AZ-900 Practice Test 25 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A development team frequently needs to create and tear down test environments. In their on-premises datacenter, they must submit a ticket to the IT operations team, which often takes several days to provision the required servers. After migrating to Azure, developers can now create virtual machines, databases, and other resources directly through the Azure portal or using PowerShell scripts, without any interaction from the IT operations team. This ability to provision cloud resources directly is a direct example of which fundamental characteristic of cloud computing?

Accepted Answer

On-demand self-service. Option C is correct because the scenario describes developers provisioning virtual machines, databases, and other resources directly through the Azure portal or PowerShell scripts without needing to interact with the IT operations team. This is the definition of on-demand self-service, a core characteristic of cloud computing defined by NIST (SP 800-145) as a consumer being able to unilaterally provision computing capabilities without requiring human interaction with each service provider.

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Resource pooling

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Measured service

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Rapid elasticity

Question 2

A company wants to move their on-premises infrastructure to the cloud to avoid the large upfront cost of purchasing new servers every three years. In the cloud, they will pay only for the server capacity they use, with no long-term commitment. This shift from upfront investment to variable expense is an example of which cloud benefit?

Accepted Answer

Consumption-based pricing. Consumption-based pricing is a cloud model where customers pay only for the resources they actually use (e.g., compute hours, storage GBs) with no upfront costs or long-term commitments. This directly matches the scenario of avoiding large upfront server purchases and paying only for capacity used, shifting from a capital expenditure (CapEx) to an operational expenditure (OpEx) model.

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Economies of scale

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Capacity planning

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Reserved capacity

Question 3

A company wants to migrate an on-premises application to Azure. The application requires consistently high disk throughput for database files. They plan to use Azure virtual machines with managed disks. Which disk type should they choose to get the highest possible IOPS and throughput at a premium cost?

Accepted Answer

Ultra Disk. Ultra Disk (Option C) is correct because it provides the highest IOPS and throughput of any Azure managed disk type, with sub-millisecond latency, making it ideal for I/O-intensive workloads like database files. It is designed for premium cost scenarios where maximum performance is required, offering configurable IOPS and throughput independent of disk size.

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Standard SSD

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Premium SSD v2

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Standard HDD

Question 4

A manufacturing company traditionally purchased and maintained its own servers, paying a large upfront capital expense (CapEx) for hardware that was expected to last five years. After migrating its workloads to Azure virtual machines, the company now receives a monthly invoice that reflects only the compute and storage resources actually consumed during that month. There are no upfront payments. This change in cost structure best illustrates which benefit of cloud computing?

Accepted Answer

Consumption-based pricing model. The scenario describes a shift from a large upfront capital expenditure (CapEx) for hardware to a monthly invoice based on actual compute and storage consumption. This directly illustrates the consumption-based pricing model, where you pay only for the resources you use (e.g., VM hours, storage GB-months) with no upfront costs. This is a core financial benefit of cloud computing, enabling operational expenditure (OpEx) instead of CapEx.

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Scalability to handle variable demand

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High availability through geographic redundancy

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Resource pooling through multi-tenancy

Question 5

A global e-commerce company has deployed its web application in two Azure regions: West US and East US. The company wants to automatically route end users to the region that provides the lowest latency, and if an entire region becomes unavailable, gracefully redirect all traffic to the remaining healthy region. 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 endpoint with the lowest latency based on the user's geographic location. It also supports automatic failover: if an entire region becomes unavailable, Traffic Manager detects the endpoint health probe failure and redirects all traffic to the remaining healthy region, meeting the company's requirements.

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Azure Load Balancer

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Azure Application Gateway

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Azure Front Door

Question 6

A global e-commerce company needs to store product catalog data that must be available for reads and writes from multiple Azure regions simultaneously. The application requires consistently low latency (single-digit milliseconds) for writes from any region, and the database must automatically replicate all changes across regions with conflict resolution. The company wants a fully managed database service with native multi-region write support. Which Azure database service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Cosmos DB. Azure Cosmos DB is the correct choice because it is a fully managed NoSQL database service that natively supports multi-region writes with automatic and synchronous replication across any number of Azure regions. It guarantees single-digit millisecond latency for reads and writes at the 99th percentile, and provides built-in conflict resolution policies (e.g., last-writer-wins or custom) to handle concurrent updates from different regions. This makes it ideal for globally distributed applications requiring consistent low-latency writes and automatic replication.

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Azure SQL Database

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Azure Database for PostgreSQL

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Azure Cache for Redis

Question 7

A company wants to host a static website (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) that is accessed by users worldwide. They need a low-cost solution that provides high availability and global reach without managing servers. Which Azure service is most cost-effective for this scenario?

Accepted Answer

Azure Blob Storage with static website hosting. Azure Blob Storage with static website hosting is the most cost-effective solution because it allows you to host static content (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) directly from a storage container without provisioning any virtual machines or app service plans. It provides built-in high availability through geo-redundant storage (GRS) and global reach via integration with Azure CDN, while the pay-per-GB storage model and no compute costs keep expenses minimal.

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Azure App Service

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Azure Virtual Machines

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Azure CDN

Question 8

A large enterprise has multiple Azure subscriptions for different business units. The governance team wants to apply a set of Azure Policy initiatives, such as allowed locations and required tags, to all subscriptions in the organization. They also want to set up role-based access control for the compliance team at the root level so that they can monitor compliance across all subscriptions. Which Azure feature should they use to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Azure management groups. Azure management groups provide a hierarchical structure above subscriptions, enabling you to apply Azure Policy initiatives and role-based access control (RBAC) at the root management group level. This ensures that policies like allowed locations and required tags are inherited by all subscriptions within the organization, and the compliance team can monitor compliance across the entire hierarchy without needing to configure each subscription individually.

Answer

Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates

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Azure resource groups

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Azure Blueprints

Question 9

A manufacturing company runs its proprietary production scheduling software on on-premises servers. The IT team also manages on-premises file servers. The company decides to move its email system to Microsoft 365 but keeps all other systems on-premises. Which cloud deployment model does this scenario best describe?

Accepted Answer

Hybrid cloud. This scenario describes a hybrid cloud because the company uses a mix of on-premises infrastructure (production scheduling servers and file servers) and a public cloud service (Microsoft 365 for email). In a hybrid cloud model, organizations integrate on-premises resources with public cloud services, allowing data and applications to be shared between them. Here, the email system runs in Microsoft's public cloud while all other systems remain on-premises, creating a hybrid deployment.

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Private cloud

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Public cloud

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Community cloud

Question 10

A startup company plans to move its e-commerce application to Azure. The startup has limited upfront capital and expects demand to be unpredictable initially. The key requirement is that the company should only be charged for the compute and storage resources it actually uses, with the ability to pay per hour or per minute. This requirement directly maps to which fundamental benefit of cloud computing?

Accepted Answer

Consumption-based pricing – customers pay only for the resources they consume, with no upfront costs.. Option C is correct because the startup's requirement to pay only for the compute and storage resources it actually uses, with per-hour or per-minute billing and no upfront capital, directly maps to consumption-based pricing. This cloud benefit eliminates the need for large initial investments and aligns costs with actual usage, which is ideal for unpredictable demand scenarios.

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High availability – redundant infrastructure ensures the application stays online.

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Elasticity – resources can automatically scale out and in based on demand.

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Disaster recovery – data and applications are backed up to another region.

Question 11

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?

Accepted Answer

Resource pooling. Resource pooling is the cloud computing concept most directly related to sustainability because it allows a cloud provider to serve multiple customers from the same shared physical infrastructure. By dynamically allocating and reallocating resources based on demand, the provider maximizes utilization rates, reducing the total number of physical servers and data centers needed. This consolidation directly lowers energy consumption and carbon emissions per workload, which is the core environmental benefit of shifting to the cloud.

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Broad network access

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On-demand self-service

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Rapid elasticity

Question 12

A retail company hosts an e-commerce website on on-premises servers. During seasonal sales events, the website experiences traffic spikes that last for a few hours. Several years ago, the company purchased additional servers to handle these spikes, but those servers now sit idle for most of the year. The company is considering moving the website to Azure. Which benefit of cloud computing would most directly help the company avoid maintaining idle hardware while still being able to handle traffic spikes?

Accepted Answer

Elasticity. Elasticity is the correct answer because it allows the company to automatically scale computing resources up during traffic spikes and scale down when demand drops, eliminating the need to maintain idle on-premises servers. In Azure, this is achieved through features like Virtual Machine Scale Sets and autoscale rules that adjust capacity based on metrics such as CPU usage or request count, ensuring the company only pays for resources consumed during peak periods.

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High availability

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Disaster recovery

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Geo-redundancy

Question 13

A financial services company has an on-premises data center that houses sensitive customer data. Regulatory requirements mandate that this data cannot be stored or processed outside the company's physical premises. However, the company wants to take advantage of cloud computing for compute-intensive risk analysis workloads that process anonymized subsets of the data. The company also needs to maintain a consistent management and security posture across both environments. Which cloud deployment model should the company adopt?

Accepted Answer

Hybrid cloud. Hybrid cloud (C) is correct because it allows the company to keep sensitive customer data on-premises to meet regulatory requirements while leveraging the public cloud for compute-intensive risk analysis on anonymized subsets. This model also enables consistent management and security policies across both environments through unified tools like Azure Arc or AWS Outposts.

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Public cloud

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Private cloud

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Community cloud

Question 14

A company wants to store large amounts of unstructured data (e.g., images, videos, documents) that will be accessed from multiple applications over HTTP/HTTPS. The data needs to be highly durable and available. Which Azure storage service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Blob Storage. Azure Blob Storage is designed for storing massive amounts of unstructured data, such as images, videos, and documents, and it provides native HTTP/HTTPS access via REST APIs. It offers industry-leading durability (99.9999999999% for RA-GRS) and high availability, making it the correct choice for this scenario.

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Azure SQL Database

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Azure Files

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Azure Disk Storage

Question 15

A manufacturing company is planning to move its on-premises infrastructure to Azure. The CFO wants to understand the financial impact. Currently, the company purchases servers and networking equipment upfront, which depreciates over three years. In Azure, they will pay only for the compute and storage resources they consume on a monthly basis. Which cloud concept best describes this shift in cost structure?

Accepted Answer

Operational expenditure (OpEx). The shift from upfront hardware purchases (capital expenditure) to paying only for consumed resources monthly is the definition of operational expenditure (OpEx). In Azure, this is enabled by the consumption-based pricing model, where you are billed for compute hours, storage GBs, and data egress rather than owning physical assets. This directly addresses the CFO's concern about financial impact by converting large upfront costs into predictable, variable monthly payments.

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Scalability

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High availability

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Resource pooling