Question 1easymultiple choice
Full question →easymultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A line-of-business app will run on a single Azure virtual machine in a region that supports availability zones. The business wants the VM to keep running if one datacenter in the region fails. Which deployment choice should you use?
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 the VM in an availability set
An availability set protects against certain maintenance and host failures, but it does not place the VM in separate datacenter zones.
B
Best answer
Deploy the VM in an availability zone
An availability zone places the VM in a physically separate datacenter within the same Azure region. That design gives better resilience against a datacenter-level failure than an availability set. For a single VM, choosing a zone is the direct way to improve protection from one zone or datacenter going offline. It is the right operational choice when the region supports zones and the requirement is survivability during a datacenter outage.
C
Distractor review
Use a larger VM size
A larger VM size can improve performance, but it does not add redundancy or protect against datacenter failure.
D
Distractor review
Use a custom image
A custom image helps standardize software installation, but it does not provide resilience against infrastructure failure.
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.
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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?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Deploy the VM in an availability zone — Availability zones are designed for higher resiliency than availability sets because each zone is isolated with separate power, cooling, and networking. When a single VM must continue running through a datacenter-level failure, placing it in a zone is the best fit. An availability set helps with host and maintenance separation, but it is not the same as zone isolation. The question specifically asks for protection from a datacenter failure, which points to an availability zone. Why others are wrong: An availability set improves availability within a datacenter cluster, but not against a whole zone outage. VM size affects capacity, not resilience. A custom image is about deployment consistency, not fault tolerance. Only availability zones directly address the requirement for surviving a datacenter failure in a supported region.
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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