Databricks-ML-Assoc Model Deployment Practice Question
A team serves a model with Databricks Model Serving and wants to send production traffic to a newly registered model version while keeping the ability to revert instantly if quality degrades. They prefer not to edit the endpoint configuration to switch versions. Which approach best fits this requirement?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is believing that stage transitions or version pinning can switch production traffic, when the served entity must reference an alias to allow promotion and rollback without a configuration change.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Create a model alias such as Champion in Unity Catalog, point the served entity at that alias, and move the alias between versions to promote or roll back.
Serving through a Unity Catalog alias decouples the endpoint configuration from the specific model version. Promotion and rollback become operations on the alias, so traffic shifts to the new version or back to the previous one without editing or redeploying the endpoint, which is exactly the instant-revert capability the team needs.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Update the endpoint to reference the new model version by number and rely on the previous version remaining in the registry.
Why it's wrong here
Pinning a served entity to a specific version number means every promotion or rollback requires an endpoint configuration update, which triggers a deployment and brief unavailability. Keeping the old version in the registry does not make reverting instant, because the endpoint still has to be reconfigured and redeployed to point at it.
- ✗
Deploy a separate endpoint per model version and update the client to choose which endpoint to call.
Why it's wrong here
Running one endpoint per version multiplies infrastructure cost and pushes version selection into every client, which is brittle and hard to coordinate. It also does not provide a single control point for promotion or rollback; instead, each client must be redeployed or reconfigured, increasing the chance of inconsistent traffic.
- ✓
Create a model alias such as Champion in Unity Catalog, point the served entity at that alias, and move the alias between versions to promote or roll back.
Why this is correct
Aliases are mutable pointers to a model version, and a served entity can reference an alias instead of a fixed version. Moving the alias from the old version to the new one shifts traffic without editing the endpoint, and moving it back reverts instantly. This matches the requirement to promote and roll back without configuration changes.
- ✗
Use the workspace model registry and transition the model version between Staging and Production stages to switch traffic.
Why it's wrong here
Stage transitions belong to the workspace model registry workflow and are not the mechanism a served entity uses to select a version. The endpoint must still reference the version or alias it serves, so transitioning stages alone does not redirect traffic or provide the instant rollback the team wants without touching the endpoint.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Databricks exam blueprint
This Databricks-ML-Assoc practice question is part of Courseiva's free Databricks certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the Databricks-ML-Assoc exam.