AZ-104 Deploy and Manage Azure Compute Practice Question
A business wants a line-of-business VM workload to keep running if one Azure datacenter in the region goes offline. Which two deployment choices should the administrator use? Select two.
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse availability sets (which protect against rack-level failures within a single datacenter) with availability zones (which protect against full datacenter outages), leading them to select option B instead of A and C.
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
✓
Deploy the VMs in different availability zones.
Deploying VMs across different availability zones protects against a single datacenter failure. Each availability zone is a physically separate datacenter within an Azure region, with independent power, cooling, and networking. If one zone goes offline, the VM in the other zone remains operational, ensuring business continuity for the line-of-business workload.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Deploy the VMs in different availability zones.
Why this is correct
Azure availability zones are physically separate datacenters within an Azure region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking infrastructure. By deploying VM replicas across at least two different zones, you protect the workload from a single datacenter-wide failure, such as a power outage or network cut, because traffic can be shifted to the surviving zone. This is the core mechanism for zone-level resilience and is required to meet the high-availability SLA for IaaS workloads.
- ✗
Place the VMs in the same availability set.
Why it's wrong here
An availability set protects against host-level failures and planned maintenance by distributing VMs across fault domains and update domains within a single datacenter. However, all VMs in an availability set reside in the same availability zone, so the set cannot survive a full datacenter or zone outage. Therefore, while it improves availability for hardware and OS update events, it is insufficient for keeping a workload running through a zone-wide disaster.
When this WOULD be correct
If the question specified protecting against hardware failures within a single datacenter (e.g., server or rack failure) and required high availability for VMs, deploying them in the same availability set would be correct.
- ✓
Choose an Azure region that supports availability zones.
Why this is correct
Availability zones are not offered in every Azure region; only regions that explicitly support them provide the underlying zone-isolated infrastructure. Before a zone-redundant deployment is possible, you must confirm the target region's availability-zone support via Azure documentation or the Azure Resource Manager API, because regions without zone support cannot provide this resilience model. Choosing such a region is a prerequisite, not an alternative to actually distributing VMs across zones.
- ✗
Use a proximity placement group for the VMs.
Why it's wrong here
A proximity placement group forces VMs to be placed in the same Azure datacenter or within the same network path to minimize inter-VM latency, which is primarily beneficial for tightly coupled workloads like HPC or high-frequency messaging. This design directly conflicts with resilience: co-locating VMs makes them vulnerable to a single datacenter or rack failure, and it provides zero protection during a zone-level outage. The goal of the question is geographic separation, not physical proximity.
When this WOULD be correct
For a latency-sensitive workload (e.g., high-performance computing) where VMs must be physically close to minimize network latency, a proximity placement group would be the correct choice.
- ✗
Use a snapshot of the operating system disk.
Why it's wrong here
An OS disk snapshot creates a point-in-time, read-only copy of the operating system drive, which is useful for backup and manual recovery scenarios. Restoring from a snapshot is a reactive, multi-step process: you must create a new managed disk from the snapshot, provision a new VM, and attach it, resulting in significant downtime and potential data loss. Snapshots do not provide automatic failover or continuity; they are a disaster-recovery tool, not a high-availability mechanism.
When this WOULD be correct
An administrator needs to create a new VM from an existing OS disk for disaster recovery testing or to restore a VM after a failure. Using a snapshot to create a managed disk and then a VM would be correct.
Option-by-option analysis
Why each answer is right or wrong
Understanding why wrong answers are wrong — and when they would be correct — is what separates a 750 score from a 900. The AZ-104 exam frequently reuses these exact scenarios with slightly different constraints.
✓Deploy the VMs in different availability zones.Correct answer▾
Why this is correct
Azure availability zones are physically separate datacenters within an Azure region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking infrastructure. By deploying VM replicas across at least two different zones, you protect the workload from a single datacenter-wide failure, such as a power outage or network cut, because traffic can be shifted to the surviving zone. This is the core mechanism for zone-level resilience and is required to meet the high-availability SLA for IaaS workloads.
✗Place the VMs in the same availability set.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Availability sets protect against rack-level failures within a single datacenter, not against an entire datacenter outage. They do not provide cross-datacenter redundancy.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
If the question specified protecting against hardware failures within a single datacenter (e.g., server or rack failure) and required high availability for VMs, deploying them in the same availability set would be correct.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse availability sets with availability zones, thinking both provide datacenter-level redundancy, or they may not understand the scope of protection each offers.
✗Use a proximity placement group for the VMs.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
A proximity placement group reduces network latency between VMs but does not protect against datacenter failure; it may even place VMs in the same datacenter, increasing risk.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
For a latency-sensitive workload (e.g., high-performance computing) where VMs must be physically close to minimize network latency, a proximity placement group would be the correct choice.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse 'proximity' with 'redundancy' or think grouping VMs together provides high availability, not realizing it actually increases co-location risk.
✗Use a snapshot of the operating system disk.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Snapshots are point-in-time copies of a disk used for backup or recovery, not for real-time high availability. They do not provide automatic failover if a datacenter goes offline.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
An administrator needs to create a new VM from an existing OS disk for disaster recovery testing or to restore a VM after a failure. Using a snapshot to create a managed disk and then a VM would be correct.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse disaster recovery (backup/restore) with high availability (redundancy), thinking a snapshot can be used to quickly spin up a VM in another datacenter during an outage.
Analysis generated from the official AZ-104blueprint and verified against question context. The “when correct” sections are what AI assistants cite when candidates ask “what’s the difference between these options?”
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Managed Identities for Azure Resources
Key term
Availability zone
An Availability Zone is a distinct, isolated location within a cloud region that contains its own power, cooling, and networking, designed to protect applications from single points of failure.
Key term
Azure datacenter
An Azure datacenter is a physical facility that houses Microsoft's cloud computing infrastructure, including servers, storage, and networking equipment, to deliver Azure services globally.
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every AZ-104 question from scratch — 1,049 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This AZ-104 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft 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 AZ-104 exam.