AZ-400 Timed Practice Test 3 — 10 Questions

Question 1

Your team uses a Git flow branching strategy with develop and release branches. You want to enforce that only release branches can be merged into main, and all merges into main require a successful deployment to a production-like environment. How should you implement this in Azure Pipelines?

10 minute time limit — choose an answer to begin.

Accepted Answer

YAML pipeline with environment approvals and branch filters on trigger. A YAML pipeline with environment approvals can require manual approval for deployment to a production-like environment, ensuring only successful deployments from a production-like environment allow merges. Branch filters on triggers can restrict pipeline execution to only release branches, preventing other branches from triggering the pipeline that leads to main. Option A is wrong because branch policies with required reviewers only enforce PR review requirements, not deployment or branch source restrictions. Option B is wrong because the 'Check for linked work items' status check ensures work items are linked but does not enforce branch restrictions or deployment validation. Option D is wrong because build validation runs on PR creation but does not enforce environment approvals or restrict the source branch to release branches only.

Answer

Branch policy with required reviewers for main

Answer

Required status check for 'Check for linked work items'

Answer

Build validation policy on main

Question 2

Your team uses GitHub Actions to build and deploy a Node.js application to Azure Functions. You need to implement a CI/CD pipeline that automatically deploys to a staging environment on every push to the main branch, and then promotes to production after a manual approval via GitHub Environments. The pipeline must also run unit tests and linting. You want to use the official Azure actions. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Create a single GitHub Actions workflow with multiple jobs. Use a job for build and test, then a job for deploy to staging, and a job for deploy to production with an environment that requires approval.. Correct answer is C. A single GitHub Actions workflow can have multiple jobs: build and test, deploy to staging, and deploy to production. The production deployment job should use a GitHub Environment configured with required reviewers, enabling manual approval. Option A is incorrect because two separate workflows make it harder to share build artifacts and do not inherently use environment-based approvals for staging vs production. Option B is incorrect because GitHub Issues are not used for manual approvals; approvals are configured via GitHub Environments. Option D is incorrect because it uses Azure Pipelines, not GitHub Actions, which violates the requirement to use official Azure actions in GitHub Actions.

Answer

Create two separate workflows: one for CI (build, test, deploy staging) and one for CD (deploy production) that triggers manually.

Answer

Use a single workflow with a step that deploys to staging and then to production, using a condition to require manual approval via GitHub Issues.

Answer

Use Azure Pipelines with a multi-stage YAML pipeline that includes a stage for staging and a stage for production with pre-deployment approvals.

Question 3

You are designing a release pipeline for a multi-tenant SaaS application that is deployed to Azure App Service. Each tenant has its own App Service instance. The pipeline must deploy a new version of the application to a staging slot for each tenant, run smoke tests, and then swap the staging slot to production. You need to ensure that if the smoke tests fail for any tenant, the swap is not performed for that tenant, while other tenants continue. Which release pipeline configuration should you use?

Accepted Answer

Create a release with multiple jobs (one per tenant) in the same stage, each deploying to a tenant's staging slot, running tests, and conditionally swapping. Set the 'Run this job' condition to 'Only when all previous jobs have succeeded' or use custom conditions to skip swap on failure.. It uses separate jobs per tenant within a single stage, each with its own deployment, smoke test, and conditional swap. By setting the 'Run this job' condition to 'Only when all previous jobs have succeeded' or a custom condition, you ensure that a failed smoke test for one tenant blocks only that tenant's swap, while other tenants' jobs proceed independently. This design aligns with Azure Pipelines' job-level isolation, where each job runs on its own agent and can have independent success/failure conditions.

Answer

Create a single stage with a 'foreach' loop over tenants, and if smoke tests fail, skip the swap using a condition.

Answer

Create a single job with parallel tasks for each tenant, and configure failure conditions to skip the swap.

Answer

Create a single stage with multiple deployment tasks, one per tenant, and use a 'continue on error' option on each task.

Question 4

Which THREE conditions must be met for you to use the 'Approvals' feature in Azure Pipelines to control deployments to a production environment? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

The approver must have the 'Approve pipeline permissions' permission for the environment.. The 'Approvals' feature in Azure Pipelines requires an environment to be defined in the pipeline. You must add an approval check to that environment, which can be done in either a classic release pipeline or a YAML pipeline that references the environment as a resource. Additionally, the approver(s) - whether individual users or groups - must have the 'Approve pipeline permissions' permission on that environment. Without an environment resource, the approval check cannot be configured; without the permission, approval requests cannot be validated.

Answer

The approver must be an individual user, not a group.

Answer

The approval must be configured in the release pipeline's pre-deployment conditions.

Question 5

Your organization uses GitHub and wants to implement a monorepo strategy for multiple related projects. Which approach best optimizes CI/CD pipeline performance by only building projects that have changed?

Accepted Answer

Use path filters in GitHub Actions workflows. GitHub Actions path filters (using `on.push.paths` or `on.pull_request.paths`) allow you to trigger workflows only when changes are made to specific directories or files. In a monorepo, this ensures that CI/CD pipelines run exclusively for the projects that have been modified, avoiding unnecessary builds and significantly improving performance.

Answer

Use a single workflow that builds all projects on every push

Answer

Use submodules to separate projects

Answer

Use workflow templates and composite actions

Question 6

Which THREE components are required to set up a self-hosted agent pool in Azure Pipelines?

Accepted Answer

The agent software installed on the target machine. The self-hosted agent requires the Azure Pipelines agent software to be installed on the target machine. This software, which includes the agent listener and worker processes, is what registers the machine with the agent pool and executes pipeline jobs. Without the agent software, the machine cannot communicate with Azure Pipelines or run any tasks.

Answer

A deployment group target

Answer

Azure VM extension for Azure Pipelines Agent

Question 7

Your team uses Azure Repos for source control. You need to enforce that all builds must pass unit tests before code can be merged into the main branch. Which branch policy should you configure?

Accepted Answer

Add a build validation policy that triggers the CI pipeline and requires it to succeed.. Azure Repos branch policies allow you to add a build validation policy that triggers a CI pipeline (e.g., a YAML or classic build pipeline) and requires it to succeed before a pull request can be completed. This ensures that all code merged into the main branch has passed unit tests, enforcing quality gates directly in the PR workflow.

Answer

Require a linked work item.

Answer

Require a minimum number of reviewers.

Answer

Require comment resolution.

Question 8

Your release pipeline deploys a web app to Azure App Service. You need to implement safe deployment practices that minimize downtime and enable quick rollback. Which THREE strategies should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Deploy to a staging slot first, validate, then swap.. Deploying to a staging slot first allows you to validate the application in a production-like environment without affecting live traffic. Once validated, swapping the staging and production slots ensures zero-downtime deployment by instantly routing all traffic to the validated version. This is a core safe deployment practice for Azure App Service.

Answer

Use rolling deployment with manual step to approve each instance.

Answer

Deploy directly to the production slot.

Question 9

Which TWO approaches can you use to enforce consistent commit message conventions across your GitHub repositories?

Accepted Answer

Use a GitHub Action to validate commit messages on push. GitHub Actions can be configured with a workflow that triggers on `push` events to validate commit messages against a regex pattern, rejecting non-conforming commits. Option D is correct because repository rulesets (or branch protection rules) allow you to define required commit message patterns that must match before a push is accepted, enforced server-side. Both approaches enforce conventions consistently across all contributors.

Answer

Add a .gitattributes file

Answer

Set the default branch to main

Answer

Set up an issue template

Question 10

You need to implement a build retention policy that automatically deletes old builds after 30 days, but keeps the latest 5 builds regardless of age. Which configuration should you use?

Accepted Answer

Set 'Days to keep builds' to 30 and 'Minimum number of builds to keep' to 5. In Azure Pipelines, the 'Days to keep builds' and 'Minimum number of builds to keep' settings work together to enforce a retention policy that deletes builds older than 30 days while ensuring that at least the latest 5 builds are retained, even if they exceed the age limit. This configuration directly matches the requirement to delete old builds after 30 days but keep the latest 5 builds regardless of age.

Answer

Set 'Number of days to keep runs' to 30 and 'Number of runs to keep' to 5

Answer

Set 'Maximum retention policy' to 30 days and 'Number of builds to retain' to 5

Answer

Set 'Number of days to keep artifacts' to 30 and 'Number of artifacts to keep' to 5