AZ-104 Implement and Manage Storage Practice Question
This AZ-104 practice question tests your understanding of implement and manage storage. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A finance team stores monthly reports in Azure Blob Storage. The data must remain available if one datacenter in the Azure region fails, but the company does not need read access from a secondary region. Which redundancy option should the administrator choose?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Zone-redundant storage (ZRS)
Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) replicates data synchronously across three Azure availability zones within a single region, ensuring durability even if one datacenter (zone) fails. Since the requirement specifies no need for read access from a secondary region, ZRS meets the high-availability need without the cost or complexity of geo-replication.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
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)
Why it's wrong here
LRS keeps copies inside one datacenter, so it does not protect against a zone or datacenter outage.
✓
Zone-redundant storage (ZRS)
Why this is correct
ZRS stores replicas across availability zones in the same region, which matches this availability requirement.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Geo-redundant storage (GRS)
Why it's wrong here
GRS adds a secondary region, which is more than the requirement and changes the recovery design.
✗
Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS)
Why it's wrong here
RA-GRS also provides read access from the secondary region, which the question explicitly does not require.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often choose GRS or RA-GRS because they assume any datacenter failure requires a secondary region, but ZRS within a single region is sufficient and more cost-effective when only one datacenter (zone) fails and secondary read access is not needed.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
ZRS uses synchronous replication across availability zones, meaning all three copies are updated before a write is acknowledged, providing strong consistency within the region. In contrast, GRS uses asynchronous replication to the secondary region, introducing a recovery point objective (RPO) of typically 15 minutes, which could result in data loss during a regional disaster. For workloads that only need intra-region resilience, ZRS offers a cost-effective balance between durability and availability without cross-region latency.
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.
TExam Day Tips
→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.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A startup's cloud architect reviews their monthly bill and notices costs are higher than expected for a long-running batch job. Switching from on-demand instances to Reserved Instances — or using Spot/Preemptible VMs — can reduce compute costs by up to 72 %. Questions like this test whether you understand the tradeoffs between commitment, flexibility, and cost across cloud pricing models.
Related glossary terms
Concepts from this question explained
These glossary pages explain the core terms tested in this AZ-104 question in full detail.
Implement and Manage Storage — This question tests Implement and Manage Storage — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) — Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) replicates data synchronously across three Azure availability zones within a single region, ensuring durability even if one datacenter (zone) fails. Since the requirement specifies no need for read access from a secondary region, ZRS meets the high-availability need without the cost or complexity of geo-replication.
What should I do if I get this AZ-104 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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