Question 1mediummultiple choice
Full question →mediummultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A company runs two identical Linux VMs for a stateless web app in an Azure region that supports availability zones. The business requires protection from a full datacenter outage, not just planned host maintenance. Which deployment choice best meets this requirement?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
A
Distractor review
Place both VMs in an availability set.
An availability set spreads VMs across fault and update domains, but it does not protect against an entire datacenter failure.
B
Best answer
Deploy the VMs across availability zones.
Availability zones place resources in physically separate datacenters within the same region. If one zone becomes unavailable, the other zone can continue serving traffic. That makes zones the correct choice when the requirement is resilience to a datacenter-scale outage. They provide stronger isolation than availability sets, which mainly protect against host and maintenance failures inside a single datacenter boundary.
C
Distractor review
Use a proximity placement group for both VMs.
A proximity placement group reduces network latency by placing resources close together. It is a performance feature, not a high-availability feature.
D
Distractor review
Deploy both VMs in a single-zone virtual machine scale set.
A scale set can simplify management, but a single-zone deployment still depends on one zone. It does not satisfy datacenter failure protection.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Many certification questions include familiar terms but test a specific constraint. Read the exact wording before choosing an answer that is generally true but wrong for this case.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
This question should be treated as a scenario, not a definition check. Identify the problem, the constraint and the best action. Then compare each option against those facts.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
- Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
- Use explanations to understand the rule behind the answer.
TExam Day Tips
- Underline the problem statement mentally.
- Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
- Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Related practice questions
Related AZ-104 practice-question pages
Use these pages to review the topic behind this question. This is how one missed question becomes focused revision.
AZ-104 Azure RBAC practice questions
Practise AZ-104 questions linked to AZ-104 Azure RBAC.
AZ-104 storage account practice questions
Practise AZ-104 questions linked to AZ-104 storage account.
AZ-104 virtual network practice questions
Practise AZ-104 questions linked to AZ-104 virtual network.
AZ-104 NSG practice questions
Practise AZ-104 questions linked to AZ-104 NSG.
AZ-104 Azure Monitor practice questions
Practise AZ-104 questions linked to AZ-104 Azure Monitor.
AZ-104 backup practice questions
Practise AZ-104 questions linked to AZ-104 backup.
AZ-104 managed identity practice questions
Practise AZ-104 questions linked to AZ-104 managed identity.
AZ-104 load balancer practice questions
Practise AZ-104 questions linked to AZ-104 load balancer.
AZ-104 Azure Policy practice questions
Practise AZ-104 questions linked to AZ-104 Azure Policy.
AZ-104 virtual machine practice questions
Practise AZ-104 questions linked to AZ-104 virtual machine.
More questions from this exam
Keep practising from the same exam bank, or move into a focused topic page if this question exposed a weak area.
Question 1
A route table contains these entries: 10.0.0.0/8 with next hop Virtual appliance, and 10.1.1.0/24 with next hop Virtual network gateway. Which next hop will Azure use for traffic to 10.1.1.5?
Question 2
You are deploying a stateless web application on Azure virtual machines. The solution must automatically add and remove instances based on CPU demand and allow all instances to be managed as one logical group. Which Azure compute feature should you deploy?
Question 3
You are deploying a Windows Server VM for an internal app. The VM must support Secure Boot and vTPM later, its OS disk must survive host moves, and the team wants the lowest-cost managed disk tier that still behaves like a normal writable OS disk. Which two choices should you make? Select two.
Question 4
You need to deploy several identical virtual machines and ensure that the failure of a single Azure host does not affect all of them. Which feature should you use?
Question 5
You need to connect VNet-Hub and VNet-Spoke so that resources in both virtual networks can communicate privately over the Microsoft backbone. Both virtual networks are in the same region. What should you configure?
Question 6
You need to create a storage account that provides the lowest-cost redundant storage for non-critical data and only needs protection against local disk or server failure within a single datacenter. Which redundancy option should you choose?
FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this AZ-104 question test?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Deploy the VMs across availability zones. — Availability zones are designed for resilience against a full datacenter or zone outage by distributing resources across separate physical locations in the region. For a stateless application, placing the VMs in different zones gives the workload the best chance of surviving a localized infrastructure loss. This is stronger protection than an availability set, which only spreads VMs across update and fault domains inside a single datacenter boundary. Why others are wrong: An availability set improves uptime during host maintenance and some hardware failures, but it does not span multiple datacenters. A proximity placement group is useful when low latency between resources matters, but it does nothing for fault tolerance. A single-zone virtual machine scale set can simplify operations and scaling, yet it still leaves all instances dependent on one zone, so it does not meet the outage requirement.
What should I do if I get this AZ-104 question wrong?
Then try more questions from the same exam bank and focus on understanding why the wrong options are tempting.
Discussion
Loading comments…
Sign in to join the discussion.