AZ-900 Practice Exam 60 — 20 Questions

Question 1

Which Azure feature enables governance teams to define standard, repeatable Azure environments for new projects?

Accepted Answer

Azure Blueprints. Azure Blueprints is the correct answer because it enables governance teams to define a repeatable set of Azure resources that adheres to organizational standards, patterns, and requirements. Unlike ARM templates, Blueprints can include role assignments, policy assignments, and resource groups, and they maintain a live linkage to the original blueprint for ongoing compliance tracking.

Answer

ARM templates in Azure Repos

Answer

Azure Cost Management budgets

Answer

Azure AD application registration templates

Question 2

A financial services firm uses a hybrid cloud strategy. They run customer-facing applications in a public cloud and store sensitive customer data in an on-premises data center to meet regulatory compliance. The firm wants to allow its applications in the public cloud to securely access the on-premises data when needed. Which cloud deployment model best describes this setup?

Accepted Answer

Hybrid cloud. The scenario describes a hybrid cloud deployment model, which combines a public cloud (for customer-facing applications) with an on-premises private cloud (for sensitive data storage) and enables secure connectivity between them, typically through VPN or dedicated circuits like Azure ExpressRoute. This allows the firm to meet regulatory compliance by keeping sensitive data on-premises while leveraging public cloud scalability for applications.

Answer

Public cloud

Answer

Private cloud

Answer

Community cloud

Question 3

A company is moving from an on-premises data center to Azure. Instead of paying a large upfront cost for servers, they will pay a monthly subscription fee based on usage. This represents a shift from which type of expenditure to which?

Accepted Answer

Capital expenditure to Operational expenditure. This scenario describes a shift from Capital Expenditure (CapEx) to Operational Expenditure (OpEx). CapEx involves upfront, long-term investments in physical assets like servers, while OpEx is a pay-as-you-go model where costs are incurred based on actual usage. Azure's subscription model eliminates the need for large initial capital outlays, aligning costs with consumption.

Answer

Operational expenditure to Capital expenditure

Answer

Direct cost to Indirect cost

Answer

Fixed cost to Variable cost

Question 4

Which Azure service monitors the health of Azure services and infrastructure in your region, and provides notifications about planned maintenance?

Accepted Answer

Azure Service Health. Azure Service Health is the correct service because it provides a personalized view of the health of Azure services, regions, and resources you use, including notifications about planned maintenance. It combines three layers: Azure Status (global view), Service Health (personalized view), and Resource Health (individual resource status). This makes it the specific tool for monitoring regional service health and planned maintenance events.

Answer

Azure Monitor

Answer

Azure Advisor

Answer

Azure Status Page

Question 5

A company historically purchased physical servers and networking equipment for its data center, paying the full cost upfront before using the hardware. The company is now migrating its workloads to Azure and will only pay for the compute and storage resources it consumes each month, with no long-term commitments or upfront hardware purchases. This financial model change best represents which cloud computing benefit?

Accepted Answer

Consumption-based pricing. The scenario describes a shift from upfront capital expenditure (CapEx) for physical hardware to a model where the company pays only for the resources it consumes each month, without long-term commitments. This directly aligns with consumption-based pricing, a core Azure benefit where costs are incurred based on actual usage of compute, storage, and other services, eliminating the need for upfront hardware purchases.

Answer

High availability

Answer

Elasticity

Answer

Disaster recovery

Question 6

Which aspect of Azure governance ensures that resources are protected from accidental or unauthorized deletion regardless of RBAC role?

Accepted Answer

Azure Resource Locks overriding RBAC. Azure Resource Locks override RBAC because they are applied at the subscription, resource group, or resource level and enforce a 'Deny' effect that cannot be bypassed by any RBAC role, including Owner. This ensures that even users with Contributor or Owner permissions cannot delete or modify a locked resource unless the lock is first removed by an Owner or User Access Administrator.

Answer

Azure RBAC deny assignments

Answer

Azure Policy deny effects

Answer

Azure AD Privileged Identity Management restrictions

Question 7

Which Azure service enables you to monitor, diagnose, and gain insights into the performance of web applications, including user behavior analytics?

Accepted Answer

Azure Application Insights. Azure Application Insights is an extensible Application Performance Management (APM) service for web developers. It automatically detects performance anomalies, includes powerful analytics tools to help diagnose issues, and provides user behavior analytics (e.g., page views, session duration, click patterns) via its telemetry pipeline. This makes it the correct choice for monitoring, diagnosing, and gaining insights into web application performance and user behavior.

Answer

Azure Monitor Logs

Answer

Azure Service Health

Answer

Azure Security Center

Question 8

What is the Azure free account, and what does it provide?

Accepted Answer

12 months of popular free services, $200 credit, and 55+ always-free services. The Azure free account provides new users with 12 months of popular free services (e.g., 750 hours of B1s Linux VM, 5 GB of Blob storage), a $200 credit valid for the first 30 days, and access to more than 55 services that are always free (e.g., Azure Functions with 1 million requests per month). This is designed to help users explore and learn Azure without incurring costs, but it does not grant unlimited or permanent free access.

Answer

An account with unlimited free access to all Azure services permanently

Answer

Free access for students only

Answer

A subscription that never incurs any charges

Question 9

A web application needs to store large amounts of unstructured data (images, documents) that will be accessed via HTTP from anywhere in the world. The data must be highly durable and scalable. Which Azure storage solution is most appropriate?

Accepted Answer

Azure Blob Storage. Azure Blob Storage is designed for storing massive amounts of unstructured data, such as images and documents, and provides HTTP/HTTPS access from anywhere. It offers high durability (99.9999999999% with RA-GRS) and massive scalability, making it the ideal choice for globally accessible, unstructured data workloads.

Answer

Azure SQL Database

Answer

Azure File Storage

Answer

Azure Cosmos DB

Question 10

What is 'fault tolerance' in cloud computing?

Accepted Answer

The ability to continue operating correctly despite component failures. Fault tolerance in cloud computing refers to a system's ability to continue operating correctly, without interruption, even when one or more of its components fail. This is achieved through redundancy—such as duplicate hardware, software, or data paths—so that if a component fails, another automatically takes over without any impact on the user. It is a core design principle for high-availability systems, ensuring zero downtime despite failures.

Answer

The ability to automatically scale resources during peak usage

Answer

The ability to restore data after a major disaster

Answer

The ability to deploy applications in multiple geographic regions

Question 11

Which Azure service provides a secure way for applications running in Azure to access secrets and keys without storing credentials in code?

Accepted Answer

Azure Managed Identities. Azure Managed Identities (Option C) provide an automatically managed identity in Microsoft Entra ID that applications can use to authenticate to any service supporting Microsoft Entra ID authentication, including Key Vault, without storing any credentials in code. This eliminates the need for developers to manage secrets or keys, as the Azure infrastructure automatically rotates the identity's credentials.

Answer

Azure Key Vault

Answer

Azure AD Service Principals with client secrets

Answer

Azure Certificate Manager

Question 12

A company is moving from an on-premises data center to the cloud. Previously, they paid a large upfront sum for servers and storage, plus annual maintenance fees. Now they pay a monthly subscription based on the amount of compute and storage they actually use. This shift represents moving from which type of expenditure to which?

Accepted Answer

From CapEx to OpEx. This scenario describes a shift from Capital Expenditure (CapEx) to Operational Expenditure (OpEx). CapEx involves upfront purchases of physical assets like servers and storage, which are capitalized and depreciated over time. OpEx, on the other hand, is a pay-as-you-go model where costs are incurred based on actual usage, such as monthly cloud subscription fees for compute and storage resources.

Answer

From OpEx to CapEx

Answer

From direct cost to indirect cost

Answer

From variable cost to fixed cost

Question 13

A company has an Azure subscription that hosts multiple virtual machines, databases, and storage accounts. The finance team wants to receive an automated email notification when the forecasted monthly spending for the subscription exceeds $10,000. The team needs to use a native Azure feature that can track actual and forecasted costs and trigger alerts based on a monetary threshold. The solution must not require custom scripts or third-party tools. Which Azure feature should the team configure?

Accepted Answer

Azure Budgets. Azure Budgets is the correct native feature because it allows you to set a monetary threshold (e.g., $10,000) for forecasted or actual costs, and it can automatically trigger an email alert when that threshold is reached. It integrates directly with Azure Cost Management and requires no custom scripts or third-party tools, meeting the finance team's requirements exactly.

Answer

Azure Advisor

Answer

Azure Policy

Answer

Azure Resource Graph

Question 14

A company manages 50 Azure SQL Databases, each used by a different department. Each database experiences low average usage (less than 5 DTU on average) but unpredictable hourly peaks that can reach up to 50 DTU for short bursts. The company wants to minimize total cost while ensuring every database can handle its peak load without performance degradation. Which Azure SQL Database deployment option should the company choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure SQL Database elastic pool. Azure SQL Database elastic pool is the correct choice because it allows multiple databases to share a fixed pool of DTU resources, enabling the aggregated peak loads to be handled efficiently without over-provisioning each database individually. With low average usage (less than 5 DTU) but unpredictable bursts up to 50 DTU, an elastic pool provides the necessary headroom for spikes while minimizing total cost by only paying for the pooled eDTUs, not per-database maximums.

Answer

Azure SQL Database single database with 50 DTU

Answer

Azure SQL Managed Instance

Answer

SQL Server on an Azure virtual machine

Question 15

A company has deployed applications in two separate Azure virtual networks (VNets) in the East US and West Europe regions. Each VNet contains multiple subnets with application servers and databases. The network team needs to enable direct, private IP connectivity between the VNets, ensuring that all traffic stays within the Azure backbone network and never traverses the public internet. The solution must also provide low latency for cross-region communication. They currently do not need a dedicated private connection to an on-premises datacenter. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

VNet Peering. VNet Peering is the correct choice because it enables direct, private IP connectivity between two Azure virtual networks using the Microsoft backbone infrastructure, ensuring traffic never traverses the public internet. It provides low-latency, high-bandwidth cross-region communication without requiring a VPN gateway or dedicated circuits. Since the scenario involves only cloud-to-cloud connectivity (no on-premises requirement), VNet Peering is the simplest and most cost-effective solution.

Answer

Azure VPN Gateway

Answer

Azure ExpressRoute

Answer

Azure Virtual WAN

Question 16

A healthcare company is planning to migrate its on-premises data center to Azure. The CFO wants to shift from making large upfront hardware purchases to paying for IT resources as an ongoing operational cost. Which cloud computing benefit does this scenario describe?

Accepted Answer

Operational expenditure (OpEx). The scenario describes shifting from capital expenditure (CapEx) for upfront hardware purchases to operational expenditure (OpEx) for ongoing, pay-as-you-go IT resource consumption. This is a core financial benefit of cloud computing, where costs are treated as variable operating expenses rather than fixed capital investments.

Answer

High availability

Answer

Elasticity

Answer

Fault tolerance

Question 17

A company deploys their application across multiple availability zones in an Azure region. This is done to improve which aspect of the application?

Accepted Answer

High availability. Deploying an application across multiple availability zones within an Azure region ensures that if one zone experiences an outage (e.g., due to power failure or network disruption), the application can continue serving traffic from the remaining zones. This architecture directly improves high availability by eliminating a single point of failure at the datacenter level, typically achieving a service-level agreement (SLA) of 99.99% for virtual machines when using two or more instances across zones.

Answer

Scalability

Answer

Elasticity

Answer

Cost efficiency

Question 18

What is Azure Active Directory Conditional Access?

Accepted Answer

A policy engine that enforces access rules based on conditions like location, device, and risk. Microsoft Entra ID Conditional Access is a policy engine that evaluates signals such as user location, device compliance, and sign-in risk to enforce access rules before granting access to resources. It allows organizations to implement granular controls like requiring multi-factor authentication (MFA) from untrusted networks or blocking access from non-compliant devices, making it a core identity-driven security feature.

Answer

A feature that blocks all access to Azure resources from outside the organization

Answer

A tool for encrypting user data in Azure AD

Answer

A way to provision users automatically in Azure AD

Question 19

A company runs a production web application on Azure App Service. The development team is working on a new version of the application and wants to deploy it to a staging environment to perform validation tests. After testing, they need to gradually shift a percentage of live user traffic to the new version while monitoring for issues. If any problems occur, they must be able to instantly send all traffic back to the original version with zero downtime. Which Azure App Service feature should the team use to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Deployment slots. Deployment slots are the correct choice because Azure App Service supports deploying different versions of an application to separate slots (e.g., staging) and then swapping them into production. The swap operation allows you to gradually shift traffic using slot auto-swap or manual swap with traffic routing, and if issues arise, you can instantly swap back to the original slot with zero downtime, as the swap preserves the warm-up state of the target slot.

Answer

Azure Traffic Manager

Answer

Azure Application Gateway

Answer

Azure Front Door

Question 20

A multinational company is expanding its online retail business to new countries. The company needs to deploy its web application in Azure regions that are geographically close to customers in Europe, Asia, and North America to minimize latency. The IT team can deploy identical application instances in multiple regions within minutes using Azure Resource Manager templates. Which benefit of cloud computing does this scenario best illustrate?

Accepted Answer

Global reach. The scenario emphasizes deploying identical application instances in multiple Azure regions across Europe, Asia, and North America to serve customers geographically close to each region, which directly illustrates the global reach benefit of cloud computing. Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates enable rapid, consistent deployment to any region, allowing the company to expand its global footprint and reduce latency by leveraging Azure's distributed infrastructure.

Answer

High availability

Answer

Elasticity

Answer

Disaster recovery