AZ-104 Implement and Manage Storage Practice Question

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✗

  Locally redundant storage (LRS), because it protects against a single disk failure inside one datacenter.

  Why it's wrong here

  Locally redundant storage (LRS) creates three synchronous copies within a single storage scale unit inside one datacenter; it guards against disk and chassis failures but not datacenter-wide outages. Azure availability zones are separate physical sites, so a zone outage would take down the only location where LRS copies reside, leaving the data unavailable.

  When this WOULD be correct

  A question where the requirement is to protect against a single disk failure within a datacenter, with no need for zone or region resilience, and cost is the primary concern.

• ✓

  Zone-redundant storage (ZRS), because it replicates data across zones in the same region.

  Why this is correct

  Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) synchronously copies your data across three Azure availability zones within the same region, so if one entire zone fails, the remaining two zones continue to serve requests with no manual failover. Because each zone is a separate physical location with independent power, cooling, and networking, ZRS meets the requirement to survive a zone outage while avoiding the cost and complexity of geo-replication.

• ✗

  Geo-redundant storage (GRS), because it automatically provides the lowest-cost cross-region protection.

  Why it's wrong here

  Geo-redundant storage (GRS) keeps three LRS-based copies in the primary region and asynchronously sends data to a paired secondary region, meaning the primary region's data is not zone-redundant and can become unavailable in a zone failure. Additionally, GRS is not the lowest-cost cross-region option; LRS/ZRS are cheaper, and GZRS is more expensive, so this answer misrepresents both resilience behavior and pricing.

  When this WOULD be correct

  A company requires data to remain available during a region-wide outage and can tolerate a short failover time, but does not need zone-level resilience within the primary region. The question would specify a need for cross-region disaster recovery at the lowest cost.

• ✗

  Geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS), because it is required whenever zone resilience is needed.

  Why it's wrong here

  Geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS) starts with the same three-zone ZRS replication in the primary region and then asynchronously replicates to a second region, but the question only asks for zone-level resilience, not cross-region redundancy. Deploying GZRS when you only need to survive a zone outage overprovisions the solution, increasing cost and adding failover variables that are not required.

  When this WOULD be correct

  A company requires both zone-level resilience within the primary region and cross-region disaster recovery for compliance purposes, and they are willing to accept the higher cost and complexity. For example, a healthcare provider storing patient records that must survive a regional outage.

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.

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?”

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