AZ-900 Practice Exam 61 — 20 Questions

Question 1

A company runs a web application in Azure that experiences variable traffic throughout the day. During peak hours, the application becomes slow because the existing virtual machine (VM) cannot handle the increased load. The solution architect proposes adding more VMs of the same size and distributing incoming requests across all of them to balance the load. Which scaling concept does this approach represent?

Accepted Answer

Horizontal scaling. Horizontal scaling (also known as scaling out) involves adding more virtual machines of the same size to distribute incoming traffic across them. In this scenario, adding more VMs of the same size and using a load balancer to distribute requests directly matches the definition of horizontal scaling, which increases system capacity by adding more instances rather than increasing the power of a single instance.

Answer

Vertical scaling

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Elastic scaling

Answer

Disaster recovery

Question 2

A company runs an e-commerce web application on a set of Azure virtual machines behind a load balancer. The application experiences unpredictable traffic surges during flash sales. The company configures an autoscale setting that automatically adds virtual machines when the average CPU usage across the existing VMs exceeds 75% for five minutes, and removes virtual machines when CPU usage drops below 30% for ten minutes. Which essential characteristic of cloud computing does this configuration primarily demonstrate?

Accepted Answer

Rapid elasticity. B is correct because the autoscale configuration dynamically adds and removes virtual machines in response to real-time CPU usage thresholds, which is the defining characteristic of rapid elasticity. This allows the e-commerce application to scale computing resources up and down automatically and seamlessly to match unpredictable traffic surges, ensuring performance during flash sales without manual intervention.

Answer

Measured service

Answer

Resource pooling

Answer

Broad network access

Question 3

A company runs a critical line-of-business application on Azure virtual machines. The operations team needs to receive proactive notifications about any upcoming planned maintenance events that could affect their virtual machines, as well as real-time alerts when a service incident occurs in the Azure region where the application is deployed. The team wants a native Azure solution that provides a personalized view of all service health events relevant to their subscriptions, including historical incident reports. Which Azure service should the operations team use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Service Health. Azure Service Health provides a personalized dashboard of service health events, including planned maintenance notifications, real-time service incident alerts, and historical reports, all scoped to the user's subscriptions. This makes it the correct native Azure solution for the operations team's requirements.

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Azure Monitor

Answer

Azure Advisor

Answer

Azure Status Page (status.azure.com)

Question 4

A company stores compliance logs in Azure Blob Storage. The logs must remain available even if an entire Azure datacenter within the primary region fails. The company is cost-conscious and wants to minimize storage costs while meeting this availability requirement. The company does not need to access the data from a secondary location during a disaster. Which storage replication option should the company choose?

Accepted Answer

Zone-redundant storage (ZRS). Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) replicates data synchronously across three Azure availability zones within the primary region. This ensures data remains available even if an entire datacenter (one zone) fails, while avoiding the higher cost and cross-region replication of GRS. Since the company does not need secondary region access and wants to minimize costs, ZRS meets the requirement without paying for geo-redundancy.

Answer

Locally-redundant storage (LRS)

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Geo-redundant storage (GRS)

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

Question 5

A company operates a fleet of on-premises servers running legacy applications. Due to strict regulatory compliance requirements, these servers cannot be migrated to Azure. However, the IT team wants to centrally manage these servers using Azure tools, including applying Azure Policy to enforce configuration standards and using Azure Monitor for log collection and performance monitoring. The team needs to treat these on-premises servers as Azure resources without moving them. Which Azure service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Arc. Azure Arc is the correct service because it extends Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and Azure management plane to on-premises servers, allowing them to be treated as Azure resources without migration. With Azure Arc, you can apply Azure Policy to enforce configuration standards and use Azure Monitor for log collection and performance monitoring on these servers, meeting the regulatory compliance requirement of keeping them on-premises.

Answer

Azure Stack Edge

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Azure Site Recovery

Answer

Azure Policy

Question 6

A company needs to burst compute capacity during a seasonal sale event. They plan to use Azure virtual machines to handle the extra load and then release them after the event. They want to pay only for the extra resources used during that period. Which cloud characteristic best describes this?

Accepted Answer

Elasticity. Elasticity is the cloud characteristic that allows resources to automatically scale up to meet increased demand and scale down when demand decreases, ensuring you only pay for what you use. In this scenario, the company needs to burst compute capacity for a seasonal sale event and then release the VMs afterward, which is a textbook example of elasticity. This contrasts with other characteristics like high availability or geo-redundancy, which focus on uptime and data replication rather than dynamic scaling.

Answer

High availability

Answer

Geo-redundancy

Answer

Agility

Question 7

A company uses Azure Blueprints to define a standard environment with policies, role assignments, and resource groups. They publish a new version of the blueprint that adds a new role assignment. However, existing subscriptions created from older versions do not have this new role assignment. What must they do to apply the update to existing subscriptions?

Accepted Answer

They need to update the existing blueprint assignment to use the latest published version.. Azure Blueprints assignments are not automatically updated when a new version of the blueprint is published. To apply the new role assignment to existing subscriptions, you must update the existing blueprint assignment to reference the latest published version. This triggers Azure to evaluate and apply the changes defined in the new version, including the new role assignment, to the assigned subscriptions.

Answer

Delete and recreate the subscriptions using the new blueprint.

Answer

The blueprint version update is automatically applied to all existing subscriptions.

Answer

They must manually assign the role to each subscription.

Question 8

A company uses Azure Blueprints to define a standard environment. They publish a new version of the blueprint with an updated role assignment. All existing subscriptions that were created from an older version need to receive the new role assignment. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Use the 'Update existing assignments' option. Option D is correct because Azure Blueprints provides a built-in 'Update existing assignments' option that propagates changes from a published blueprint version to all existing assigned subscriptions. This ensures that updated role assignments are applied without manual intervention, maintaining consistency across the environment.

Answer

Reassign the blueprint to each subscription manually

Answer

The blueprint updates automatically

Answer

Manually add the role assignment to each subscription

Question 9

A company has a root management group that contains two child management groups: Production and Development. Each child management group contains several subscriptions. The security team assigns a built-in Azure Policy definition with the 'Deny' effect to the Production management group to enforce encryption on all storage accounts. Later, the Development team requests that storage accounts in their subscriptions must not be encrypted because they host temporary test data that needs to be quickly deleted and recreated. The security team must allow this exception for Development only, without changing the policy for Production. What should the security team do?

Accepted Answer

Create an Azure Policy exemption for the Development management group with the 'Mitigated' category.. Option D is correct because Azure Policy exemptions allow specific scopes (like the Development management group) to be excluded from a policy assignment's effect without modifying the original assignment. The 'Mitigated' category is used when a policy's intent is addressed by another method or when an exception is justified, such as for temporary test data that requires no encryption. This preserves the Deny effect for Production while permitting Development to have unencrypted storage accounts.

Answer

Assign a new policy with the 'Audit' effect at the Development management group to override the Deny effect.

Answer

Remove the policy assignment from the root management group and assign it individually to each Production subscription.

Answer

Create an Azure RBAC role assignment that grants the Development team permission to bypass the policy.

Question 10

A company currently budgets for maximum capacity to handle peak loads, resulting in underutilized resources during off-peak times. They want a model where they can quickly adjust resources up or down based on demand. Which cloud characteristic directly addresses this concern?

Accepted Answer

Elasticity. Elasticity is the cloud characteristic that enables automatic scaling of resources up or down in response to real-time demand. This directly addresses the company's need to avoid over-provisioning for peak loads while still being able to handle spikes without manual intervention, typically implemented through auto-scaling policies in services like Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets or Azure App Service autoscale.

Answer

High availability

Answer

Geo-redundancy

Answer

Fault tolerance

Question 11

A company has multiple on-premises file servers that store user home directories and department shares. The company wants to migrate these file shares to Azure Files to eliminate on-premises server maintenance. However, users frequently access large files, and the company wants to cache the most frequently accessed files locally on a small Windows Server machine at each branch office to minimize latency and bandwidth usage. The company also wants a single unified namespace so users can access files using the same path regardless of whether the files are cached locally or stored in Azure. Which Azure service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Azure File Sync. Azure File Sync is the correct choice because it enables caching of frequently accessed files on a local Windows Server at each branch office while maintaining a single unified namespace (the same UNC path). It synchronizes files between Azure Files and on-premises servers, allowing users to access files locally for low latency and bandwidth savings, while changes are synced to Azure. This directly addresses the requirement to eliminate on-premises server maintenance by using Azure Files as the primary storage, with local caching for performance.

Answer

Azure Blob Storage with Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Answer

Azure Site Recovery

Answer

Azure Migrate

Question 12

A company deploys an Azure SQL Database. The company is billed based on the amount of data stored and the number of transactions per second (DTUs). At the end of each month, the company receives an invoice that itemizes the exact usage and the corresponding charges. Which of the five essential characteristics of cloud computing does this billing model primarily demonstrate?

Accepted Answer

Measured service. The billing model for Azure SQL Database, which itemizes usage based on data stored and transactions per second (DTUs), directly demonstrates the 'Measured service' characteristic. This is because cloud providers meter and charge for resource consumption (storage and DTUs) with pay-per-use billing, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer. The detailed invoice showing exact usage and charges is the hallmark of measured service, where usage is monitored, controlled, and reported.

Answer

On-demand self-service

Answer

Broad network access

Answer

Resource pooling

Question 13

A company is evaluating cloud providers. They want to ensure that their data remains within a specific country due to legal requirements. Which cloud computing concept is most directly related to this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Data sovereignty. Data sovereignty is the concept that data is subject to the laws and governance structures of the country where it is physically stored. For a company with legal requirements to keep data within a specific country, this concept directly dictates where cloud providers must locate their data centers and how they handle data residency. Azure, for example, offers region pairs and data residency commitments through its Trust Center to help customers meet such compliance obligations.

Answer

Latency

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High availability

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Elasticity

Question 14

A company's IT manager is evaluating a public cloud provider. The provider's data center contains powerful physical servers that host virtual machines from thousands of different organizations. The manager is concerned about security, but the provider assures that each organization's VMs are logically isolated and cannot access each other's data, even though they share the same hardware. Which essential characteristic of cloud computing does this scenario best describe?

Accepted Answer

Resource pooling. The scenario describes resource pooling because the provider's physical servers host VMs from multiple organizations, and logical isolation ensures each tenant's data remains separate. Resource pooling is the cloud characteristic where computing resources (e.g., storage, processing, memory) are aggregated to serve multiple customers using a multi-tenant model, with physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to demand. The provider's assurance of logical isolation (e.g., via hypervisor-level segmentation or VLANs) is a direct implementation of resource pooling's security boundary.

Answer

Rapid elasticity

Answer

Measured service

Answer

Broad network access

Question 15

A company is migrating a web application to Azure. The web tier will run on Azure App Service (PaaS) and the database tier will use Azure SQL Database (PaaS). The company's IT team wants to understand their patching responsibilities for the underlying operating system (OS) of each service. According to the shared responsibility model, which statement is correct?

Accepted Answer

Microsoft is responsible for patching the operating system of both Azure App Service and Azure SQL Database.. In the shared responsibility model, Microsoft manages the underlying infrastructure for Platform as a Service (PaaS) services. Both Azure App Service and Azure SQL Database are PaaS offerings, meaning Microsoft handles OS patching, updates, and security for the host OS. The customer is responsible only for their application code and data, not the OS. Therefore, option D is correct.

Answer

The customer is responsible for patching the operating system of both Azure App Service and Azure SQL Database.

Answer

Microsoft is responsible for patching the operating system of Azure App Service, and the customer is responsible for patching the operating system of Azure SQL Database.

Answer

The customer is responsible for patching the operating system of Azure App Service, and Microsoft is responsible for patching the operating system of Azure SQL Database.

Question 16

A company runs multiple projects in Azure, each project is placed in a separate resource group. The finance team wants to set a monthly spending limit of $10,000 per project and receive automated email alerts when a project's spending reaches 80% of the limit and again when it exceeds the limit. The solution must use native Azure capabilities and be configurable per resource group. Which Azure service should the finance team use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Cost Management budgets with alert rules. Azure Cost Management budgets allow you to set spending limits at the scope of a resource group and configure alert rules that trigger automated email notifications when costs reach a specified threshold (e.g., 80% of the budget) and again when the limit is exceeded. This meets all requirements natively without additional automation or custom scripting.

Answer

Azure Policy with a built-in policy definition to enforce spending limits

Answer

Azure Advisor cost recommendations

Answer

Azure Resource Graph queries triggered by Azure Automation runbooks on a schedule

Question 17

A company manages hundreds of Azure SQL databases across multiple subscriptions. The compliance team requires that every Azure SQL database has diagnostic settings enabled to send logs to a central Log Analytics workspace. The team wants a solution that automatically configures diagnostic settings for any new Azure SQL database when it is created, without requiring manual intervention or additional scripting. Which Azure governance feature should the team use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Policy with the DeployIfNotExists effect. Azure Policy with the DeployIfNotExists effect is the correct choice because it automatically evaluates new Azure SQL databases against a policy rule and, if diagnostic settings are missing, triggers a remediation task to deploy them to the specified Log Analytics workspace. This effect operates at resource creation time without manual intervention or scripting, fulfilling the compliance team's requirement for automatic, consistent configuration across all subscriptions.

Answer

Azure Blueprints with a resource group artifact

Answer

Azure Resource Manager templates deployed via Azure DevOps

Answer

Azure Monitor with a data collection rule

Question 18

A company pays a monthly subscription fee for cloud services based on the resources they consume, such as the number of virtual machines or amount of storage used. There are no upfront costs or fixed long-term commitments. This pricing model is known as:

Accepted Answer

Pay-as-you-go. Pay-as-you-go (also called consumption-based pricing) is the correct model because it charges the customer only for the actual resources consumed (e.g., VM hours, storage GBs) with no upfront payment or termination penalties. This aligns directly with the scenario of a monthly subscription fee based on resource usage without long-term commitments.

Answer

Reserved instances

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Spot pricing

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Hybrid benefit

Question 19

A company's finance team wants to proactively monitor Azure spending and receive automated email notifications when costs reach 80% of a predefined monthly limit. They want to avoid manual cost tracking and set up alerts without custom scripting. Which Azure feature should they use?

Accepted Answer

Create a budget in Azure Cost Management with an alert at 80% of the budget amount.. Azure Cost Management budgets allow you to set a spending limit and configure alert thresholds (e.g., 80%) that trigger automated email notifications when costs reach that percentage. This meets the finance team's requirement for proactive monitoring without custom scripting or manual tracking.

Answer

Use Azure Advisor cost recommendations and configure an alert on the recommendations.

Answer

Configure an Azure Policy with a deny effect to block any spending that exceeds the monthly limit.

Answer

Use the Azure Pricing Calculator to estimate costs and set a manual reminder to check the Azure portal each month.

Question 20

A company migrates its web application to Azure. The CFO wants to view detailed reports of CPU usage, storage consumption, and network bandwidth for each team's resources to accurately allocate costs. The company uses Azure Cost Management and Billing to generate these reports. Which characteristic of cloud computing does this capability best illustrate?

Accepted Answer

Measured service. Measured service is the cloud characteristic that enables providers to track and report resource usage (CPU, storage, bandwidth) for billing and cost allocation. Azure Cost Management and Billing leverages this capability by aggregating consumption metrics from Azure Monitor and resource providers, then generating detailed reports that allow the CFO to allocate costs per team. Without measured service, granular usage-based billing and cost attribution would not be possible.

Answer

Rapid elasticity

Answer

Resource pooling

Answer

On-demand self-service