Microsoft · Free Practice Questions · Last reviewed May 2026
18 real exam-style questions organised by domain, each with the correct answer highlighted and a plain-English explanation of why it's right — and why the others are wrong.
A startup wants to deploy a web application that experiences unpredictable traffic spikes. They need to scale resources automatically without manual intervention. Which benefit of cloud computing directly addresses this requirement?
High availability
Elasticity
Elasticity enables automatic scaling of resources to match varying demand, making it the correct choice.
Disaster recovery
Fault tolerance
A retail company runs its e-commerce platform on a public cloud. During a major sale event, they want to ensure that the application remains accessible even if an entire data center fails. Which cloud computing concept does this describe?
Scalability
Elasticity
High availability
High availability is designed to minimize downtime and keep services running during component failures.
Disaster recovery
A financial services company is evaluating a public cloud provider. They are concerned about the shared responsibility model for security. The company must ensure that their customer data is encrypted at rest and in transit. Under the shared responsibility model, which security control is the cloud provider typically responsible for?
Encrypting customer data at rest
Patching virtual machines
Physical network security
The cloud provider is responsible for the security of the physical network, including firewalls and infrastructure against physical threats.
Managing customer access policies
A multinational corporation wants to reduce its carbon footprint by shifting workloads to the cloud. They want to understand how using a cloud provider's shared infrastructure contributes to sustainability. Which cloud computing concept is most directly related to this environmental benefit?
Broad network access
Resource pooling
Resource pooling enables sharing of resources among multiple customers, improving utilization and reducing waste.
On-demand self-service
Rapid elasticity
A small business wants to move its accounting software to the cloud to avoid purchasing and maintaining physical servers. Which cloud service model would provide the accounting application as a ready-to-use service over the internet?
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Software as a Service (SaaS)
SaaS delivers ready-to-use software applications over the internet, such as accounting software.
Function as a Service (FaaS)
A hospital is subject to strict data residency laws that require patient data to remain within the country's borders. They are considering using a public cloud provider. Which cloud deployment model would best meet this compliance requirement?
Public cloud
Private cloud
A private cloud is dedicated to a single organization, providing maximum control over data location and compliance.
Hybrid cloud
Community cloud
Want more Describe cloud concepts practice?
Practice this domainA company is planning to migrate its on-premises applications to Azure. They have a mix of monolithic and microservices-based applications. Which Azure compute service should they choose for a microservices architecture that requires independent scaling and deployment of components?
Azure Functions
Azure App Service
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
AKS provides container orchestration, enabling independent scaling, deployment, and management of microservices.
Azure Virtual Machines
A solutions architect is designing a storage solution for a large media company. The company needs to store video files that are accessed infrequently but must be retained for several years for compliance. Which two Azure storage options meet these requirements? (Select two.)
Blob Storage - Hot tier
Blob Storage - Cool tier
Cool tier is for infrequently accessed data with a lower storage cost, suitable for videos accessed occasionally.
Blob Storage - Archive tier
Archive tier is the lowest-cost option for data that is rarely accessed and requires long-term retention, perfect for compliance.
Azure Files - Premium tier
A developer is building a serverless application that requires integration with an on-premises SQL Server database for real-time data processing. The on-premises network is connected to Azure via a site-to-site VPN. Which Azure service would allow the function to securely access the on-premises database without exposing it to the public internet?
Azure Functions in Consumption plan
Azure Functions in Premium plan with VNet integration
Premium plan allows VNet integration, enabling secure access to on-premises resources over the VPN.
Azure SQL Database
Hybrid Connections
A company is designing a multi-tier application on Azure. The web tier needs to scale out based on CPU usage, while the database tier requires high-performance storage for transactional data. Which combination of Azure services should they choose?
Azure Functions and Azure Cosmos DB
Azure App Service and Azure SQL Database
App Service provides autoscaling for web applications, and Azure SQL Database offers high-performance transactional storage with built-in scaling.
Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets and Azure Files
Azure Kubernetes Service and Blob Storage
A company is deploying a mission-critical application that must remain available even if a physical Azure datacenter within a region fails. The application will run on multiple virtual machines. Which Azure feature should they use to protect against this specific failure scenario?
Availability Zones
Availability Zones are physically separate locations within an Azure region that provide redundancy at the datacenter level.
Availability Sets
Virtual Machine Scale Sets
Azure Load Balancer
A company deploys a web application on Azure App Service. During a marketing campaign, they expect traffic to double. The app uses a Standard tier App Service plan. They want to ensure that the additional load is handled without performance degradation while keeping costs minimal. Which action should they take?
Scale out the App Service plan by increasing the instance count.
Scaling out adds more VM instances to handle increased load, is cost-effective, and can be done manually or via autoscale.
Scale up the App Service plan to a Premium tier for more resources.
Enable autoscale on the existing plan to let Azure handle scaling automatically.
Deploy Azure CDN to cache static content.
Want more Describe Azure architecture and services practice?
Practice this domainA company has multiple Azure subscriptions for different departments. They want to enforce consistent policies across all subscriptions regarding allowed virtual machine sizes and require compliance reporting. Which Azure feature should they use?
Azure Blueprints
Azure Resource Manager templates
Azure Policy
Azure Policy enforces rules on resources across subscriptions and provides compliance dashboards and reports.
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
A company uses Azure and wants to ensure that their IT team receives alerts when virtual machines are deallocated unexpectedly. Which Azure service should they use to create a rule that triggers an action when a VM is deallocated?
Azure Service Health
Azure Monitor
Azure Monitor with Activity Log alerts can notify you when VMs are deallocated.
Azure Advisor
Azure Policy
A company needs to track and optimize costs across multiple Azure subscriptions. They want to allocate budgets and receive notifications when spending exceeds forecasted amounts. Which Azure tool should they use?
Azure Advisor
Azure Cost Management
Cost Management allows you to create budgets, monitor spending, and configure alerts when costs exceed thresholds.
Azure Policy
Azure Budgets
A global company wants to organize its Azure resources by department and project. They need to enforce cost allocation and apply governance policies consistently across all subscriptions. Which two Azure features should they use together? (Select two.)
Resource groups
Management groups
Management groups enable hierarchical organization of subscriptions for applying governance and policies.
Tags
Tags are key-value pairs that can categorize resources for cost allocation and reporting across departments.
Azure Policies
A company wants to ensure that all new Azure resources in a subscription are automatically tagged with a 'Department' tag. Which Azure service should they use to enforce this requirement?
Azure Policy
Azure Policy can enforce tags on resources by using built-in or custom policies that audit or require tags.
Azure Blueprints
Azure RBAC
Azure Resource Lock
A company has multiple Azure subscriptions for different departments. They want to receive budget alerts when spending in any subscription exceeds 80% of the allocated amount. Which Azure feature enables them to set up these alerts?
Azure Cost Management + Billing budgets
Budgets in Azure Cost Management allow you to set spending limits and configure alerts when thresholds are exceeded.
Azure Advisor
Azure Monitor
Azure Policy
Want more Describe Azure management and governance practice?
Practice this domainThe AZ-900 exam has up to 60 questions and must be completed in 60 minutes. The passing score is 700/1000.
The AZ-900 exam uses multiple-choice, multiple-select, drag-and-drop, and exhibit-based questions. Exhibit questions show CLI output, network diagrams, or routing tables and ask you to interpret them — exactly the format Courseiva uses.
The exam covers 3 domains: Describe cloud concepts, Describe Azure architecture and services, Describe Azure management and governance. Questions are weighted by domain — higher-weight domains appear more on your actual exam.
No. These are original exam-style practice questions written against the official Microsoft AZ-900 exam objectives. They are not copied from the real exam. Courseiva focuses on genuine understanding, not memorisation of braindumps.
Courseiva tracks your accuracy per domain and routes you toward weak areas automatically. Free, no account required.