AZ-900 Timed Practice Test 5 — 10 Questions

Question 1

A manufacturing company traditionally relied on an internal IT team to procure, configure, and install physical servers for each new project. The provisioning process typically took three to four weeks. After migrating to Azure, developers can now provision virtual machines and other resources directly from the Azure portal within minutes without any interaction with the IT team. This capability best represents which characteristic of cloud computing?

Accepted Answer

On-demand self-service. The scenario describes users provisioning virtual machines directly from the Azure portal without IT intervention. This aligns with on-demand self-service, a core cloud characteristic defined by NIST SP 800-145, where a consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider.

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Rapid elasticity

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Measured service

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Resource pooling

Question 2

A hospital stores patient data in the cloud. They are concerned about physical security at the datacenter. Which aspect of the shared responsibility model describes the cloud provider's obligation to secure the physical infrastructure?

Accepted Answer

Security of physical hardware. In the shared responsibility model, the cloud provider is always responsible for the physical security of the datacenter, including the physical hardware, environmental controls (power, cooling), and physical access controls. This is a foundational principle of the model: the provider secures the physical layer, while the customer secures what they deploy on top of it.

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Security of the network infrastructure

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Security of customer data

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Security of operating systems

Question 3

A company wants to receive notifications when Azure services in their region experience an outage or planned maintenance that might affect their resources. Which Azure service should they set up alerts for?

Accepted Answer

Azure Service Health. Azure Service Health is the correct service because it provides personalized alerts and notifications specifically for Azure service issues—such as outages and planned maintenance—that affect your subscriptions and resources in a given region. It combines global service health information with region-specific and resource-specific impacts, allowing you to configure alerts via Azure Service Health alerts (formerly known as Service Health Alerts).

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Azure Monitor

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Azure Advisor

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Azure Resource Health

Question 4

A manufacturing company deploys a batch processing application on Azure. The processing workload is highly unpredictable; sometimes the application requires hundreds of virtual machines for a few hours to process a large queue of jobs, and at other times it requires only a handful of virtual machines. The company configures the application to automatically add and remove virtual machines based on the size of the processing queue, ensuring that they never pay for idle capacity. Which cloud characteristic does this scenario primarily demonstrate?

Accepted Answer

Elasticity. The scenario describes automatically scaling the number of virtual machines up and down based on the queue size, which directly aligns with the cloud characteristic of elasticity. Elasticity allows resources to be dynamically provisioned and de-provisioned to match workload demand, ensuring the company never pays for idle capacity. This is distinct from high availability, fault tolerance, or disaster recovery, which focus on uptime, redundancy, and data protection rather than dynamic scaling.

Answer

High availability

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Fault tolerance

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Disaster recovery

Question 5

A company wants to run a containerized microservices application on Azure. They need automatic scaling based on demand, service discovery, and rolling updates without manual intervention. They want to avoid managing the underlying virtual machines. Which Azure compute service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is the correct choice because it provides a managed Kubernetes orchestration platform that supports automatic scaling (Horizontal Pod Autoscaler), service discovery (via DNS and Kubernetes Services), and rolling updates (via Deployment strategies) without requiring you to manage the underlying VMs. AKS abstracts the control plane and node management, aligning perfectly with the requirement to avoid VM management while offering full container orchestration capabilities.

Answer

Azure Container Instances (ACI)

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Azure App Service

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Azure Functions

Question 6

A company wants to run a containerized application in Azure without managing any virtual machines. They need automatic scaling, load balancing, and service discovery. Which Azure compute 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 platform that abstracts away the underlying virtual machines. AKS handles automatic scaling via the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) and cluster autoscaler, built-in load balancing through Azure Load Balancer integration, and service discovery using Kubernetes DNS (CoreDNS). This meets the requirement of running containerized applications without managing VMs.

Answer

Azure Container Instances

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Azure App Service

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Azure Virtual Machines

Question 7

A startup expects rapid growth and wants its cloud infrastructure to automatically add or remove compute resources based on real-time demand without manual intervention. Which cloud characteristic does this describe?

Accepted Answer

Elasticity. Elasticity is the cloud characteristic that enables automatic scaling of compute resources up or down in response to real-time demand. This startup's requirement to add or remove resources without manual intervention directly matches the definition of elasticity, which is a core benefit of cloud computing.

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High availability

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Fault tolerance

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Disaster recovery

Question 8

A global company is designing a disaster recovery solution for a critical application. They plan to deploy the application to two Azure regions. The company wants to minimize the risk of both regions failing simultaneously due to a major platform update or a widespread natural disaster. Which Azure feature provides a specific pairing of regions to meet this goal?

Accepted Answer

Azure region pairs. Azure region pairs are designed to ensure that two paired regions are updated sequentially during platform maintenance, reducing the risk of simultaneous failure. They are also physically separated by at least 300 miles to minimize the impact of natural disasters. This meets the company's goal of minimizing simultaneous failure risk from both a major platform update and a widespread natural disaster.

Answer

Availability Zones within a single region

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Azure Traffic Manager with geographic routing

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Azure Site Recovery replication between any two regions of your choice

Question 9

A financial services company processes sensitive customer data and must strictly control the physical location of the servers. They want to use cloud computing but with dedicated hardware that is not shared with other customers. Which cloud deployment model should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Private cloud. A private cloud is the correct deployment model because it provides dedicated, single-tenant infrastructure that is not shared with other customers. This ensures that the financial services company can maintain strict physical control over server locations and meet compliance requirements for sensitive customer data, as the hardware is exclusively used by one organization.

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Public cloud

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Hybrid cloud

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Community cloud

Question 10

A small business wants to run its accounting application without managing the underlying operating systems or hardware. The application is accessed through a web browser. Which cloud service model is being used?

Accepted Answer

Software as a Service (SaaS). The correct answer is C (SaaS) because the business uses a web browser to access the accounting application without managing the underlying OS or hardware. SaaS delivers fully functional software over the internet, where the provider handles all infrastructure, platform, and application management, matching the scenario's requirement of zero administrative overhead.

Answer

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

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Platform as a Service (PaaS)

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Functions as a Service (FaaS)