AZ-305 Design data storage solutions Practice Test 11 — 15 Questions

Question 1

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?

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

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.

Answer

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 2

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 3

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 4

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 5

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.

Answer

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 6

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

Answer

Configure active geo-replication and manually initiate failover

Answer

Use geo-restore from geo-redundant backups

Question 7

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 8

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

Question 9

Refer to the exhibit. You run a KQL query against Azure Cosmos DB diagnostics logs. The query shows increasing latency for Query operations over time. Which is the most likely root cause?

Accepted Answer

A query is consuming increasing RU over time, possibly due to a hot partition. The query latency increase over time, combined with the fact that the query is consuming more Request Units (RU) per execution, strongly indicates a hot partition. In Azure Cosmos DB, a hot partition occurs when a disproportionate amount of traffic hits a single physical partition, causing that partition's RU budget to be exhausted while others remain underutilized. This leads to increased latency for queries targeting that partition, as the partition's resources become saturated.

Answer

The Cosmos DB account has reached its storage limit

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The Cosmos DB account is being throttled due to insufficient RUs

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There is network latency between the client and the Cosmos DB endpoint

Question 10

Which TWO Azure services can be used to host a MongoDB-compatible database with global distribution? (Select two.)

Accepted Answer

Azure Cosmos DB API for MongoDB. Azure Cosmos DB API for MongoDB is correct because it provides a MongoDB-compatible API layer over Cosmos DB's globally distributed, multi-model database engine. This allows you to use standard MongoDB drivers and tools while benefiting from Cosmos DB's turnkey global distribution, multi-region writes, and 99.999% availability SLA.

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Azure SQL Database

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Azure Database for PostgreSQL

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Azure Cache for Redis

Question 11

Which THREE factors should you consider when selecting a partition key for an Azure Cosmos DB container? (Select three.)

Accepted Answer

Even distribution of request unit (RU) consumption. An even distribution of request unit (RU) consumption across physical partitions prevents hot partitions, which can throttle throughput and degrade performance. In Azure Cosmos DB, the partition key determines how data and throughput are distributed; if RU consumption is skewed, some partitions become overloaded while others remain underutilized, violating the design goal of uniform load.

Answer

Low cardinality to reduce overhead

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Property with large binary data

Question 12

Which TWO Azure storage replication options provide durability for data in the event of a regional disaster? (Select two.)

Accepted Answer

Geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS). Geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS) is correct because it combines zone-redundant storage (ZRS) within a primary region with geo-replication to a secondary region, ensuring data durability even if an entire region becomes unavailable. This synchronous replication across availability zones in the primary region, followed by asynchronous replication to the secondary region, provides 99.99999999999999% (16 nines) durability over a given year.

Answer

Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS)

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Zone-redundant storage (ZRS)

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Locally redundant storage (LRS)

Question 13

Contoso Ltd. is a global retail company with headquarters in New York and operations in Europe and Asia. They are migrating their on-premises SQL Server databases to Azure. The databases include a customer database (500 GB), an orders database (2 TB), and a product catalog database (100 GB). The customer database requires high read throughput with sub-10 ms latency for global users. The orders database must support complex queries and reporting with point-in-time restore capability up to 35 days. The product catalog is updated infrequently but must be available for read-heavy workloads with strong consistency. Contoso wants to minimize costs while meeting performance and compliance requirements. They also need to support hybrid deployments for databases that must remain on-premises due to data sovereignty laws. You need to design a data storage solution. Which combination of Azure services and configurations should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Azure Cosmos DB with multiple write regions for customer DB; Azure SQL Database Business Critical for orders; Azure SQL Database serverless for product catalog; Azure SQL Managed Instance with managed instance link for hybrid. It matches each database's workload to the optimal Azure service: Cosmos DB with multiple write regions provides global low-latency reads and writes for the customer DB; Azure SQL Database Business Critical offers the complex query support and point-in-time restore up to 35 days for the orders DB; Azure SQL Database serverless minimizes cost for the infrequently updated product catalog; and Azure SQL Managed Instance with managed instance link enables hybrid deployment for on-premises databases subject to data sovereignty laws.

Answer

Azure SQL Managed Instance for all databases with geo-replication for customer DB; use failover groups for global distribution; Azure Data Sync for hybrid

Answer

Azure SQL Database Hyperscale for all databases; use geo-replication for customer DB; Azure SQL Server on Azure VMs for hybrid

Answer

Azure SQL Database Business Critical for customer DB with geo-replication; Azure SQL Database Hyperscale for orders; Azure SQL Database serverless for product catalog; Azure SQL Managed Instance for hybrid

Question 14

Your company is migrating a critical on-premises database to Azure SQL Managed Instance. The database is 500 GB and requires minimal downtime during migration. You need to choose the best migration approach. What should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use Azure Database Migration Service with online migration.. Azure Database Migration Service (DMS) with online migration is the correct choice because it supports minimal downtime by continuously replicating changes from the source SQL Server to Azure SQL Managed Instance using a log-based change capture mechanism. This allows you to cut over to the target with only a brief pause, meeting the critical requirement for a 500 GB database.

Answer

Use the export/import bacpac method.

Answer

Use Azure Data Factory to copy data.

Answer

Use transactional replication.

Question 15

You are designing a storage solution for a global e-commerce platform that must serve users from multiple regions with low latency. The data includes product catalog (read-heavy, rarely updated) and user session state (write-heavy, short-lived). Which combination of Azure services meets the requirements?

Accepted Answer

Azure Cosmos DB for session state and Azure Front Door with Azure CDN for catalog.. Azure Cosmos DB is ideal for session state because it offers multi-region writes with single-digit-millisecond latency and automatic failover, meeting the write-heavy, short-lived requirements. Azure Front Door with Azure CDN provides global load balancing and caching for the read-heavy, rarely updated product catalog, ensuring low-latency content delivery from the nearest point of presence.

Answer

Azure Cache for Redis for session state and Azure Front Door for catalog.

Answer

Azure Table Storage for session state and Azure Front Door for catalog.

Answer

Azure SQL Database with geo-replication for both.