A compliance team keeps signed contract scans in blob storage. The files are usually not accessed, but when they are needed they must be available immediately without waiting for rehydration. The team wants the lowest-cost online tier that still allows immediate reads. Which access tier should you choose?
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.
Distractor review
Cool
Cool is meant for infrequent access, but it is usually more expensive than Cold for long-term online retention.
Best answer
Cold
Cold is an online tier intended for infrequently accessed data that still must remain immediately readable.
Distractor review
Archive
Archive has the lowest storage cost, but data is offline and cannot be read immediately without rehydration.
Distractor review
Hot
Hot is online and immediately readable, but it is not the lowest-cost choice for infrequently accessed data.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: NAT rules depend on direction and matching traffic
NAT is not only about the public address. The inside/outside interface roles and the ACL or rule that matches traffic are just as important.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
NAT questions usually test address translation, overload/PAT behaviour, static mappings and whether the right traffic is being translated. Read the interface direction and address terms carefully.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
- PAT allows many inside hosts to share one public address using ports.
- Inside local and inside global describe the private and translated addresses.
- NAT ACLs identify traffic for translation, not always security filtering.
TExam Day Tips
- Identify inside and outside interfaces first.
- Check whether the scenario needs static NAT, dynamic NAT or PAT.
- Do not confuse NAT matching ACLs with normal packet-filtering intent.
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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?
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Cold — Cold is the best fit because the data must remain online and readable immediately, yet it is accessed only rarely. That combination favors an infrequent-access online tier rather than Archive, which would require rehydration first. Hot would work functionally, but it is not cost-effective for long-term retention of documents that are mostly left untouched. Cold balances availability and lower storage cost for this usage pattern. Why others are wrong: Hot provides immediate access but is more expensive than needed. Cool is also online, but the scenario asks for the lowest-cost online tier. Archive is not acceptable because it is offline, so users would have to wait for rehydration before opening a blob.
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.
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