AZ-900 Practice Exam 54 — 20 Questions

Question 1

A company needs to store large amounts of unstructured data, such as images and videos, for a web application. They need to access data from anywhere via HTTP/HTTPS. Which Azure storage service should they use?

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

Accepted Answer

A) Azure Blob Storage. Azure Blob Storage is designed for storing large amounts of unstructured data, such as images and videos, and provides REST-based access over HTTP/HTTPS from anywhere. It supports scalable object storage with global accessibility, making it ideal for web application content delivery.

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B) Azure File Storage

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C) Azure Queue Storage

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D) Azure Table Storage

Question 2

Which Azure service provides a managed Apache Kafka-compatible event streaming service for ingesting millions of events per second?

Accepted Answer

Azure Event Hubs. Azure Event Hubs is a fully managed, real-time data ingestion service that is natively compatible with Apache Kafka, allowing you to use existing Kafka clients and tooling to stream millions of events per second. It provides a partitioned consumer model, high throughput, and low-latency event ingestion, making it the correct choice for a managed Kafka-compatible event streaming service.

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Azure Service Bus

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Azure Event Grid

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Azure Queue Storage

Question 3

A company uses Azure to host multiple virtual machines and virtual networks. The network team is responsible for configuring and maintaining virtual networks, subnets, and network security groups. The company wants to ensure that the network team can manage these network resources but cannot modify or delete virtual machines. Which Azure built-in role should the company assign to the network team?

Accepted Answer

Network Contributor. The Network Contributor role grants full management permissions for network resources, including virtual networks, subnets, and network security groups, but does not allow modification or deletion of virtual machines. This aligns exactly with the requirement to restrict the network team to network resources only.

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Owner

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Contributor

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Virtual Machine Contributor

Question 4

What is a key difference between vertical scaling and the benefit of cloud elasticity?

Accepted Answer

Vertical scaling resizes one resource while elasticity adds/removes instances automatically without downtime. Vertical scaling (scaling up) increases the capacity of a single resource, such as adding more RAM or CPU to a virtual machine, but it typically requires downtime to apply the changes. Cloud elasticity, on the other hand, automatically adds or removes instances (horizontal scaling) based on demand, often without downtime, enabling the system to handle variable workloads seamlessly. Option B correctly captures this distinction by contrasting the resizing of one resource with the automated, no-downtime addition or removal of instances.

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Vertical scaling works faster than horizontal scaling

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Vertical scaling is more cost-effective than elasticity for all workloads

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Both vertical and horizontal scaling require manual intervention in cloud environments

Question 5

A startup company is developing a new mobile application. The development team needs to quickly create test environments to validate new features. They can provision virtual machines and databases in Azure within minutes, use them for a few hours, and then delete them when done. This ability to rapidly deploy and decommission resources directly supports which cloud computing benefit?

Accepted Answer

Agility. The scenario describes the ability to rapidly provision and decommission Azure resources like virtual machines and databases in minutes, use them for a few hours, and then delete them. This directly supports cloud agility, which is the cloud computing benefit that enables organizations to quickly adapt to changing requirements by deploying and releasing resources on demand. Agility is about speed and flexibility in resource management, not just scaling or metering.

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Scalability

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Elasticity

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Measured service

Question 6

A company runs several Azure virtual machines (VMs) in a virtual network. Administrators need to connect to these VMs using Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to perform maintenance tasks. The security team mandates that the VMs must not have any public IP addresses assigned. All RDP traffic must be routed through a fully managed Azure service that provides secure TLS-based access directly from the Azure portal, without requiring any client software installation on the administrator's workstation. Which Azure service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Bastion. Azure Bastion is a fully managed Platform as a Service (PaaS) that provides secure and seamless RDP/SSH connectivity to virtual machines directly from the Azure portal over TLS. It eliminates the need for public IP addresses on the VMs by deploying a Bastion host in the same virtual network, acting as a jump server that brokers the connection. Because it requires no client software on the administrator's workstation and enforces TLS-based access, it perfectly meets the security mandate and connectivity requirements described.

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Azure VPN Gateway

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Azure ExpressRoute

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Azure Application Gateway

Question 7

A global software company hosts its SaaS product on Azure. Thousands of different customers' virtual machines and databases run on the same physical servers in Microsoft's data centers, yet each customer can only access their own resources and cannot see or interact with other customers' data. Which cloud computing characteristic does this scenario primarily describe?

Accepted Answer

Resource pooling. Resource pooling is the correct answer because the scenario describes a multi-tenant architecture where Microsoft's Azure data centers use a shared physical infrastructure (servers, storage, network) to serve multiple customers. Each customer's VMs and databases are isolated via hypervisor-level virtualization and network segmentation, ensuring they cannot access each other's data. This pooling of resources to serve many customers, with dynamic assignment and reassignment of physical and virtual resources, is the defining characteristic of resource pooling as per the NIST definition of cloud computing.

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Rapid elasticity

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Measured service

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On-demand self-service

Question 8

Which Azure compliance feature allows organizations to understand which standards and regulations Azure services comply with?

Accepted Answer

Azure Compliance Documentation / Trust Center. Azure Compliance Documentation (often accessed via the Trust Center) provides detailed information about certifications, attestations, and regulatory standards that Azure services adhere to, such as ISO 27001, SOC 2, and GDPR. This is the dedicated resource for understanding which specific compliance frameworks Azure meets, rather than enforcing or monitoring compliance.

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Azure Security Center

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Azure Policy

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Azure Blueprints

Question 9

What is a key characteristic of the public cloud model?

Accepted Answer

Resources are shared among multiple tenants over the internet. The public cloud model is defined by multi-tenancy, where computing resources such as virtual machines, storage, and networks are shared across multiple customers (tenants) over the internet. Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud all operate on this principle, using hypervisor-level isolation to ensure each tenant's data and workloads remain separate. This shared infrastructure enables the cloud provider to achieve economies of scale, offering pay-as-you-go pricing and elastic scalability.

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Resources are dedicated exclusively to one organization

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Resources are always hosted on-premises

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The organization owns all hardware

Question 10

Which of the following is NOT a benefit of moving to the cloud?

Accepted Answer

Elimination of internet connectivity requirements. Moving to the cloud does not eliminate the need for internet connectivity; in fact, cloud services are accessed over the internet or dedicated network connections. Option B is correct because it presents a false benefit—cloud computing still requires network connectivity to reach the provider's endpoints, and without it, resources become inaccessible. The other options are legitimate benefits: faster provisioning, global data center reach, and converting CapEx to OpEx.

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Reduced time to provision new resources

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Access to a global network of data centers

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Conversion of capital expenses to operational expenses

Question 11

Which Azure tool helps identify compliance issues by continuously evaluating your resource configurations against defined policies?

Accepted Answer

Azure Policy compliance dashboard. Azure Policy compliance dashboard is the correct answer because it provides a centralized view of the compliance state of your Azure resources against the defined policy assignments. It continuously evaluates resource configurations and displays which resources are compliant or non-compliant, allowing you to identify and remediate compliance issues proactively.

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Azure Monitor

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Azure Advisor

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Azure Resource Graph

Question 12

A company deploys two Azure virtual machines (VMs) into the same availability set. The first VM runs a web server and the second runs a database server. The company's primary concern is that during Azure platform maintenance events (e.g., OS updates to the underlying host) or in the event of a hardware failure in the datacenter, both VMs should not be impacted at the same time. Which benefit does placing the VMs in the same availability set provide?

Accepted Answer

The VMs will be distributed across different fault domains and update domains within the datacenter.. An availability set ensures that VMs are distributed across different fault domains (separate power, cooling, and network racks) and update domains (groups that are updated sequentially during planned maintenance). This isolation guarantees that a hardware failure or a platform maintenance event will not affect both VMs simultaneously, meeting the company's primary concern.

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Both VMs will be placed on the same physical server for performance consistency.

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The VMs will be automatically load-balanced and scaled based on CPU usage.

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The VMs will be replicated to a second Azure region for disaster recovery.

Question 13

Which Azure service enables automatic scaling of compute resources based on rules or schedules?

Accepted Answer

Azure Autoscale. Azure Autoscale is the native service that automatically adjusts the number of compute instances (e.g., Virtual Machines, App Service plans, or Cloud Services) based on predefined rules (e.g., CPU > 75%) or fixed schedules (e.g., scale out at 8 AM). It works by monitoring metrics via Azure Monitor and triggering scale operations to maintain performance and optimize cost.

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Azure Elastic Pool

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Azure Load Balancer

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Azure Traffic Manager

Question 14

A company has a global web application deployed on Azure virtual machines in three separate Azure regions: West US, West Europe, and Southeast Asia. The application must automatically direct each user to the region that is geographically closest to the user's location in order to minimize latency. The solution must expose a single DNS name that does not change if regions are added or removed. The company does not need to offload SSL certificates or perform URL-based routing at the global level. Which Azure service should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Azure Traffic Manager. Azure Traffic Manager is a DNS-based traffic load balancer that can route users to the closest regional endpoint based on geographic location using the 'Performance' routing method. It exposes a single DNS name (e.g., myapp.trafficmanager.net) that remains constant even when endpoints are added or removed, and it does not require SSL offloading or URL-based routing, matching the requirements exactly.

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Azure Load Balancer

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Azure Application Gateway

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Azure Front Door

Question 15

What does 'manageability' mean as a benefit of cloud computing?

Accepted Answer

The ability to manage cloud resources through portal, CLI, APIs, and automated monitoring. Manageability in cloud computing refers to the ability to efficiently administer and control cloud resources through multiple interfaces such as the Azure portal, command-line interface (CLI), APIs, and automated monitoring tools. This allows administrators to deploy, configure, update, and scale resources programmatically or via a web interface without needing physical access to hardware, enabling rapid changes and consistent management across large environments.

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The ability to physically access and repair cloud hardware

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The right to audit the cloud provider's security practices

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The guarantee that resources will always be available

Question 16

A company stores a critical database in Azure Blob Storage. The data must remain available even if an entire Azure datacenter fails. The company uses the East US region, which supports availability zones. They want the lowest-cost storage redundancy option that protects against a full datacenter failure while keeping all data within the East US region. Which redundancy option should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Zone-redundant storage (ZRS). Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) is the correct choice because it synchronously replicates data across three availability zones within the East US region, ensuring data remains accessible even if an entire datacenter (one zone) fails. This meets the requirement for intra-region protection against a full datacenter failure at the lowest cost, as ZRS does not incur the additional expense of geo-replication.

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Locally redundant storage (LRS)

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Geo-redundant storage (GRS)

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

Question 17

Which Azure identity feature automatically assigns permissions when a user joins a specific group, and removes them when they leave?

Accepted Answer

Azure AD Dynamic Groups. Azure AD Dynamic Groups automatically manage user membership based on rules defined using user or device attributes. When a user meets the rule criteria (e.g., department equals 'Sales'), they are added to the group and receive the associated permissions; when they no longer meet the criteria, they are removed, and permissions are revoked. This is the only Azure identity feature that directly ties group membership and permission assignment to attribute-based rules without manual intervention.

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Azure AD Privileged Identity Management

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Azure AD Conditional Access

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Azure AD Identity Protection

Question 18

Which Azure service provides intelligent threat protection across your Azure and hybrid environments by collecting and analyzing security data?

Accepted Answer

Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Microsoft Defender for Cloud (formerly Azure Security Center) is the correct answer because it provides unified security management and intelligent threat protection across Azure and hybrid environments. It continuously assesses the security posture of your resources, applies security recommendations, and collects and analyzes security data from various sources to detect and respond to threats. Azure Sentinel, while also a security service, is a cloud-native SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) and SOAR (Security Orchestration Automation and Response) solution that focuses on log aggregation and incident response, not the integrated workload protection and posture management that Defender for Cloud offers.

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Azure Sentinel

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Azure DDoS Protection

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Azure Firewall

Question 19

A company hosts a web application on a single Azure virtual machine. Over the past month, the application's CPU utilization has consistently remained above 90%, causing slow response times. The administrator plans to modify the virtual machine's size from Standard_D2s_v3 (2 vCPUs) to Standard_D8s_v3 (8 vCPUs) to improve performance. Which scaling method does this change represent?

Accepted Answer

Vertical scaling (scaling up). Vertical scaling (scaling up) increases the power of an existing resource by upgrading its size or capacity. In this scenario, changing the virtual machine from Standard_D2s_v3 (2 vCPUs) to Standard_D8s_v3 (8 vCPUs) adds more CPU cores to the same VM, which is a classic example of scaling up. This approach improves performance without adding additional VM instances.

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Horizontal scaling (scaling out)

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Elastic scaling

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Auto-scaling

Question 20

Which Azure service provides network address translation for outbound internet connectivity from private subnets without public IP addresses on individual resources?

Accepted Answer

Azure NAT Gateway. Azure NAT Gateway is the correct service because it is specifically designed to provide outbound internet connectivity for resources in private subnets without requiring public IP addresses on individual VMs. It uses source network address translation (SNAT) to map private IPs to a single public IP or prefix, enabling outbound traffic while preventing inbound connections from the internet.

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Azure Load Balancer with outbound rules

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Azure Firewall

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Azure VPN Gateway