AZ-900 Practice Test 16 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company hosts a public-facing web application on Azure Virtual Machines in two separate Azure regions for disaster recovery. The application's domain is managed by a third-party registrar. The company needs a solution that can route user traffic to the nearest healthy regional endpoint based on geographic location and provides automatic failover if an entire region becomes unavailable. The solution should not inspect or modify the HTTP traffic (no SSL termination or web application firewall). 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 nearest healthy regional endpoint based on geographic location or latency. It supports automatic failover by monitoring endpoint health and redirecting traffic if an entire region becomes unavailable, and it operates at the DNS level without inspecting or modifying HTTP traffic, so no SSL termination or web application firewall is involved.

Answer

Azure Load Balancer

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Azure Application Gateway

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Azure Front Door

Question 2

A company is deploying two Azure virtual machines that host a critical line-of-business application. The application is stateful and requires that the VMs are located in the same datacenter but on separate physical hardware to protect against a rack-level failure. Additionally, the VMs must be updated during Azure platform maintenance in a staggered manner to ensure the application remains available. Which Azure feature should the company configure for these VMs?

Accepted Answer

Azure Availability Set. Azure Availability Set ensures that VMs are placed in the same datacenter (same fault domain) but on separate physical hardware (different fault domains) to protect against rack-level failures. It also distributes VMs across update domains so that during Azure platform maintenance, only one update domain is rebooted at a time, ensuring the application remains available in a staggered manner.

Answer

Azure Availability Zones

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Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set with autoscale

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Azure Application Gateway

Question 3

A company is designing a multi-cloud strategy to avoid dependency on a single provider. They need the ability to move workloads between different cloud providers or back to an on-premises environment with minimal rework. Which cloud characteristic is most essential for this goal?

Accepted Answer

Portability. Portability is the cloud characteristic that enables workloads, data, and applications to be moved across different cloud providers or between cloud and on-premises environments with minimal rework. This is achieved through the use of standardized formats, APIs, and containerization technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes, which abstract underlying infrastructure dependencies. For a multi-cloud strategy aimed at avoiding vendor lock-in, portability is the essential enabler.

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Elasticity

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Scalability

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Fault tolerance

Question 4

What is disaster recovery in the context of cloud computing?

Accepted Answer

Restoring systems and data after a catastrophic event with minimal downtime. Disaster recovery (DR) in cloud computing focuses on restoring systems, applications, and data after a catastrophic event (e.g., natural disaster, cyberattack) to meet Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) targets. Azure Site Recovery orchestrates replication, failover, and failback of workloads between primary and secondary regions, ensuring minimal downtime and data loss. This is distinct from high availability, which prevents outages, or auto-scaling, which handles demand fluctuations.

Answer

Preventing any service outages from occurring

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Automatically scaling resources when demand increases

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Distributing traffic across multiple servers for performance

Question 5

A company is evaluating cloud providers and needs to ensure that their data remains within a specific geographic boundary due to data sovereignty laws. Which cloud concept is most directly related to this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Region. Azure regions are discrete geographic locations containing one or more datacenters that provide the physical boundary for data residency. By deploying resources within a specific region (e.g., 'West Europe'), an organization ensures that data is stored and processed within that geographic boundary, directly addressing data sovereignty laws. Other concepts like Availability Zones or Latency do not enforce geographic data residency.

Answer

Availability Zone

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Latency

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Compliance

Question 6

A company is evaluating moving its on-premises datacenter to Azure. The CFO points out that Microsoft purchases servers, networking equipment, and cooling systems in enormous quantities, enabling them to negotiate lower prices from hardware vendors. The company expects to benefit from these lower hardware costs as it migrates. Which cloud computing benefit does this scenario primarily describe?

Accepted Answer

Economies of scale. The scenario describes how Microsoft's massive purchasing power reduces per-unit costs for hardware like servers and cooling systems, which is the definition of economies of scale. This benefit is passed to customers through lower Azure service prices, not through any operational or architectural feature of the cloud itself.

Answer

Elasticity

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High availability

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Measured service

Question 7

A company is evaluating moving their workloads to Azure. They currently operate a small on-premises data center. Their IT manager notes that by using Azure, they will benefit from the fact that Microsoft operates many large data centers globally, which allows them to achieve lower network bandwidth costs and hardware procurement discounts. The company will not have to negotiate separate contracts for power and cooling. Which cloud computing concept does this benefit best illustrate?

Accepted Answer

Economies of scale. The scenario describes how Microsoft's global scale of operations—operating many large data centers—enables lower network bandwidth costs and hardware procurement discounts, and eliminates the need for separate power and cooling contracts. This directly illustrates economies of scale, where the average cost per unit decreases as the scale of operations increases, allowing Microsoft to pass these savings to customers. It is not about technical capabilities like availability, elasticity, or agility, but about the cost advantage derived from massive infrastructure investment.

Answer

High availability

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Elasticity

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Agility

Question 8

Which Azure service enables you to securely connect remote users to Azure and on-premises resources using an SSL-based VPN?

Accepted Answer

Azure VPN Gateway. Azure VPN Gateway supports site-to-site, point-to-site, and VNet-to-VNet connections. Point-to-site (P2S) VPN uses SSTP (Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol) or IKEv2 VPN, and when configured with SSTP, it provides an SSL-based VPN tunnel (TCP port 443) that allows remote users to securely connect to Azure and on-premises resources through the gateway.

Answer

Azure ExpressRoute

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Azure Bastion

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Azure Application Gateway

Question 9

A company runs a workload that requires predictable performance and dedicated physical servers. They also need to ensure no other tenant uses the same hardware. Which cloud deployment model meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Private. A private cloud deployment model is correct because it provides dedicated physical servers and ensures that no other tenant shares the same hardware. In a private cloud, the infrastructure is provisioned for exclusive use by a single organization, offering predictable performance and complete isolation from other tenants. This model can be hosted on-premises or by a third-party provider, but the key requirement of dedicated hardware is met.

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Public

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Hybrid

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Community

Question 10

A company is migrating its on-premises batch processing jobs to Azure. The jobs are triggered by file uploads to an on-premises file share. After migration, the files will be uploaded to Azure Blob Storage. The company wants a solution where code runs automatically whenever a new blob is created, with no requirement to manage servers or containers. The code must process the blob and then terminate. Compute resources should be used only when there is a file to process. Which Azure compute service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Functions. Azure Functions is the correct choice because it provides a serverless compute service that can be triggered automatically by Azure Blob Storage events (e.g., new blob creation). The code runs only when a blob is uploaded, processes it, and then terminates, ensuring zero compute cost when idle. No servers or containers need to be managed, aligning perfectly with the requirement for event-driven, ephemeral execution.

Answer

Azure App Service

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Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

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Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Question 11

A company is migrating its on-premises workloads to Azure. Previously, they purchased servers every three years as a large capital investment. Now, they pay a monthly subscription for virtual machines based on actual usage, with no long-term commitment. Which type of cloud expenditure model does this represent?

Accepted Answer

Capital expenditure (CapEx) to operational expenditure (OpEx). This scenario describes a shift from Capital Expenditure (CapEx), where the company made large upfront investments in hardware every three years, to Operational Expenditure (OpEx), where they pay a monthly subscription for Azure virtual machines based on actual usage with no long-term commitment. This is a core benefit of cloud computing, converting fixed, upfront costs into variable, ongoing expenses that align with consumption.

Answer

Operational expenditure (OpEx) to capital expenditure (CapEx)

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Pay-as-you-go to reserved

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Consumption-based to fixed cost

Question 12

Which Azure identity service provides single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) for cloud and on-premises applications?

Accepted Answer

Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is Microsoft's cloud-based identity and access management service that provides single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) for both cloud and on-premises applications. It enables users to sign in once and access multiple resources, while MFA adds an extra layer of security by requiring additional verification methods like a phone call or app notification.

Answer

Azure AD Domain Services

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Azure Key Vault

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Azure Information Protection

Question 13

A company is moving to the cloud to achieve economies of scale. Which of the following best describes how cloud computing enables economies of scale?

Accepted Answer

Cloud providers purchase large quantities of hardware, reducing per-unit costs, which are passed to customers.. Economies of scale in cloud computing are achieved because providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud purchase hardware (servers, networking gear, storage) in massive volumes, negotiating lower per-unit costs from vendors. These savings are passed to customers via lower pay-as-you-go prices, making cloud services cheaper than what an individual company would pay for equivalent on-premises infrastructure.

Answer

Customers can reserve resources in advance for a discount.

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Multiple customers share the same physical hardware, reducing security.

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Customers only pay for resources they use, reducing waste.

Question 14

A company manages multiple Azure subscriptions for development, testing, and production environments. The governance team needs to ensure that every new subscription automatically includes a consistent baseline consisting of Azure Policy definitions, role assignments, and a predefined resource group structure. The team wants to package these governance components into a single deployable artifact that can be applied to any subscription with minimal manual effort. Which Azure feature should the team use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Blueprints. Azure Blueprints is the correct choice because it is specifically designed to orchestrate the deployment of a consistent baseline—including Azure Policy definitions, role assignments, and resource groups—as a single, versioned, and repeatable artifact. Unlike other tools, Blueprints packages these governance components together and can be applied to any subscription with minimal manual effort, ensuring every new subscription automatically inherits the defined baseline.

Answer

Azure Policy

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Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates

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Azure Management Groups

Question 15

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?

Accepted Answer

Azure App Service and Azure SQL Database. Azure App Service provides built-in autoscaling based on metrics like CPU usage, making it ideal for the web tier that needs to scale out. Azure SQL Database offers high-performance, low-latency storage for transactional data with features like automatic indexing and in-memory OLTP, meeting the database tier's requirements.

Answer

Azure Functions and Azure Cosmos DB

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Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets and Azure Files

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Azure Kubernetes Service and Blob Storage