DP-900 Identify considerations for relational data on Azure Practice Test 5 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is migrating a 3-TB on-premises SQL Server database to Azure. The database heavily uses cross-database queries with three-part names (e.g., db.schema.table) and relies on SQL Server Agent for scheduled maintenance jobs. They want a fully managed PaaS service with automatic backups and patching, while minimizing application code changes. Which Azure SQL service should they choose?

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

Accepted Answer

Azure SQL Managed Instance. Azure SQL Managed Instance is the correct choice because it provides near-100% compatibility with on-premises SQL Server, including support for cross-database queries using three-part names (db.schema.table) and SQL Server Agent for scheduled maintenance jobs. As a fully managed PaaS service, it offers automatic backups, patching, and high availability while minimizing application code changes, unlike Azure SQL Database which lacks cross-database query support and SQL Agent.

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Azure SQL Database (single database)

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Azure SQL Database (elastic pool)

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Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool

Question 2

A company runs a customer-facing web application that uses an Azure SQL Database. The database experiences highly variable workloads: high traffic during business hours and low traffic at night and on weekends. The company wants to pay only for the compute resources consumed and automatically scale compute capacity based on demand, while maintaining the ability to pause during inactivity. Which Azure SQL Database service tier should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Serverless. The Serverless tier is designed for workloads with variable traffic and idle periods, as it automatically scales compute resources based on demand and can pause the database during inactivity, charging only for consumed compute and storage. This matches the requirement to pay only for resources used and to pause when there is no traffic, such as at night and weekends.

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Hyperscale

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Provisioned (General Purpose)

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Business Critical

Question 3

A company is migrating a 2-TB on-premises SQL Server database to Azure. The database uses SQL Server Agent jobs for scheduled maintenance, relies on linked servers to query data from another SQL Server instance, and requires cross-database queries within the same instance. The company wants a fully managed PaaS service that minimizes application code changes and provides automatic backups and patching. Which Azure SQL service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure SQL Managed Instance. Azure SQL Managed Instance is the correct choice because it provides near 100% compatibility with on-premises SQL Server, including support for SQL Server Agent jobs, linked servers, and cross-database queries within the same instance. As a fully managed PaaS service, it offers automatic backups, patching, and high availability while minimizing application code changes, unlike Azure SQL Database which lacks instance-scoped features.

Answer

Azure SQL Database (Single Database)

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Azure SQL Database (Elastic Pool)

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SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machine

Question 4

A company is migrating a 500 GB on-premises SQL Server database to Azure. The database uses SQL Server Agent for scheduled maintenance jobs and requires the ability to run cross-database queries within the same logical server. The company wants a PaaS service that minimizes management overhead for patching and backups while preserving these SQL Server features. Which Azure SQL service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure SQL Managed Instance. Azure SQL Managed Instance is the correct choice because it provides near 100% compatibility with on-premises SQL Server, including SQL Server Agent and cross-database queries within the same instance. As a PaaS service, it handles patching and backups automatically, minimizing management overhead while preserving these required features.

Answer

Azure SQL Database

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SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machine

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Azure Database for MySQL

Question 5

A financial company is migrating a 2-TB on-premises SQL Server database to Azure. The database uses SQL Server Agent jobs for data validation and cleanup, and it performs cross-database queries using three-part names (e.g., DB1.schema.table). The company requires a fully managed PaaS service that supports these features with minimal application changes. Which Azure SQL service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure SQL Managed Instance. Azure SQL Managed Instance is the correct choice because it provides near-100% compatibility with on-premises SQL Server, including support for SQL Server Agent jobs and cross-database queries using three-part names (e.g., DB1.schema.table). As a fully managed PaaS service, it minimizes application changes while offloading infrastructure management, making it ideal for migrating a 2-TB database with these specific requirements.

Answer

Azure SQL Database (single database)

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Azure SQL Database elastic pool

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SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machine

Question 6

A company plans to migrate an on-premises SQL Server database to Azure. The database uses SQL Server Agent jobs for scheduled maintenance and relies on linked servers to query data from another SQL Server instance. It also performs cross-database queries within the same instance. The company wants a fully managed PaaS service that requires minimal application changes and provides automated backups and patching. Which Azure SQL service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

B. Azure SQL Managed Instance. Azure SQL Managed Instance is the correct choice because it provides near 100% compatibility with on-premises SQL Server, including support for SQL Server Agent jobs, linked servers, and cross-database queries within the same instance. It is a fully managed PaaS service that offers automated backups and patching, minimizing application changes during migration.

Answer

A. Azure SQL Database (single database)

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C. SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines

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D. Azure SQL Database elastic pool

Question 7

A company has a suite of 20 e-commerce applications, each with its own SQL Server database. The databases vary in size from 5 GB to 100 GB and have unpredictable usage patterns with bursty peaks. The company wants to migrate to Azure SQL Database to benefit from built-in high availability and automatic backups. They need to minimize costs by only paying for the resources each database actually uses, and they want to avoid over-provisioning for peak loads. Which Azure SQL Database deployment option should they 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 resources (DTUs or vCores), enabling cost efficiency by pooling and reallocating resources across databases with unpredictable, bursty usage patterns. This avoids over-provisioning for peak loads while still providing built-in high availability and automatic backups, as each database in the pool benefits from these features without needing individual resource reservations.

Answer

Azure SQL Database (single database) with Serverless compute tier

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Azure SQL Managed Instance

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Azure SQL Database Hyperscale

Question 8

A company has 15 SQL Server databases, ranging from 50 GB to 200 GB each. The databases experience unpredictable load spikes during the day. They want to migrate to Azure SQL Database to minimize management overhead and reduce costs by allowing databases to share resources, while ensuring each database can burst to higher performance when needed. Which deployment option should they choose?

Accepted Answer

B) Elastic pool. Elastic pools allow multiple databases to share a fixed pool of resources (DTUs or vCores), which reduces costs by pooling unused capacity and enables each database to automatically burst to higher performance when needed. This matches the company's need to minimize management overhead while handling unpredictable load spikes across 15 databases ranging from 50 GB to 200 GB.

Answer

A) Single database with Provisioned throughput tier

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C) SQL Managed Instance

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D) SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machine

Question 9

A company is migrating a 500 GB financial database to Azure. The database requires low read/write latency, supports a high number of concurrent transactions, and must have a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of less than 5 seconds and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 30 minutes. The company is willing to pay more for these guarantees. Which Azure SQL Database service tier should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Business Critical. Business Critical is the correct choice because it provides the lowest read/write latency through always-on secondary replicas and uses local SSD storage, which is essential for high-concurrency transactional workloads. It also guarantees an RPO of less than 5 seconds via synchronous data replication and an RTO of under 30 minutes, meeting the strict recovery requirements.

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General Purpose

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Hyperscale

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Serverless (General Purpose)

Question 10

A company needs to migrate 10 on-premises SQL Server databases (each 50–200 GB) to Azure. The databases frequently run cross-database queries using three-part names (e.g., DB1.dbo.table) and rely on SQL Server Agent for maintenance tasks. They want to minimize management overhead and share resources across databases to reduce costs. Which Azure SQL deployment option should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure SQL Managed Instance. Azure SQL Managed Instance is correct because it provides native support for cross-database queries using three-part names (e.g., DB1.dbo.table) and SQL Server Agent for maintenance tasks, which are critical requirements. It also offers a fully managed platform that minimizes management overhead while allowing resource sharing across databases within the instance, reducing costs compared to single databases or VMs.

Answer

Azure SQL Database elastic pool

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SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machine

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Azure SQL Database single database

Question 11

A financial services company runs a single SQL Server database that is 6 TB in size and handles a high volume of concurrent transactions. The database needs to support near real-time analytics without impacting OLTP performance. The company wants to migrate to Azure SQL Database and requires fast scale-out for read workloads, as well as the ability to independently scale compute and storage. Which Azure SQL Database service tier should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Hyperscale. Hyperscale is the correct choice because it is designed for databases up to 100 TB, supports high-volume concurrent transactions, and provides near real-time read scale-out via named replicas that offload read workloads without affecting OLTP performance. It also allows independent scaling of compute (vCores) and storage (auto-scaled), meeting the company's requirements for fast scale-out and decoupled resources.

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Serverless

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Business Critical

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General Purpose

Question 12

A company is migrating a relational database to Azure SQL Database. They anticipate that the amount of stored data will grow significantly over time, but the compute requirements (CPU and memory) will remain relatively stable. Which purchasing model should they choose to allow independent scaling of storage and compute?

Accepted Answer

vCore-based purchasing model. The vCore-based purchasing model separates compute and storage costs, allowing you to scale storage independently without changing compute resources. This matches the scenario where data grows but compute requirements remain stable, as you can increase storage capacity without upgrading CPU or memory.

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DTU-based purchasing model

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Serverless compute tier

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Hyperscale service tier

Question 13

A company uses Azure SQL Database for its e-commerce platform. The reporting team runs complex, long-running queries that join multiple tables and would degrade performance of the transactional workload if executed on the primary database. Which Azure SQL Database feature should the company enable to isolate the reporting queries while ensuring read-only access to the most current data?

Accepted Answer

Read scale-out (read-only replicas). Read scale-out (read-only replicas) allows you to offload reporting queries to a read-only replica of the Azure SQL Database, ensuring that complex, long-running queries do not degrade the performance of the primary transactional workload. The replica provides access to the most current data because it uses snapshot isolation and is transactionally consistent with the primary database.

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Automatic tuning

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Geo-replication

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Elastic query

Question 14

A global e-commerce company uses Azure SQL Database for its product catalog. The database is hosted in the West US region. To ensure the catalog remains available if West US experiences an outage, the company wants to configure a secondary database in East US that can be used for reads and can be automatically promoted to primary during a disaster. They require a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of less than 5 seconds and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 30 minutes. Which feature should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Auto-failover groups. Auto-failover groups (Option B) are the correct choice because they provide automatic, orchestrated failover of a primary Azure SQL Database to a secondary region (East US) during an outage, meeting the RPO of less than 5 seconds (typically 5–10 seconds for active geo-replication) and RTO of less than 30 minutes (usually under 1 hour). The secondary database can be used for read-only queries, and the failover group ensures the entire group of databases fails over as a unit, maintaining the same connection string.

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Active geo-replication

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Geo-restore

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Transactional replication

Question 15

A company has 12 SQL Server databases, each about 30 GB. The databases experience unpredictable load spikes during the day. The company wants to migrate to Azure SQL Database to reduce administrative overhead and optimize costs by sharing resources among the databases. Which deployment option should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Elastic pool. Elastic pools are designed to share resources (eDTUs or eVCores) among multiple databases with unpredictable, overlapping load spikes. By pooling resources, the company can optimize costs because databases do not all peak simultaneously, and the pool’s total resource allocation is lower than the sum of individual peak requirements. This reduces administrative overhead by providing a single management point for scaling and monitoring all databases in the pool.

Answer

Single database with provisioned DTU

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Managed Instance

Answer

SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machine