AZ-900 Practice Exam 59 — 20 Questions

Question 1

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?

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

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

Question 2

A 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?

Accepted Answer

Azure Policy. Azure Policy is the correct choice because it enables you to create, assign, and manage policies that enforce specific rules (such as allowed VM sizes) across multiple subscriptions. It provides built-in compliance reporting via the Compliance dashboard, showing which resources are non-compliant. Unlike Blueprints or ARM templates, Policy focuses solely on governance rules and does not deploy resources or define the environment's architecture.

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Azure Blueprints

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Azure Resource Manager templates

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Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Question 3

Which Azure service can detect faces in images and identify emotions, facial attributes, and recognize specific individuals?

Accepted Answer

Azure Face API. Azure Face API is the correct service because it is specifically designed to detect human faces in images, analyze facial attributes such as emotions (e.g., happiness, sadness), and recognize specific individuals through face identification and verification. Unlike general-purpose image analysis services, Face API provides dedicated facial recognition capabilities, including person identification against a pre-enrolled database.

Answer

Azure Computer Vision

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Azure Custom Vision

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Azure Video Analyzer

Question 4

What is the Azure Well-Architected Framework?

Accepted Answer

A set of architectural guiding principles for building reliable, secure, and efficient cloud workloads. The Azure Well-Architected Framework is a set of five architectural pillars (Reliability, Security, Cost Optimization, Operational Excellence, and Performance Efficiency) that provide best practices and guiding principles for designing and operating reliable, secure, and efficient cloud workloads on Azure. It is not a billing structure, compliance program, or migration tool, but rather a prescriptive framework to help architects evaluate and improve their cloud architectures.

Answer

A billing structure for Azure services

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A compliance certification program for Azure partners

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A tool for migrating on-premises applications to Azure

Question 5

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 6

A company develops a data processing application that runs only when new files are uploaded to an Azure Blob Storage container. The application must scale automatically to handle hundreds of simultaneous file uploads and must not incur cost when no files are being processed. The development team wants the simplest solution that requires no infrastructure management. Which Azure compute service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Functions with a Blob Storage trigger. Azure Functions with a Blob Storage trigger is the correct choice because it provides an event-driven, serverless compute model that automatically scales to handle hundreds of concurrent file uploads without requiring any infrastructure management. The function executes only when a new blob is created in the container, ensuring zero cost when no files are being processed, and the platform handles scaling out to meet demand.

Answer

Azure Virtual Machines Scale Set with autoscale rules

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Azure Batch

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Azure Container Instances

Question 7

What is the purpose of Azure tags?

Accepted Answer

To apply metadata to resources for organization, billing tracking, and filtering. Azure tags are key-value pairs that you can assign to Azure resources to apply metadata for organization, billing tracking, and filtering. They enable you to categorize resources by department, environment, cost center, or any custom taxonomy, which is essential for managing costs and resource inventory at scale. Tags are not used for access control, compliance enforcement, or backup automation.

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To control access to Azure resources based on user roles

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To enforce compliance policies across resource configurations

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To back up resource configurations automatically

Question 8

A company has five Azure subscriptions, each managed by a different department. The IT governance team needs to enforce a single set of compliance policies (e.g., allowed VM SKUs) and assign a specific role to a central security team across all subscriptions. The goal is to minimize administrative overhead. Which Azure component should the governance team use as the scope for these assignments?

Accepted Answer

Place all subscriptions under a single management group and assign policies and roles at that management group level.. Management groups provide a hierarchical scope above subscriptions, enabling centralized governance. By placing all five subscriptions under a single management group, the IT governance team can assign Azure Policy definitions (e.g., allowed VM SKUs) and role-based access control (RBAC) roles (e.g., for the security team) once at that management group level. This inheritance automatically applies the policies and roles to all child subscriptions, minimizing administrative overhead compared to per-subscription or per-resource-group assignments.

Answer

Assign the policies and role at each subscription level individually.

Answer

Create a resource group in each subscription and assign policies and roles at the resource group level.

Answer

Create an Azure Blueprint definition and apply it to each subscription separately.

Question 9

A company wants to run some applications in its own on-premises datacenter for compliance reasons, while also using cloud services for burst capacity and development/testing. Which cloud deployment model should they adopt?

Accepted Answer

Hybrid cloud. The hybrid cloud model is correct because it combines on-premises infrastructure (private cloud) with public cloud services, enabling the company to keep sensitive applications in its own datacenter for compliance while using the public cloud for burst capacity and development/testing. This directly matches the scenario's requirement for a unified environment that spans both local and cloud resources.

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Private cloud

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Public cloud

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Community cloud

Question 10

A hospital stores patient health records in the cloud. They are responsible for encrypting the data before storing it, while the cloud provider is responsible for securing the physical datacenter. Which cloud model is being described?

Accepted Answer

Shared responsibility model. The scenario describes a division of security responsibilities: the hospital encrypts data (customer responsibility) and the cloud provider secures the physical datacenter (provider responsibility). This is the core definition of the shared responsibility model, where security obligations are split based on the cloud service model (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) and the customer's control over the data and configurations.

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Community cloud

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Hybrid cloud

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Private cloud

Question 11

A company hosts a web application in the West US region on two Azure virtual machines that are in the same virtual network. The application handles user sessions that must persist on the same virtual machine for the duration of a checkout process. The company needs to load balance incoming HTTP traffic across the two virtual machines. If one virtual machine becomes unhealthy, the load balancer must automatically stop sending new traffic to that machine. Which Azure service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Application Gateway. Azure Application Gateway is correct because it provides HTTP/HTTPS layer-7 load balancing with session affinity (also known as sticky sessions) using cookie-based persistence, which ensures that all requests from a user during the checkout process are routed to the same virtual machine. It also includes built-in health probes that automatically stop sending traffic to an unhealthy backend VM, meeting both requirements precisely.

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Azure Traffic Manager

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Azure Load Balancer

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Azure Front Door

Question 12

A company is building a mobile app backend that handles HTTP requests from thousands of users. The traffic pattern is highly unpredictable: there can be sudden spikes to hundreds of requests per second followed by long periods of no activity. The development team wants a solution that automatically scales from zero to hundreds of instances based on demand, and they want to pay only for the compute time consumed when the code is actually executing. They do not want to manage any underlying infrastructure, such as virtual machines or containers. Which Azure compute service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure Functions. Azure Functions is the correct choice because it is a serverless compute service that automatically scales from zero to hundreds of instances based on incoming HTTP requests, and you pay only for the compute time consumed when your code executes. It handles unpredictable traffic patterns with sudden spikes and idle periods without requiring any infrastructure management, as it runs on a consumption plan that provides dynamic scaling.

Answer

Azure App Service

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Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

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Azure Virtual Machines

Question 13

Which Azure service provides a way to build workflows that integrate apps, data, and services across cloud and on-premises environments?

Accepted Answer

Azure Logic Apps. Azure Logic Apps is the correct answer because it is a cloud-based platform for creating and running automated workflows that integrate apps, data, services, and systems across cloud and on-premises environments. It provides a visual designer and hundreds of prebuilt connectors to orchestrate business processes without writing code, making it ideal for enterprise integration scenarios.

Answer

Azure Functions

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Azure Service Bus

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Azure Event Grid

Question 14

A company is designing a disaster recovery solution for an application hosted on Azure VMs. They want to replicate the VMs to a secondary Azure region and automatically failover if the primary region fails. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Site Recovery. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) orchestrates replication, failover, and failback of Azure VMs between regions. It continuously replicates VM disks to the secondary region and, upon a failure, allows you to initiate a planned or unplanned failover with a single click, meeting the stated disaster recovery and automatic failover requirements.

Answer

Azure Backup

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Azure Traffic Manager

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Azure Load Balancer

Question 15

A company has 10 Azure subscriptions used by different departments. The finance team wants to receive automated, prioritized recommendations to reduce cloud costs. Specifically, they want suggestions for identifying idle virtual machines and rightsizing underutilized resources across all subscriptions. Which Azure service should the finance team use to get these recommendations?

Accepted Answer

Azure Advisor. Azure Advisor is the correct service because it provides personalized, prioritized recommendations across Azure subscriptions, including cost optimization suggestions such as identifying idle virtual machines and rightsizing underutilized resources. It analyzes resource usage and configuration to deliver actionable insights, making it ideal for the finance team's needs.

Answer

Azure Cost Management + Billing

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Azure Policy

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Azure Monitor

Question 16

A company plans to use an infrastructure-as-code approach to deploy its Azure resources. The company wants to define all resources (virtual networks, virtual machines, storage accounts) in a declarative JSON file. This file must ensure that resources are created in the correct order, handle dependencies automatically, and allow the same configuration to be deployed to multiple environments (dev, test, production) with parameterized values. The solution should be a native Azure feature. Which Azure feature should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates. Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates are the native Azure feature for infrastructure-as-code using a declarative JSON format. They define resources, handle dependencies automatically via the 'dependsOn' element, and support parameterization for deploying the same template to multiple environments (dev, test, production) by passing different parameter files. This directly matches the scenario's requirements for declarative JSON, dependency management, and multi-environment deployment.

Answer

Azure Policy

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Azure Blueprints

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Azure Automation State Configuration

Question 17

A company runs a containerized application on Azure. They want to use Kubernetes for orchestration but do not want to manage the control plane nodes. They need a managed Kubernetes service. Which Azure service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is the correct choice because it provides a fully managed Kubernetes orchestration service. With AKS, Azure manages the control plane nodes (including the API server, etcd, and scheduler) automatically, so the company does not need to manage them. This meets the requirement for a managed Kubernetes service without control plane management overhead.

Answer

Azure Container Instances

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Azure Container Registry

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Azure App Service

Question 18

A retail company runs its e-commerce platform on Azure App Service. The platform is configured with an autoscale rule that adds web server instances when CPU usage exceeds 75%. During a holiday flash sale, traffic surges from a baseline of 1,000 concurrent users to over 100,000 concurrent users within minutes. The platform automatically provisions additional instances to handle the load, and once the sale ends, it scales back down. This ability to rapidly adjust resources to meet varying demand is a direct example of which fundamental characteristic of cloud computing?

Accepted Answer

Rapid elasticity. Rapid elasticity is the cloud characteristic that enables resources to scale out (add instances) and scale in (remove instances) automatically and quickly in response to demand changes. In this scenario, the autoscale rule on Azure App Service detects CPU usage exceeding 75% and provisions additional web server instances within minutes to handle the surge from 1,000 to over 100,000 concurrent users, then scales back down after the flash sale ends. This dynamic, near-instantaneous adjustment of capacity is the direct embodiment of rapid elasticity, distinguishing it from manual provisioning or fixed capacity models.

Answer

On-demand self-service

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Measured service

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Resource pooling

Question 19

A company runs a critical order-processing application on two Azure virtual machines in the West US region. The application must remain available even if an entire datacenter in that region experiences a complete outage. The company wants to place the two VMs in separate physical locations within the same region to provide fault tolerance against a datacenter-level failure. Which Azure feature should they use?

Accepted Answer

Availability Zones. Availability Zones (B) are physically separate datacenters within an Azure region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking. By placing each VM in a different zone, the application remains available even if an entire datacenter fails, providing fault tolerance at the datacenter level within the same region.

Answer

Availability Set

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Azure Region Pair

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Virtual Machine Scale Set

Question 20

Which Azure feature enables you to create policy definitions, RBAC role assignments, and ARM templates as a single package and track their deployment relationship?

Accepted Answer

Azure Blueprints. Azure Blueprints is the correct answer because it is specifically designed to package together policy definitions, RBAC role assignments, ARM templates, and other artifacts into a single, versioned, and trackable deployment unit. Unlike individual ARM templates or policy initiatives, Blueprints maintain a relationship between the deployed resources and the blueprint definition, enabling you to audit and track which blueprint version was used for each deployment.

Answer

ARM Templates

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Azure Policy Initiative

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Azure DevOps Pipelines