AZ-900 Practice Test 26 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A development team is building a proof-of-concept microservice that is packaged as a Docker container. They want to deploy it to Azure with the fastest provisioning time and the least operational overhead. The team does not need to manage virtual machines, orchestrate multiple containers, or configure scaling rules. Which Azure compute service should they use?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Azure Container Instances (ACI). Azure Container Instances (ACI) is the correct choice because it allows you to deploy a single Docker container directly to Azure without managing any underlying virtual machines or orchestration. It offers the fastest provisioning time (typically seconds) and the least operational overhead, as it is a serverless platform that automatically handles container startup, networking, and resource allocation. The team's requirement to avoid managing VMs, orchestrating multiple containers, or configuring scaling rules aligns perfectly with ACI's design for simple, isolated container workloads.

Answer

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

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Azure Virtual Machines

Answer

Azure Batch

Question 2

A company plans to deploy a critical application in two Azure regions to ensure disaster recovery. The company wants to guarantee that during a major regional outage, the recovery region is physically separated from the primary region and that planned maintenance updates are rolled out sequentially to minimize downtime. Which Azure feature should the company leverage when selecting the secondary region?

Accepted Answer

Region Pairs. Region Pairs are the correct Azure feature because they guarantee physical separation between paired regions (e.g., at least 300 miles apart) and ensure that planned maintenance updates are applied sequentially across the pair, with only one region updated at a time. This minimizes downtime during disaster recovery by reducing the risk of simultaneous failures and providing a predictable recovery window.

Answer

Availability Zones

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Azure Front Door

Answer

Azure Site Recovery

Question 3

A company uses Azure Blob Storage to store archival backups of financial records. The company requires that the data is protected against a complete regional outage by replicating it to another Azure region. However, they do not need to access the replicated copy unless the primary region fails. The company wants to minimize storage costs while meeting this requirement. Which type of storage replication should the company configure?

Accepted Answer

Geo-redundant storage (GRS). Geo-redundant storage (GRS) replicates your data synchronously three times within the primary region using LRS, then asynchronously to a secondary region hundreds of miles away. This meets the requirement of protecting against a complete regional outage while minimizing costs, because the secondary copy is not accessible for reads unless Microsoft initiates a failover, and GRS is less expensive than RA-GRS which includes read-access to the secondary region.

Answer

Locally redundant storage (LRS)

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Zone-redundant storage (ZRS)

Answer

Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS)

Question 4

A company has several Azure subscriptions that contain hundreds of virtual machines. A new corporate standard requires that all VMs must use Azure managed disks instead of unmanaged disks. The governance team needs to automatically identify existing VMs with unmanaged disks and convert them to managed disks without requiring manual intervention for each VM. The team also wants to ensure that any new VMs created in the future automatically use managed disks. Which Azure feature should they use to meet both requirements?

Accepted Answer

Azure Policy with the DeployIfNotExists effect (with remediation). Azure Policy with the DeployIfNotExists effect can automatically identify VMs using unmanaged disks and, when combined with remediation tasks, convert them to managed disks without manual intervention. It also enforces that any new VMs are created with managed disks by evaluating and automatically deploying the required configuration at creation time. This meets both the identification/conversion of existing resources and the enforcement for future resources.

Answer

Azure Blueprints

Answer

Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates

Answer

Azure Cost Management + Budgets

Question 5

A company runs an e-commerce website on a set of on-premises servers that are fully owned and depreciated. The website experiences predictable traffic surges during seasonal sales. The company plans to migrate to Azure and wants to pay only for the compute and storage resources consumed, with the ability to automatically add virtual machines during sales and remove them afterward. Which characteristic of cloud computing does this scenario best illustrate?

Accepted Answer

Elasticity. Elasticity is the cloud computing characteristic that allows resources to automatically scale out (add virtual machines) during demand spikes like seasonal sales and scale in (remove VMs) when demand drops, aligning with the pay-per-use model. This scenario directly matches elasticity because the company wants to dynamically adjust compute and storage resources in response to predictable traffic surges, paying only for what is consumed.

Answer

High availability

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Fault tolerance

Answer

Disaster recovery

Question 6

A company plans to deploy a critical application across two Azure regions for disaster recovery. The compliance team requires that planned maintenance updates (such as OS patches to the underlying Azure infrastructure) must never be applied to both regions at the same time. The company also needs the data stored in the primary region to be automatically replicated to the secondary region. Which Azure architecture feature should the company rely on to meet the requirement of non-simultaneous updates?

Accepted Answer

Region Pairs. Region Pairs ensure that planned maintenance updates (e.g., OS patches) are applied to only one region in the pair at a time, with a minimum 300-minute stagger between updates. This design meets the compliance requirement for non-simultaneous updates while also supporting automatic geo-redundant storage replication from the primary to the secondary region.

Answer

Availability Zones

Answer

Azure Resource Manager

Answer

Azure Traffic Manager

Question 7

A company runs an on-premises line-of-business application that uses a SQL Server database. The database currently has 500 GB of data and is accessed by 50 users simultaneously. The company is planning to migrate this database to Azure. The IT team wants to minimize administrative overhead for patching the operating system and database engine, and for performing automated backups with point-in-time restore. The team also wants the ability to scale compute and storage independently without managing virtual machines. Which Azure service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure SQL Database (Platform-as-a-Service). Azure SQL Database is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering that fully manages the underlying operating system and SQL Server engine, including patching and updates. It provides automated backups with point-in-time restore (up to 35 days retention) and allows independent scaling of compute (DTUs/vCores) and storage without any virtual machine management. This directly meets the team's requirements to minimize administrative overhead while supporting 500 GB of data and 50 concurrent users.

Answer

SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machine (Infrastructure-as-a-Service)

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Azure Cosmos DB

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Azure Database for MySQL

Question 8

A small business wants to migrate its IT infrastructure to Azure. The owner wants the ability to provision new virtual machines, storage accounts, and databases entirely through a web-based portal, without needing to submit a formal request or wait for an administrator to manually allocate resources. The owner expects resources to be available immediately after configuration. Which characteristic of cloud computing does this scenario best illustrate?

Accepted Answer

On-demand self-service. This scenario best illustrates on-demand self-service because the owner can provision virtual machines, storage accounts, and databases through a web-based portal (such as the Azure portal) without requiring human interaction with the cloud provider's administrators. The key characteristic is that resources are available immediately after configuration, eliminating the need for formal requests or manual allocation, which is the essence of on-demand self-service as defined by NIST SP 800-145.

Answer

Broad network access

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Resource pooling

Answer

Rapid elasticity

Question 9

A healthcare organization migrates its patient data management application to Azure. The organization's compliance team learns that Azure's underlying physical infrastructure, including servers and storage, is shared by many customers globally. The team is concerned about data leakage and wants to understand which fundamental cloud computing characteristic allows the provider to share physical hardware among multiple tenants while ensuring that each tenant's data and compute resources remain logically isolated and secure from one another.

Accepted Answer

Resource pooling. Resource pooling is the correct answer because it is the fundamental cloud computing characteristic that enables a provider to serve multiple customers (tenants) from the same physical hardware while maintaining logical isolation. In Azure, this is achieved through hypervisor-level virtualization (e.g., Hyper-V) where each tenant's virtual machines and data are isolated at the kernel and memory level, preventing cross-tenant data leakage even though the underlying servers and storage are shared.

Answer

Rapid elasticity

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Measured service

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Broad network access

Question 10

A company stores critical financial data in Azure Blob Storage. The data must remain available even if an entire Azure region becomes unavailable. Additionally, the company needs the ability to read the data from the secondary region immediately during a regional outage, without waiting for Microsoft to initiate a failover. Which storage redundancy option should the company configure?

Accepted Answer

Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage (RA-GRS). Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage (RA-GRS) is the correct choice because it replicates data to a secondary region (geo-redundancy) and allows immediate read access to that secondary copy during a regional outage, without waiting for Microsoft to initiate a failover. This meets both the availability requirement and the need for instant read access from the secondary region.

Answer

Locally Redundant Storage (LRS)

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Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS)

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Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS)

Question 11

A company has a critical production resource group that contains several virtual machines and an Azure SQL Database. The IT manager wants to prevent anyone from accidentally deleting the resource group or any of its resources. However, authorized administrators must still be able to add, update, or delete individual resources within the group (except deletion of the group itself). Which Azure feature should the manager apply to the resource group?

Accepted Answer

Apply a CanNotDelete lock on the resource group.. A CanNotDelete lock on the resource group prevents deletion of the group itself while still allowing authorized administrators to add, update, or delete individual resources within the group. This lock type specifically blocks delete operations on the locked scope, but does not restrict read, write, or other management operations, aligning perfectly with the requirement to protect the resource group from accidental deletion while permitting ongoing resource management.

Answer

Apply an Azure Policy with the 'Deny' effect to prevent all operations on the resource group.

Answer

Apply a Read-Only lock on the resource group.

Answer

Remove the Contributor role from all users and assign the Owner role to the IT manager only.

Question 12

A company has multiple Azure subscriptions, each managed by different development teams. The central governance team wants to ensure that every subscription adheres to the same security baselines, including specific Azure Policy definitions, RBAC role assignments, and a standard resource group structure. The team needs a single, versioned package that brings these components together and can be consistently deployed across all subscriptions. Which Azure service should the governance team use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Azure Blueprints. Azure Blueprints is the correct choice because it is designed to orchestrate the deployment of a repeatable set of Azure resources and policies that adhere to organizational standards. It packages artifacts like Azure Policy definitions, RBAC role assignments, and resource group templates into a single, versioned blueprint that can be assigned to multiple subscriptions, ensuring consistent governance across all environments.

Answer

Azure Resource Manager templates

Answer

Azure Policy

Answer

Azure Management Groups

Question 13

A company is migrating its on-premises SQL Server databases to Azure SQL Database, which is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. The on-premises IT team is accustomed to manually applying monthly security patches to the SQL Server software. After the migration, the team wants to understand their responsibilities for securing the database. According to the shared responsibility model, which party is responsible for applying security patches to the SQL Server database engine in Azure SQL Database?

Accepted Answer

Microsoft, because Azure SQL Database is a PaaS service where Microsoft manages the database engine.. Azure SQL Database is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering where Microsoft manages the underlying infrastructure, including the operating system and the SQL Server database engine. Under the shared responsibility model, Microsoft is responsible for applying security patches to the database engine, while the customer is responsible for securing their data, access controls, and database-level configurations. This frees the customer from manual patching tasks they performed on-premises.

Answer

The customer, because the database engine is a customer-managed application.

Answer

Both the customer and Microsoft share equal responsibility for patching the database engine.

Answer

The customer, but only if the Azure SQL Database is configured with the serverless compute tier.

Question 14

A global retail company hosts its e-commerce web application on Azure virtual machines in three Azure regions: West Europe, East US, and Southeast Asia. The application must provide a single HTTPS entry point for customers worldwide. The company requires the solution to: route each user to the region that provides the best performance (lowest latency), automatically redirect traffic to a healthy region if one becomes unavailable, and protect the application from common web vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS) by inspecting all incoming HTTP/HTTPS traffic at the edge. Which Azure service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Front Door. Azure Front Door is the correct choice because it provides global HTTP(S) load balancing with latency-based routing to the nearest region, automatic failover across regions, and built-in Web Application Firewall (WAF) at the edge to inspect all incoming traffic for SQL injection and XSS. This single service meets all three requirements—performance routing, regional failover, and edge-level web vulnerability protection—without needing additional components.

Answer

Azure Traffic Manager with a Web Application Firewall (WAF) policy applied to each backend virtual machine

Answer

Azure Application Gateway

Answer

Azure Load Balancer

Question 15

A retail company runs an e-commerce website on Azure. The website experiences highly unpredictable traffic with occasional sudden spikes (e.g., during flash sales). Outside of sales events, the website has low traffic. The company wants to automatically increase the number of virtual machines during peak demand and automatically reduce them when demand subsides, without any manual intervention. The primary goal is to handle variable demand efficiently while minimizing cost. Which cloud computing characteristic best describes this capability?

Accepted Answer

Elasticity. Elasticity is the correct answer because it specifically refers to the ability of a cloud system to automatically provision and de-provision resources (such as virtual machines) in response to real-time demand changes. In this scenario, the e-commerce website needs to scale out during flash sales and scale in during low traffic periods without manual intervention, which is the defining characteristic of elasticity. This capability directly supports the goal of handling variable demand efficiently while minimizing cost, as resources are only consumed when needed.

Answer

High availability

Answer

Fault tolerance

Answer

Scalability