AZ-900 Practice Test 3 — 25 Questions

Question 1

Which Azure service provides managed hosting for Hadoop ecosystems including HDFS, Hive, HBase, and Spark?

Accepted Answer

Azure HDInsight. Azure HDInsight is the correct answer because it is a fully managed, open-source analytics service specifically designed for running popular Hadoop ecosystems such as HDFS, Hive, HBase, and Spark on Azure. It provides pre-configured clusters with these components, allowing you to process large-scale data workloads without manual infrastructure management.

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Azure Databricks

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Azure Synapse Analytics

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Azure Data Factory

Question 2

A company hosts a public-facing e-commerce website on Azure virtual machines deployed in two Azure regions (East US and West Europe). The company wants to automatically route users to the region that provides the lowest network latency based on their geographic location. The solution must use DNS-based traffic routing and does not require terminating HTTP traffic at the load balancer. Which Azure service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Traffic Manager. Azure Traffic Manager is a DNS-based traffic load balancer that routes incoming DNS requests to the most appropriate endpoint based on the traffic-routing method selected. The 'Performance' routing method directs users to the region with the lowest network latency, and because it operates at the DNS level, it does not terminate HTTP traffic, meeting all stated requirements.

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Azure Application Gateway

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Azure Front Door

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Azure Load Balancer

Question 3

A company has a critical Azure resource group that contains all production virtual machines and databases. The IT security administrator wants to ensure that no user, including members of the 'Owner' role, can accidentally or intentionally delete this resource group. The solution must not prevent modification of resources inside the resource group. The administrator needs to apply a governance control at the resource group level. What should the administrator do?

Accepted Answer

Apply a 'CanNotDelete' lock on the resource group.. Applying a 'CanNotDelete' lock at the resource group level prevents any user, including those with the Owner role, from deleting the resource group while still allowing modifications (e.g., adding or updating resources) inside it. This lock overrides all RBAC permissions for delete operations, making it the appropriate governance control for this requirement.

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Apply a 'ReadOnly' lock on the resource group.

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Assign a custom RBAC role that denies delete actions at the resource group scope.

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Move the resource group to a separate subscription with billing separation.

Question 4

A company has five Azure subscriptions, each managed by a different department. The IT governance team needs to enforce a single set of compliance policies (e.g., allowed VM SKUs) and assign a specific role to a central security team across all subscriptions. The goal is to minimize administrative overhead. Which Azure component should the governance team use as the scope for these assignments?

Accepted Answer

Place all subscriptions under a single management group and assign policies and roles at that management group level.. Management groups provide a hierarchical scope above subscriptions, enabling centralized governance. By placing all five subscriptions under a single management group, the IT governance team can assign Azure Policy definitions (e.g., allowed VM SKUs) and role-based access control (RBAC) roles (e.g., for the security team) once at that management group level. This inheritance automatically applies the policies and roles to all child subscriptions, minimizing administrative overhead compared to per-subscription or per-resource-group assignments.

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Assign the policies and role at each subscription level individually.

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Create a resource group in each subscription and assign policies and roles at the resource group level.

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Create an Azure Blueprint definition and apply it to each subscription separately.

Question 5

A company has a single Azure subscription that contains resource groups for several business units. The company's compliance team wants to enforce a rule: no virtual network (VNet) can be deployed in any resource group unless the VNet is in a specific allowed region (West Europe). The rule must also block the creation of VNets in disallowed regions, but the team must be able to selectively exempt certain resource groups (e.g., for disaster recovery testing) without altering the underlying rule definition. Which Azure feature should the compliance team implement?

Accepted Answer

Azure Policy with the 'Deny' effect assigned to the subscription, and create policy exemptions for the resource groups that need to deploy VNets in other regions.. Azure Policy with the 'Deny' effect can enforce a rule at the subscription scope that blocks VNet creation in disallowed regions. Policy exemptions allow specific resource groups to be excluded from the policy without modifying the original rule definition, meeting the compliance team's requirement for selective exemption.

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Azure role-based access control (RBAC) by creating a custom role that restricts the 'Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks/write' action to only the West Europe region, and assign that role to all users.

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A resource lock on each resource group that prevents the creation of any resource in disallowed regions.

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Azure Blueprints by defining a blueprint that only includes VNets in West Europe and assigning it to all resource groups.

Question 6

A company has a root management group that contains all Azure subscriptions. A centralized governance team needs to create and assign Azure Policy definitions and set initiatives that apply to all subscriptions. Which built-in role should be assigned to the governance team at the root management group scope to grant the minimum required permissions?

Accepted Answer

Policy Contributor. The Policy Contributor built-in role grants the minimum required permissions to create and assign Azure Policy definitions and initiatives, including the ability to read policy assignments and manage policy resources, without granting full write access to all resources. Assigning this role at the root management group scope ensures the governance team can apply policies across all subscriptions while adhering to the principle of least privilege.

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Owner

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Contributor

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Security Admin

Question 7

A multinational company has a strict data residency requirement: all Azure virtual machines must be deployed only in the East US or West Europe Azure regions. The IT governance team wants to enforce this rule automatically so that any attempt to create a virtual machine in any other region is blocked immediately at the time of deployment. Users must receive a clear error message if they try to create a VM in a disallowed region. Which Azure feature should the governance team configure to meet this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Configure an Azure Policy with the Deny effect assigned to the subscription scope.. Azure Policy with the Deny effect is the correct choice because it enforces organizational rules by evaluating resource properties during deployment and blocking any non-compliant request. In this scenario, a policy can be defined to deny virtual machine creation in any region other than East US or West Europe, and the Deny effect ensures the deployment fails with a clear error message, meeting the real-time enforcement requirement.

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Create a resource lock on the subscription to prevent all resource creation.

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Assign an Azure RBAC role that denies create permissions for VMs in disallowed regions.

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Set up a budget alert in Cost Management to notify when a VM is created in a disallowed region.

Question 8

A company operates a hybrid IT environment with virtual machines running on-premises and in Amazon Web Services (AWS). The company also has a growing number of resources in Microsoft Azure. To simplify management, the company wants to use a single Azure service to apply Azure Policy definitions and enable unified inventory and tagging across all virtual machines, regardless of their location. Which Azure service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Arc. Azure Arc extends Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and Azure Policy to non-Azure environments, including on-premises and AWS virtual machines. By installing the Azure Connected Machine agent on each VM, the company can apply Azure Policy definitions and use unified inventory and tagging across all VMs from a single Azure control plane.

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Azure Resource Manager

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Azure Blueprints

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Azure Management Groups

Question 9

A hospital is migrating patient data to the cloud. The hospital is responsible for managing who can access the data and for encrypting the data before upload. The cloud provider is responsible for securing the physical datacenters, network infrastructure, and hypervisor. This division of security responsibilities is described by which model?

Accepted Answer

Shared responsibility model. The shared responsibility model defines the division of security obligations between the cloud provider and the customer. In this scenario, the hospital (customer) is responsible for identity and access management (IAM) and data encryption at rest and in transit, while the cloud provider secures the physical datacenter, network infrastructure, and hypervisor. This clear separation of duties is the core of the shared responsibility model, which varies by service model (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).

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Defense in depth

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Principle of least privilege

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Zero trust model

Question 10

A company has multiple on-premises sites that need to connect to Azure over high-throughput, low-latency private connections. They want a dedicated private connection that does not traverse the internet. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure ExpressRoute. Azure ExpressRoute provides a dedicated private connection from on-premises sites to Azure that does not traverse the public internet, ensuring high throughput and low latency. It uses a Layer 3 VPN or direct peering via a connectivity provider, bypassing internet-based routing entirely. This makes it ideal for scenarios requiring consistent performance and security for hybrid connectivity.

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Azure VPN Gateway

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Azure Virtual WAN

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Azure Peering Service

Question 11

A company deploys a critical application across two Azure regions for disaster recovery. They want to automatically failover traffic to the secondary region if the primary becomes unavailable. They also want to improve performance by routing users to the closest region. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Traffic Manager. Azure Traffic Manager is a DNS-based traffic load balancer that enables you to distribute traffic optimally to services across global Azure regions. It supports the 'Priority' routing method for automatic failover to a secondary region when the primary is unavailable, and the 'Performance' routing method to direct users to the closest region for improved latency. This combination directly meets the stated requirements for disaster recovery failover and performance-based routing.

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Azure Load Balancer

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Azure Application Gateway

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Azure VPN Gateway

Question 12

A company has 15 Azure subscriptions organized under multiple management groups. The security team has defined a standard set of 8 Azure Policy definitions that must be applied to every subscription. These definitions enforce required tags, deny creation of public IPs, require encryption for storage accounts, and restrict VM SKUs. The team wants to assign these policies as a single entity to simplify management and ensure consistent compliance. What should the team create and assign?

Accepted Answer

An Azure Policy initiative (policy set definition) containing the policy definitions. An Azure Policy initiative (policy set definition) allows grouping multiple individual policy definitions into a single set, which can then be assigned as one entity. This simplifies management and ensures consistent compliance across all subscriptions, as the security team requires. Assigning the initiative at the root management group applies it to all 15 subscriptions under the management groups.

Answer

An Azure Blueprint containing the policy definitions

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An Azure Policy assignment for each individual definition at the root management group

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An Azure Resource Manager template that deploys the policy definitions

Question 13

A company's IT manager is evaluating a public cloud provider. The provider's data center contains powerful physical servers that host virtual machines from thousands of different organizations. The manager is concerned about security, but the provider assures that each organization's VMs are logically isolated and cannot access each other's data, even though they share the same hardware. Which essential characteristic of cloud computing does this scenario best describe?

Accepted Answer

Resource pooling. The scenario describes resource pooling because the provider's physical servers host VMs from multiple organizations, and logical isolation ensures each tenant's data remains separate. Resource pooling is the cloud characteristic where computing resources (e.g., storage, processing, memory) are aggregated to serve multiple customers using a multi-tenant model, with physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to demand. The provider's assurance of logical isolation (e.g., via hypervisor-level segmentation or VLANs) is a direct implementation of resource pooling's security boundary.

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Rapid elasticity

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Measured service

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Broad network access

Question 14

Which Azure storage redundancy option replicates data synchronously across three availability zones within a single region?

Accepted Answer

Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS). Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS) is the correct answer because it synchronously replicates data across three Azure availability zones within a single region, ensuring high durability and availability even if an entire zone fails. This meets the exact requirement of the question: synchronous replication across multiple zones in one region.

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Locally Redundant Storage (LRS)

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Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS)

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Geo-Zone-Redundant Storage (GZRS)

Question 15

An organization needs to ensure all VMs in Azure use approved VM sizes only. Which Azure feature enforces this?

Accepted Answer

Azure Policy with allowed VM SKU policy. Azure Policy with the 'Allowed virtual machine SKUs' built-in policy definition enforces which VM sizes can be deployed in a subscription or resource group. When assigned, this policy evaluates all VM creation or update requests and denies any that use a SKU not included in the allowed list, ensuring compliance with organizational standards.

Answer

Azure RBAC

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Azure Resource Manager locks

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Azure Cost Management budgets

Question 16

A company wants to run a containerized microservices application on Azure. The application requires automatic scaling, service discovery, and rolling updates without manual intervention. They prefer not to manage the underlying virtual machines. Which Azure compute service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is the correct choice because it provides a fully managed Kubernetes orchestration platform that handles automatic scaling (via Horizontal Pod Autoscaler), service discovery (via Kubernetes DNS and Services), and rolling updates (via Deployment strategies) without requiring you to manage the underlying virtual machines. AKS abstracts the control plane and node management, allowing you to focus on deploying and managing containerized microservices.

Answer

Azure Container Instances

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Azure App Service

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Azure Functions

Question 17

A company runs a critical ERP system on-premises and plans to extend the application to Azure IaaS VMs for burst capacity. The network team requires a dedicated, private connection between the on-premises data center and Azure that does not traverse the public internet. The connection must offer consistent latency, high bandwidth options up to 10 Gbps, and a financially backed SLA for availability. Which Azure service should the team provision to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Azure ExpressRoute. Azure ExpressRoute provides a dedicated, private connection from on-premises to Azure that bypasses the public internet, ensuring consistent latency and high bandwidth up to 10 Gbps. It also offers a financially backed SLA for availability, making it the ideal choice for extending a critical ERP system for burst capacity with predictable performance.

Answer

Azure VPN Gateway (site-to-site)

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Azure Front Door

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Azure Bastion

Question 18

A company has multiple Azure subscriptions used by different departments. The security team wants to enforce a requirement that all Azure Storage accounts in every subscription must be encrypted at rest using customer-managed keys (CMK). The solution must automatically evaluate existing and new storage accounts for compliance, and it must be able to automatically remediate non-compliant resources by enabling CMK encryption. The team wants to use a single, centralized Azure feature that can be assigned once and apply to all subscriptions. Which Azure feature should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Policy. Azure Policy is the correct choice because it can enforce organizational standards and assess compliance across all Azure subscriptions from a single assignment. By using a built-in or custom policy definition that requires storage accounts to use customer-managed keys (CMK) for encryption at rest, Azure Policy can automatically evaluate both existing and new storage accounts. With the 'DeployIfNotExists' effect, it can also trigger remediation tasks to enable CMK encryption on non-compliant resources without manual intervention.

Answer

Azure Blueprints

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Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

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Azure Security Center (Microsoft Defender for Cloud)

Question 19

A global company is designing a disaster recovery solution for a critical application. They plan to deploy the application to two Azure regions. The company wants to minimize the risk of both regions failing simultaneously due to a major platform update or a widespread natural disaster. Which Azure feature provides a specific pairing of regions to meet this goal?

Accepted Answer

Azure region pairs. Azure region pairs are designed to ensure that two paired regions are updated sequentially during platform maintenance, reducing the risk of simultaneous failure. They are also physically separated by at least 300 miles to minimize the impact of natural disasters. This meets the company's goal of minimizing simultaneous failure risk from both a major platform update and a widespread natural disaster.

Answer

Availability Zones within a single region

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Azure Traffic Manager with geographic routing

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Azure Site Recovery replication between any two regions of your choice

Question 20

A company has a policy that all Azure resources must have a tag named 'CostCenter'. The governance team wants to automatically add the tag with a default value 'IT' to any new resource that is created without it. The team wants the tag to be applied during resource creation, not just report non-compliance. The solution must also support remediation for existing non-compliant resources if needed later. Which Azure Policy effect should the team use in their policy definition?

Accepted Answer

Modify. The Modify effect is correct because it can automatically add or change tags on resources during creation or update, enforcing compliance in real-time. Unlike Append, Modify supports both creation and remediation of existing resources, and unlike DeployIfNotExists, it directly alters the resource properties without deploying a separate remediation task.

Answer

Append

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DeployIfNotExists

Answer

Audit