AZ-104 Monitor and Maintain Azure Resources 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.

• ✗

  Yes, because backup alone guarantees immediate failover to another region

  Why it's wrong here

  Backup creates historical copies of VM disks, but it does not replicate the running state or maintain a booted instance elsewhere. Geo-redundant storage (GRS) may protect the backup data itself, but that data is not an active VM ready to receive traffic. Immediate failover requires continuous replication of the virtual machine to a secondary region—exactly what Azure Site Recovery provides—not merely having a backup artifact in another location.

  When this WOULD be correct

  This option would be correct if the question asked: 'Does Azure Backup alone ensure data durability and recoverability in case of accidental deletion or corruption?' In that context, Azure Backup is sufficient for data protection, though not for high availability or disaster recovery.

• ✓

  No, you also need disaster recovery replication such as Azure Site Recovery

  Why this is correct

  Azure Backup is designed for point-in-time data recovery, not continuous uptime. During a region-wide outage, even a geo-redundant backup vault contains only backup data, not a running VM with the application loaded. Azure Site Recovery replicates the VM's disks to a secondary region and enables orchestrated failover, which is what actually keeps the app online in a disaster.

• ✗

  Yes, as long as the VM has a backup policy

  Why it's wrong here

  A backup policy simply defines how frequently snapshots are taken and how long they are retained in a Recovery Services vault. It does not provision any compute or maintain a standby replica in another region. Even with an aggressive backup schedule, restoring a VM requires manual steps such as picking a recovery point, deploying a new VM, and reconfiguring network settings, so workloads remain unavailable during a region-wide outage.

  When this WOULD be correct

  This option would be correct if the question asked: 'Does Azure Backup alone ensure that VM data is protected and can be restored in case of accidental deletion or corruption?' In that context, having a backup policy is sufficient for data protection.

• ✗

  Yes, if diagnostic settings are enabled on the VM

  Why it's wrong here

  Diagnostic settings route VM metrics and logs to Azure Monitor, Storage, or Event Hubs for observability and troubleshooting. They might help you detect an outage, but they do not create a secondary VM, replicate disks, or alter the region in which the VM runs. Monitoring is one component of an incident response plan, not a substitute for disaster recovery replication, so enabling diagnostics has no effect on keeping the application serving users during a regional disaster.

  When this WOULD be correct

  This option would be correct if the question asked: 'What is required to send VM performance metrics and logs to a Log Analytics workspace for monitoring?' In that context, enabling diagnostic settings is the correct action.

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?”

Go deeper

Related to this question