standard.

Question 4

A company is building a big data analytics platform that will process structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data using Azure Synapse Analytics and other tools. They need a storage layer that supports hierarchical namespaces and fine-grained access control at the directory level. Which Azure storage solution should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 (ADLS Gen2) is the correct choice because it combines Azure Blob Storage with a hierarchical namespace, enabling directory-level access control lists (ACLs) and POSIX-compliant permissions. This is essential for the big data analytics platform described, as it must support structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data with fine-grained access control at the directory level, which Azure Synapse Analytics can directly query via ABFS (Azure Blob File System) driver.

Answer

Azure Blob Storage

Answer

Azure Files

Answer

Azure Cosmos DB

Question 5

A company is deploying a multi-tier web application on Azure VMs. The web tier must be accessible from the internet, while the application and database tiers must be isolated within the virtual network. The solution must provide SSL termination, web application firewall (WAF) capabilities, and URL-based routing. Which Azure service should they use to expose the web tier?

Accepted Answer

Use Azure Application Gateway with WAF, and configure NSGs to restrict traffic between tiers.. Azure Application Gateway is a Layer 7 load balancer that provides SSL termination, a web application firewall (WAF), and URL-based routing, making it ideal for exposing a web tier to the internet. By placing the gateway in front of the web tier and configuring network security groups (NSGs) on the application and database subnets, you can isolate internal tiers while meeting all stated requirements.

Answer

Use an Azure Load Balancer and configure NSGs on each subnet.

Answer

Use Azure Firewall to inspect all traffic and allow internet traffic to the web tier.

Answer

Use Azure Front Door to expose the web tier and NSGs for internal isolation.

Question 6

A company is building a petabyte-scale data lake for analytics. They need a storage solution that supports a hierarchical namespace, POSIX-like permissions (ACLs), and is optimized for big data analytics workloads using Apache Spark and Hive. The data must be accessible over the Azure Blob Storage API. Which Azure data service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 (ADLS Gen2) is the correct choice because it combines a hierarchical namespace with POSIX-like ACLs and is natively optimized for big data analytics workloads like Apache Spark and Hive. It exposes data through the Azure Blob Storage API, meeting all stated requirements for petabyte-scale analytics.

Answer

Azure Blob Storage (with flat namespace)

Answer

Azure NetApp Files

Answer

Azure HPC Cache

Question 7

A company runs a mission-critical SQL Server database on an Azure virtual machine using SQL Server Standard Edition. They need a disaster recovery solution that replicates the database to a secondary Azure region with a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 1 hour. The solution must support non-disruptive disaster recovery drills. The company cannot modify the SQL Server configuration or use Always On features due to licensing constraints. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Site Recovery. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) replicates the entire VM (including the SQL Server database) to a secondary Azure region, meeting the RPO of 15 minutes and RTO of 1 hour. It supports non-disruptive disaster recovery drills by allowing test failovers in an isolated network without affecting the production environment. ASR does not require any changes to SQL Server configuration or licensing, as it operates at the hypervisor level using continuous replication.

Answer

SQL Server log shipping to a VM in the secondary region

Answer

Azure Backup with cross-region restore

Answer

Azure SQL Database geo-replication

Question 8

A company stores unstructured data such as documents and images in Azure Blob Storage. The data is accessed frequently for the first month, then only rarely for the next year, and after that must be retained for 10 years for compliance. The company wants to minimize storage costs by automatically moving data to the most cost-effective storage tiers. Which Azure Blob Storage feature should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Lifecycle management policies. Lifecycle management policies in Azure Blob Storage allow you to automatically transition blobs to cooler tiers (e.g., from Hot to Cool, then to Archive) based on age or last modification time. This directly matches the requirement to move data from frequent access (first month) to rare access (next year) and then to long-term retention (10 years) while minimizing costs.

Answer

Azure Data Lake Storage access tiers

Answer

Soft delete

Answer

Immutability policies

Question 9

A company runs a critical application on Azure VMs and an Azure SQL Managed Instance in a single region. They need a disaster recovery solution with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 5 minutes for the database and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 2 hours for the entire stack. They want to minimize cost and use native Azure services. Which combination should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Azure Site Recovery for VMs and auto-failover groups for the database. Option C is correct because Azure Site Recovery (ASR) provides orchestrated replication and failover for Azure VMs, meeting the 2-hour RTO for the entire stack, while auto-failover groups for Azure SQL Managed Instance enable automatic, synchronous or asynchronous replication with an RPO as low as 5 minutes using the built-in distributed availability groups feature. This combination uses native Azure services without manual scripting, minimizing cost and complexity.

Answer

Azure Site Recovery for VMs and active geo-replication for the database

Answer

Azure Backup for VMs and auto-failover groups for the database

Answer

Deploy a second region with VMs and database replicas manually configured and Azure Traffic Manager

Question 10

A company runs a critical multi-tier application on Azure VMs. The application includes a database tier that requires recovery across multiple VMs at the same point in time. The company uses Azure Site Recovery (ASR) for disaster recovery to a secondary region. The recovery point objective (RPO) is 15 minutes and the recovery time objective (RTO) is 1 hour. The database VMs have a high data change rate, and the company wants to minimize replication costs. Which combination of ASR configurations should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Use multi-VM consistency groups and set the replication frequency to 15 minutes.. Option A is correct because multi-VM consistency groups in Azure Site Recovery ensure that all VMs in the group are recovered to the same crash-consistent point in time, which meets the requirement for cross-VM recovery. Setting the replication frequency to 15 minutes aligns with the 15-minute RPO while minimizing replication costs by avoiding more frequent replication (e.g., 5 minutes) that would increase bandwidth and storage costs.

Answer

Enable application-consistent recovery for all VMs and use ExpressRoute.

Answer

Use standard recovery plans and default replication policy.

Answer

Configure a single recovery plan with manual failover and use Premium SSD managed disks.

Question 11

A global company stores customer profile data in JSON format. The application requires low-latency writes and reads from multiple regions. The solution must support multi-region writes with automatic conflict resolution and provide high availability. Which Azure Cosmos DB configuration should they choose?

Accepted Answer

SQL API with eventual consistency and multi-region writes enabled. The scenario demands low-latency multi-region writes with automatic conflict resolution and high availability. Azure Cosmos DB's SQL API supports multi-region writes with eventual consistency, which is the only consistency level that allows multi-region writes. Eventual consistency provides the lowest latency and highest availability, and Cosmos DB's automatic conflict resolution handles concurrent writes across regions using last-writer-wins (LWW) or custom conflict resolution policies.

Answer

MongoDB API with strong consistency and multi-region writes enabled

Answer

Table API with consistent prefix consistency and single-region writes

Answer

Gremlin API with session consistency and multi-region writes enabled

Question 12

A company deploys a stateless web application on Azure VMs in a single region. They need to distribute incoming HTTP traffic across multiple VMs and perform health checks. The solution should be highly available within the region. Which Azure load balancing solution should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Load Balancer (Standard) with HTTP health probe.. Azure Load Balancer (Standard) operates at Layer 4 (TCP/UDP) and can distribute HTTP traffic across VMs in a single region while performing health checks via HTTP health probes. It provides high availability within a region by distributing traffic across availability zones or availability sets, meeting the requirement for a stateless web application without needing Layer 7 features.

Answer

Azure Application Gateway v2.

Answer

Azure Traffic Manager.

Answer

Azure Front Door.

Question 13

A company has 10 branch offices, each with Windows file servers. They want to centralize file storage in Azure and allow each branch office to cache files locally for fast access. The solution must support cloud tiering so that only frequently accessed files are kept locally. Which Azure service should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Azure File Sync. Azure File Sync is the correct choice because it enables centralizing file shares in Azure Files while providing local caching on Windows file servers at each branch office. It supports cloud tiering, which automatically keeps only frequently accessed files locally and moves cold data to the cloud, meeting the requirement for fast local access and efficient storage.

Answer

Azure Files

Answer

Azure Blob Storage with Azure File Sync

Answer

Azure NetApp Files

Question 14

A company runs a critical application on Azure SQL Database in the West US region. They need a disaster recovery solution with an RPO of 5 seconds and an RTO of 1 hour. They also need to be able to perform patching and maintenance on the primary without downtime. Which configuration should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Active geo-replication with auto-failover group. Active geo-replication with auto-failover group meets the RPO of 5 seconds (typically under 5 seconds for active geo-replication) and RTO of 1 hour (auto-failover groups can fail over in minutes). It also supports patching and maintenance on the primary without downtime by failing over to a secondary replica during planned maintenance, leveraging the continuous data synchronization between primary and secondary databases in different Azure regions.

Answer

Azure SQL Database backup to geo-redundant storage

Answer

Azure SQL Database with zone-redundant configuration

Answer

Azure SQL Database with failover group using manual failover

Question 15

A company needs to store audit logs for 7 years to meet compliance requirements. The logs are generated at a high volume and must be cost-effective. They need to run occasional queries on recent logs (less than 30 days old) but rarely on older ones. Which Azure storage solution should they recommend?

Accepted Answer

Azure Blob Storage with lifecycle management to Archive tier. Azure Blob Storage with lifecycle management to the Archive tier is the correct solution because it provides a cost-effective storage hierarchy for high-volume audit logs. Lifecycle management can automatically move logs from the Hot or Cool tier to the Archive tier after 30 days, aligning with the requirement to keep recent logs queryable while minimizing costs for older logs that are rarely accessed. The Archive tier offers the lowest storage cost, making it ideal for 7-year retention of audit data.

Answer

Azure SQL Database

Answer

Azure Cosmos DB

Answer

Azure Log Analytics

Question 16

A company needs to store large amounts of unstructured file data (documents, images) that is accessed concurrently from hundreds of Azure VMs. The data must be accessible via the SMB protocol and provide low-latency, high-throughput performance. The solution must be fully managed and support up to 1000 simultaneous connections. Which Azure storage solution should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure Files (Premium tier). Azure Files (Premium tier) is correct because it provides fully managed SMB file shares with low-latency, high-throughput performance suitable for concurrent access from hundreds of Azure VMs. Premium file shares are backed by SSD storage and are designed to support up to 1000 simultaneous connections per share, meeting the stated requirements for unstructured file data accessed via SMB.

Answer

Azure Blob Storage

Answer

Azure NetApp Files

Answer

Azure Managed Disks

Question 17

A company runs a critical SQL Server database on an Azure virtual machine. They need a backup strategy that supports point-in-time restore down to the second and long-term retention of backups for 7 years to meet compliance. They want to offload backup management to Azure. Which backup solution should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Backup for SQL Server on Azure VM. Azure Backup for SQL Server on Azure VM provides native integration that supports point-in-time restore down to the second for SQL Server databases and allows configuring long-term retention (LTR) for up to 10 years, meeting the 7-year compliance requirement. It offloads backup management to Azure by automating backup schedules, retention policies, and restore operations without requiring manual scripting or third-party tools.

Answer

Azure Site Recovery

Answer

SQL Server managed backup to Azure

Answer

Azure Disk Backup

Question 18

A company runs a stateless web application on Azure VMs. They need to ensure the application remains available in the event of an entire Azure datacenter failure. They want to achieve a 99.99% SLA. Which deployment option should they recommend?

Accepted Answer

B. To survive an entire Azure datacenter failure and achieve a 99.99% SLA, the stateless web application must be deployed across at least two Azure Availability Zones within a region. Availability Zones are physically separate datacenters within the same region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking. Deploying VMs in a zone-redundant configuration ensures that if one datacenter fails, the application continues running in another zone, meeting the 99.99% SLA (which requires a minimum of two zones).

Answer

A

Answer

C

Answer

D

Question 19

A company runs SQL Server on an Azure virtual machine. They need to ensure high availability within a single Azure region. The solution must provide automatic failover with zero data loss (synchronous replication) and support read-only routing for reporting workloads. Which solution should they implement?

Accepted Answer

SQL Server Always On Availability Group. SQL Server Always On Availability Groups (AG) provide high availability and disaster recovery at the database level. They support synchronous replication with automatic failover, ensuring zero data loss (RPO=0) within a single Azure region. Additionally, AGs allow secondary replicas to be configured as readable, enabling read-only routing for reporting workloads, which directly meets all stated requirements.

Answer

SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance (FCI)

Answer

Azure Site Recovery

Answer

Azure Backup

Question 20

A company runs multiple on-premises workloads that are critical. They need a disaster recovery solution that can replicate workloads to Azure and enable failover in the event of an on-premises outage. The solution must support non-VMware and non-Hyper-V physical servers. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Site Recovery. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is the correct service because it provides orchestrated replication and failover for on-premises physical servers (including non-VMware, non-Hyper-V) to Azure. It supports physical-to-Azure (P2A) replication using the Mobility service installed on the source server, enabling automated failover during an outage. This directly meets the requirement for critical workload disaster recovery with failover capability.

Answer

Azure Backup

Answer

Azure Migrate

Answer

Azure Disaster Recovery