AZ-305 Design data storage solutions Practice Test 10 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is designing a hybrid storage solution to connect on-premises file shares to Azure. They need to cache frequently accessed files locally for low-latency access while storing all files in Azure. The solution must support SMB protocol and integrate with existing Windows file servers. Which Azure service should they use?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Azure File Sync. Azure File Sync is the correct choice because it enables caching of frequently accessed files on-premises via a sync agent installed on Windows Server, while all files are stored in Azure Files. This provides low-latency access for local users and supports SMB protocol, seamlessly integrating with existing Windows file servers through a cloud tiering feature that keeps only hot files locally.

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Azure Blob Storage with NFS 3.0 support

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Azure Files

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Azure NetApp Files

Question 2

A company is migrating on-premises SQL Server databases to Azure. They need to minimize administrative overhead for patching and backups while ensuring high availability. The solution must support automatic failover within the same Azure region. Which Azure service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure SQL Database Managed Instance. Azure SQL Database Managed Instance is correct because it provides near-100% compatibility with on-premises SQL Server, automated patching and backups, and built-in high availability with automatic failover within the same region via Always On availability groups. This minimizes administrative overhead while meeting the high availability requirement without manual configuration.

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SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines

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Azure SQL Database Hyperscale

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Azure SQL Database (single database)

Question 3

A company stores petabytes of sensor data in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. They need to run complex analytics queries that involve joining multiple datasets and aggregating time-series data. The queries must complete within seconds. Which Azure service should they use for querying?

Accepted Answer

Azure Synapse Analytics. Azure Synapse Analytics (Option C) is correct because it provides a unified analytics platform that can directly query petabyte-scale data in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 using T-SQL or Spark, and its distributed query engine (PolyBase or Synapse SQL) can perform complex joins and time-series aggregations with sub-second response times when combined with appropriate indexing and materialized views.

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Azure Stream Analytics

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Azure Data Explorer

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Azure Databricks

Question 4

A company uses Azure Redis Cache to improve the performance of a web application. They need to ensure that cached data survives a failover to a secondary region. Which Azure Redis Cache tier should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Premium tier. The Premium tier of Azure Redis Cache supports geo-replication, which enables data to be replicated across paired regions. This ensures that cached data survives a failover to a secondary region, meeting the requirement for disaster recovery. The Standard tier only provides replication within a single region, while the Basic tier offers no replication at all.

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Standard tier

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Basic tier

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Enterprise tier

Question 5

Which TWO Azure services can be used to store unstructured data such as documents, images, and videos?

Accepted Answer

Azure Blob Storage. Azure Blob Storage is designed for storing massive amounts of unstructured data, such as documents, images, and videos, as objects (blobs) in a flat namespace. It supports three types of blobs (block, append, and page) and provides REST APIs for access, making it ideal for scalable, cost-effective storage of binary and text data.

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Azure Files

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Azure SQL Database

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Azure Cosmos DB

Question 6

A company plans to store operational logs from Azure App Services in a scalable and cost-effective way. The logs must be retained for 90 days and then automatically deleted. Which Azure data storage solution should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Azure Log Analytics Workspace. Azure Log Analytics Workspace is the correct choice because it natively ingests operational logs from Azure App Services via diagnostic settings, provides a scalable and cost-effective storage tier with a 90-day retention policy that can be configured to automatically delete data after the retention period expires. It also supports Kusto Query Language (KQL) for analysis and integrates with Azure Monitor for alerting, making it purpose-built for log storage and management.

Answer

Azure Blob Storage with lifecycle management

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Azure SQL Database with retention policy

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Azure Cosmos DB with TTL

Question 7

A global e-commerce company uses Azure Cosmos DB for its product catalog. The write-heavy workload experiences high latency during peak hours. Which design change would most reduce write latency?

Accepted Answer

Enable multiple write regions. Enabling multiple write regions allows writes to be accepted by the nearest regional replica, reducing cross-region network latency for write-heavy workloads. This is the most direct architectural change to lower write latency globally, as it avoids the round-trip to a single write region.

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Change the default consistency level to eventual

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Partition the container by a different key

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Increase the request units (RUs) per container

Question 8

A financial services company needs to store sensitive transaction records in Azure for 7 years to meet regulatory compliance. The data must be immutable and cannot be deleted or modified during the retention period. Which Azure storage feature should you enable?

Accepted Answer

Immutable blob with time-based retention policy. Immutable blob storage with a time-based retention policy enforces WORM (Write Once, Read Many) compliance, ensuring that data cannot be deleted or modified for a specified retention period. This meets the 7-year regulatory requirement for sensitive transaction records, as the policy locks the data at the blob level and prevents any overwrite or deletion, even by administrators with elevated permissions.

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Blob versioning with lifecycle management

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Soft delete for blob storage

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Legal hold on the storage container

Question 9

You need to design a data storage solution for a mobile app that requires low-latency reads and writes globally. The data is JSON documents with varying schemas. Which Azure service should you choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure Cosmos DB. Azure Cosmos DB is the correct choice because it provides native global distribution with multi-region writes and single-digit-millisecond latency at the 99th percentile, making it ideal for a mobile app requiring low-latency reads and writes worldwide. It natively supports JSON documents with varying schemas through its document model and offers multiple consistency levels to balance performance and data integrity.

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Azure Cache for Redis

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Azure SQL Database

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Azure Table Storage

Question 10

A healthcare organization stores patient records in Azure SQL Database. They need to ensure that all read queries against the database are directed to a read-only replica to offload the primary. Which feature should you configure?

Accepted Answer

Read scale-out. Read scale-out in Azure SQL Database allows you to direct read-only queries to a read-only replica, offloading the primary database. By setting the `ApplicationIntent=ReadOnly` connection string parameter, queries are automatically routed to the secondary replica, which is ideal for read-heavy workloads like patient record queries.

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Elastic database queries

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Failover groups

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Active geo-replication

Question 11

A media company uploads large video files to Azure Blob Storage. Users frequently access recent videos, while older videos are rarely accessed after 30 days. The company wants to minimize storage costs while ensuring that recently accessed videos are immediately available. Which storage tier strategy should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use Hot tier for the first 30 days, then automatically move to Cool tier. It balances cost and performance by using the Hot tier for the first 30 days (when videos are frequently accessed) and then automatically transitioning to the Cool tier via Azure Blob Storage lifecycle management. This ensures immediate availability for recent uploads while minimizing storage costs for older, rarely accessed content. The Cool tier offers lower storage costs than Hot but still provides low-latency access, meeting the requirement that recently accessed videos are immediately available.

Answer

Use Premium tier for all files

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Use Cool tier for all files with lifecycle management to Archive

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Use Archive tier for all files and rehydrate on access

Question 12

A company needs to store and analyze petabytes of IoT telemetry data. The data is append-only and rarely updated. They require SQL-based querying and columnar storage for fast analytics. Which Azure storage solution should you choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 with Azure Synapse SQL pool. Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 (ADLS Gen2) provides hierarchical namespace and petabyte-scale storage optimized for big data analytics. When combined with Azure Synapse SQL pool (formerly SQL DW), it enables SQL-based querying over columnar storage (using PolyBase or CETAS) for fast analytics on append-only IoT telemetry data. This combination supports massive data volumes, append-only workloads, and columnar storage for high-performance analytical queries.

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Azure Cosmos DB with analytical store

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Azure SQL Database with columnstore indexes

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Azure Blob Storage with Azure Cognitive Search

Question 13

You need to design a disaster recovery strategy for Azure SQL Database. The primary region is East US. The database must be available within 1 hour of a regional outage with no data loss. Which solution meets the requirements?

Accepted Answer

Configure a failover group with automatic failover to a secondary in West US. A failover group with automatic failover to a secondary in West US provides the lowest possible RPO and meets the 1-hour RTO. Cross-region replication is asynchronous, so the RPO is typically a few seconds—stricter than any other option. While the requirement specifies 'no data loss', no Azure SQL Database disaster recovery solution across regions can guarantee zero data loss. Failover groups come closest. Option B loses all transactions since the last backup. Option C requires manual failover, which could exceed the 1-hour RTO. Option D relies on geo-restore from backups, with an RPO of up to an hour. Therefore, A is the best answer.

Answer

Perform regular backups to Azure Blob Storage in a secondary region

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Configure active geo-replication and manually initiate failover

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Use geo-restore from geo-redundant backups

Question 14

A company uses Azure NetApp Files for high-performance file shares accessed by Linux VMs. They need to reduce latency for read-heavy workloads. Which configuration should you implement?

Accepted Answer

Enable read-only cache on the volume. Azure NetApp Files supports a read-only cache option on volumes, which stores frequently accessed data in a high-speed cache (SSD-based) local to the compute resources. This reduces read latency for read-heavy workloads by serving data from the cache instead of the underlying storage tier. The cache is transparent to the Linux VMs and requires no application changes.

Answer

Migrate to Azure Files with Azure File Sync

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Disable the export policy to allow all clients

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Mount the volume using SMB protocol

Question 15

Refer to the exhibit. An Azure Policy is assigned to a subscription. A user tries to create a blob container via the Azure portal and receives a deny error. What is the most likely reason?

Accepted Answer

The policy denies creation of blob containers. The Azure Policy assigned to the subscription includes a policy definition that explicitly denies the creation of blob containers. When the user attempts to create a blob container via the Azure portal, Azure Policy evaluates the request against the assigned policies and returns a deny error because the action violates the policy rule. This is the most direct and likely reason for the denial.

Answer

The blob container requires immutable storage

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The user is trying to enable public access on the container

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The storage account does not have encryption enabled