AZ-305 Design data storage solutions Practice Test 12 — 15 Questions

Question 1

Which TWO Azure services provide native support for Azure Active Directory (now Entra ID) authentication for accessing data? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Azure Blob Storage.. Azure Blob Storage supports Azure AD (Entra ID) authentication natively, allowing you to use role-based access control (RBAC) to grant permissions to containers or blobs. This eliminates the need for shared access keys or SAS tokens, enabling identity-based access for users, groups, or service principals. Azure SQL Database also natively supports Azure AD authentication, including integrated, password, and managed identity authentication methods, allowing users to connect using their Azure AD credentials without SQL Server logins.

Answer

Azure Files (SMB).

Answer

Azure Cache for Redis.

Answer

Azure Cosmos DB.

Question 2

Your company, Contoso Ltd., is a global financial services firm with a primary data center in London and a disaster recovery site in Paris. They are migrating their on-premises SQL Server databases to Azure. The databases include: (1) a 2-TB customer database with high transaction throughput, requiring an RPO of 5 seconds and an RTO of 30 seconds; (2) a 500-GB reporting database that is read-only and can tolerate an RPO of 1 hour and an RTO of 2 hours; (3) a 100-GB archival database that is accessed once a month. The solution must minimize costs while meeting requirements. You need to recommend a storage and database strategy for each database. What should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication for the customer database, geo-restore for the reporting database, and long-term retention for the archival database.. It aligns the recovery objectives and cost constraints for each database. The customer database requires an RPO of 5 seconds and RTO of 30 seconds, which active geo-replication can meet by continuously replicating transactions to a secondary region with an RPO of 5 seconds and RTO of 30 seconds (including failover time). The reporting database tolerates an RPO of 1 hour and RTO of 2 hours, making geo-restore (which restores from geo-redundant backups with up to 1-hour RPO) a cost-effective choice. The archival database is accessed monthly, so long-term retention (LTR) backups stored in Azure Blob Storage minimize cost while meeting the infrequent access pattern.

Answer

Use Azure SQL Managed Instance for all databases with auto-failover groups.

Answer

Use Azure Cosmos DB for the customer database, Azure SQL Database for reporting, and Azure Blob Storage for archival.

Answer

Use Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication for all databases.

Question 3

AdventureWorks is a global retailer with a cloud-native architecture. They have a microservices application deployed on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Each microservice needs to store its own data. The data requirements vary: (1) Shopping cart service: key-value data with high write throughput and low latency, data can be lost if not critical; (2) Order service: transactional data with strong consistency and ACID compliance; (3) Product catalog service: semi-structured product data that supports complex queries and is globally distributed for low-latency reads. The solution must use Azure PaaS services and minimize operational overhead. You need to design the data storage for each microservice. What should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Azure Cache for Redis for shopping cart, Azure SQL Database for orders, Azure Cosmos DB for product catalog.. Azure Cache for Redis provides a high-throughput, low-latency key-value store ideal for the shopping cart service where data loss is acceptable. Azure SQL Database offers full ACID compliance and strong consistency required for transactional order data. Azure Cosmos DB supports semi-structured data with global distribution and complex querying via its SQL API, meeting the product catalog's needs while minimizing operational overhead as a fully managed PaaS service.

Answer

Azure Cosmos DB for all three services.

Answer

Azure Table Storage for shopping cart, Azure SQL Database for orders, Azure Cosmos DB for product catalog.

Answer

Azure SQL Database for all three services.

Question 4

You are the Azure architect for a healthcare organization that needs to store patient medical records (unstructured data) and provide secure access to doctors and nurses via a web application. The data must be encrypted at rest and in transit. Access must be authorized based on the requester's role (doctor, nurse, admin). The solution must be cost-effective and support high concurrency. You decide to use Azure Blob Storage. You need to design the access control mechanism. What should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use Azure RBAC with Microsoft Entra ID authentication.. Use Azure RBAC with Microsoft Entra ID authentication. Azure RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) integrated with Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) allows you to assign permissions to users based on their roles (e.g., doctor, nurse, admin) for fine-grained access to Blob Storage. This meets the requirement for role-based authorization without managing separate keys or tokens. Option A is incorrect because encryption at rest and HTTPS only address data protection, not access control. Option B is incorrect because shared access signatures (SAS) grant time-limited access to specific resources but are not tied to user roles. Option D is incorrect because storage account access keys provide full administrative access to the entire storage account, not role-based permissions.

Answer

Enable storage service encryption and use HTTPS.

Answer

Use shared access signatures (SAS) with stored access policies.

Answer

Use storage account access keys and distribute them to users.

Question 5

A multinational corporation is designing a data storage solution for its global customer data. The data must be stored in the Azure region closest to each customer to minimize latency, but all data must be accessible from a central analytics platform for reporting. The solution must also comply with data residency regulations that require customer data to remain in the country of origin. Which Azure storage solution should the company recommend?

Accepted Answer

Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication. Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication allows the creation of a primary database in a central region and readable secondary databases in other regions. This enables low-latency reads for customers by serving data from the closest secondary while respecting data residency because the primary remains in the country of origin and replicas can be limited to the same country. The central analytics platform can query the primary database for reporting. This solution avoids the global replication that would violate residency requirements.

Answer

Azure Cosmos DB with multi-master writes and conflict resolution

Answer

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 with geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS)

Answer

Azure Blob Storage with geo-redundant storage (GRS)

Question 6

A company plans to migrate its on-premises Oracle database to Azure. The database is currently 2 TB and experiences high write throughput. The solution must support: - ACID transactions - Automatic failover to a secondary region - Minimal downtime during maintenance. Which three Azure services should the company include in the solution? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Azure SQL Database Managed Instance. Azure SQL Database Managed Instance is correct because it provides full SQL Server compatibility, including support for ACID transactions, and can host migrated Oracle databases using the SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA). It also supports active geo-replication for automatic failover to a secondary region and zone-redundant configuration for high availability, meeting the requirements for minimal downtime during maintenance.

Answer

Azure Cosmos DB with SQL API

Answer

Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Hyperscale (Citus)

Question 7

A startup needs a cost-effective data storage solution for its application logs. The logs are accessed infrequently but must be available for audit purposes for up to 3 years. The solution should minimize storage costs while allowing data retrieval within 24 hours when needed. Which Azure storage tier should the company recommend?

Accepted Answer

Azure Blob Storage Archive tier. The Archive tier is the most cost-effective option for data that is infrequently accessed and requires retrieval times of up to 15 hours (standard) or 24 hours (high-priority). Since the logs must be available within 24 hours and stored for up to 3 years, Archive meets both the cost and retrieval requirements, as it offers the lowest storage cost among Azure Blob Storage tiers.

Answer

Azure Blob Storage Cool tier

Answer

Azure Blob Storage Hot tier

Answer

Azure Blob Storage Premium tier

Question 8

You are designing a data storage solution for a global e-commerce platform that handles millions of transactions per day. The platform uses Azure Cosmos DB for its transactional data. The company wants to implement a real-time analytics pipeline to monitor sales trends and detect anomalies. The analytics must be performed on the transactional data with minimal latency (under 5 seconds). The solution must not impact the transactional workload's performance. The analytics queries involve aggregations over time windows and joins with reference data stored in Azure SQL Database. You need to recommend a solution. Which option should you choose?

Accepted Answer

Use Azure Cosmos DB change feed to stream data to Azure Stream Analytics, which performs the aggregations and joins with reference data from Azure SQL Database.. Azure Cosmos DB change feed enables real-time streaming of transactional data to Azure Stream Analytics, which can perform low-latency aggregations and joins with reference data from Azure SQL Database without impacting the transactional workload. This architecture meets the sub-5-second latency requirement and avoids any direct query load on Cosmos DB.

Answer

Enable Azure Synapse Link for Cosmos DB and use Synapse serverless SQL to query the transactional data directly.

Answer

Use Azure Data Factory to copy data from Cosmos DB to Azure Synapse Analytics every minute, and run analytics queries in Synapse.

Answer

Use Azure Databricks with Auto Loader to incrementally load data from Cosmos DB into Delta Lake, and then query with Spark SQL.

Question 9

Refer to the exhibit. You are reviewing the configuration of an Azure Blob Storage container used for storing financial audit records. The exhibit shows the container's immutability policy and legal hold settings. You need to ensure that the audit records cannot be deleted or modified for at least 7 years. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Increase the immutability period to 2555 days by updating the policy.. A locked immutability policy on an Azure Blob Storage container can be extended (increased) at any time, even after locking. The exhibit shows a locked policy with 365 days; to enforce a 7-year (2555-day) retention, you simply update the policy to 2555 days. Deleting the container (Option A) is unnecessary and would result in data loss. Option C is misleading because 'modify' implies changing the period to any value, but only increases are allowed. Option D, legal hold tags, are separate from the retention period and do not enforce a minimum duration.

Answer

Delete the container, create a new container, and set the immutability policy to 2555 days before locking.

Answer

Modify the immutability period to 2555 days.

Answer

Add additional legal hold tags for each year.

Question 10

A healthcare company is designing a data storage solution for its electronic health records (EHR) system. The system must store patient data in Azure SQL Database with high availability. The solution must meet the following requirements: - Data must be stored in the East US region with automatic failover to a secondary region in West US in case of a regional outage. - The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) must be less than 5 seconds. - The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) must be less than 1 hour. - The solution must minimize costs while meeting the RPO and RTO. Which Azure SQL Database configuration should the company recommend?

Accepted Answer

Deploy Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication to a secondary server in West US. Configure automatic failover using a failover group.. Active geo-replication with a failover group provides automatic, asynchronous replication to a secondary region (West US) with an RPO of less than 5 seconds and an RTO of less than 1 hour. This configuration meets the high-availability and disaster recovery requirements while minimizing costs compared to higher-tier options.

Answer

Deploy Azure SQL Database Managed Instance with failover group to a secondary instance in West US.

Answer

Deploy Azure SQL Database Business Critical tier with auto-failover group and a secondary replica in a different availability zone within East US.

Answer

Deploy Azure SQL Database General Purpose tier with zone-redundant configuration.

Question 11

A company is designing a data storage solution for its IoT devices that generate telemetry data. The data is ingested at high velocity (millions of events per second) and must be stored for real-time dashboards and historical analysis. The solution must also support complex event processing and alerting. Which two Azure services should the company use together? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Azure Event Hubs. Azure Event Hubs is the correct choice because it is a high-throughput data ingestion service designed to handle millions of events per second from IoT devices, providing low-latency, durable event capture for real-time dashboards and historical analysis. Azure Stream Analytics is the correct companion service because it natively integrates with Event Hubs to perform complex event processing (CEP), such as pattern matching, aggregation, and alerting, on the streaming telemetry data in real time.

Answer

Azure IoT Hub

Answer

Azure Synapse Analytics

Answer

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2

Question 12

A company is designing a disaster recovery solution for its on-premises SQL Server databases that are critical for business operations. The databases are approximately 500 GB each. The solution must meet the following requirements: - Replicate data to Azure with minimal data loss (RPO of 15 minutes). - Automatically failover to Azure in case of an on-premises outage. - Use existing SQL Server licenses to minimize costs. Which Azure service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Azure SQL Managed Instance with managed instance link. Azure SQL Managed Instance with managed instance link enables near-real-time replication of on-premises SQL Server databases to Azure with an RPO as low as 15 seconds, meeting the 15-minute RPO requirement. It supports automatic failover to Azure during an on-premises outage and allows you to use existing SQL Server licenses with Software Assurance via the Azure Hybrid Benefit, minimizing costs.

Answer

Azure Site Recovery with SQL Server replication

Answer

Azure Database Migration Service (DMS)

Answer

Azure SQL Database Managed Instance with transaction replication

Question 13

A company is designing a storage solution for its backup data. The backups must be stored for 10 years for compliance reasons. The solution should minimize storage costs while ensuring data durability. Which two Azure services should the company consider? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Azure Blob Storage Archive tier. Azure Blob Storage Archive tier is correct because it provides the lowest-cost storage for data that is rarely accessed, with a 10-year retention period meeting compliance requirements. It offers 11 nines of durability (99.999999999%) by storing multiple copies across Azure regions, ensuring data integrity over the long term.

Answer

Azure Files with snapshots

Answer

Azure NetApp Files with cross-region replication

Answer

Azure Disk Storage with incremental snapshots

Question 14

A financial services company is designing a data storage solution for its transaction processing system. The system uses Azure Cosmos DB with the Core (SQL) API. The company needs to implement a change data capture (CDC) pipeline to feed a downstream analytics system in near real-time (under 1 minute). The analytics system uses Azure Synapse Analytics. The data volume is approximately 10,000 transactions per second. The solution must minimize operational complexity and cost. Which approach should the company recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use Azure Cosmos DB change feed with Azure Functions to process changes and load them into Azure Synapse Analytics using the COPY command.. Azure Cosmos DB change feed provides a built-in, event-driven mechanism to capture inserts and updates in near real-time. By using Azure Functions to process each batch of changes and the COPY command for efficient bulk loading into Azure Synapse, the solution meets the sub-minute latency requirement while minimizing operational overhead and cost, as it avoids managing additional compute resources.

Answer

Enable Azure Synapse Link for Cosmos DB and query the transactional data directly from Synapse serverless SQL.

Answer

Use Azure Data Factory to schedule incremental copy from Cosmos DB to Synapse every minute.

Answer

Use Azure Databricks with Spark Structured Streaming to read from Cosmos DB change feed and write to Synapse.

Question 15

A company stores sensitive customer data in Azure Blob Storage. They need to ensure that data at rest is encrypted using a customer-managed key stored in Azure Key Vault. Which of the following should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Storage Service Encryption with customer-managed keys in Azure Key Vault. Azure Storage Service Encryption (SSE) encrypts data at rest in Azure Blob Storage. When configured with customer-managed keys (CMK) stored in Azure Key Vault, the customer controls the encryption key lifecycle, including rotation and revocation, meeting the requirement for customer-managed key control. This is the only option that directly applies to Blob Storage data at rest with CMK support.

Answer

Azure Disk Encryption

Answer

Azure Storage Service Encryption with Microsoft-managed keys

Answer

Azure Information Protection