AZ-104 Deploy and Manage Azure Compute Practice Question
A line-of-business application must keep running even if one datacenter in an Azure region has an outage. Which deployment option should you choose for the VMs?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse availability sets (which protect against rack-level failures) with availability zones (which protect against datacenter-level failures), leading them to choose Option A when the requirement is for datacenter outage resilience.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Availability zones
Availability zones (Option C) are physically separate datacenters within an Azure region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking. Deploying VMs across two or more zones ensures that if one datacenter fails, the application continues running in the other zone, meeting the requirement for resilience against a single datacenter outage.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
An availability set
Why it's wrong here
An availability set spreads virtual machines across multiple fault domains and update domains, but those domains all reside within the same datacenter and share common power, cooling, and network infrastructure. A datacenter-wide failure takes down every VM in the set because the set does not span independent buildings. Availability sets mitigate rack-level hardware failures and planned maintenance events, not a full datacenter outage.
When this WOULD be correct
If the question required protecting VMs from hardware failures or maintenance within a single datacenter (e.g., 'ensure VMs are on different racks and update schedules'), an availability set would be the correct answer.
- ✗
A single virtual machine with Premium SSD
Why it's wrong here
A single virtual machine, even with Premium SSD-managed disks, has no redundant compute or network path: the VM runs on one physical host in a single datacenter. Premium SSD only guarantees high IOPS, low latency, and local hardware-level durability; it does not create a second instance or an independent availability domain. If that datacenter suffers an outage, the VM and its disk become unreachable, so the application cannot remain available.
When this WOULD be correct
This option would be correct for a question asking for the highest performance storage for a single VM with minimal latency, where high availability across datacenters is not required.
- ✓
Availability zones
Why this is correct
Availability zones place VMs in separate physical datacenters within the same region. That gives the workload protection from a datacenter-level failure, which is stronger than an availability set. If one zone goes down, VMs in the other zones can continue serving traffic when the application is designed for zone-aware redundancy.
- ✗
A proximity placement group
Why it's wrong here
A proximity placement group intentionally places VMs in the same Azure datacenter or availability zone to minimize network latency between application tiers. This reduces inter-VM communication time, but it concentrates all instances inside a single failure boundary rather than distributing them. If that particular datacenter fails, every VM in the group fails together, making the workload less resilient to a zone-level disaster.
When this WOULD be correct
When the question asks for minimizing network latency between VMs in a single datacenter, such as for a high-performance computing workload that requires low inter-VM latency.
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.
✓Availability zonesCorrect answer▾
Why this is correct
Availability zones place VMs in separate physical datacenters within the same region. That gives the workload protection from a datacenter-level failure, which is stronger than an availability set. If one zone goes down, VMs in the other zones can continue serving traffic when the application is designed for zone-aware redundancy.
✗An availability setWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
An availability set protects against failures within a single datacenter (rack/update domain failures), not against an entire datacenter outage within a region.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
If the question required protecting VMs from hardware failures or maintenance within a single datacenter (e.g., 'ensure VMs are on different racks and update schedules'), an availability set would be the correct answer.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates often confuse availability sets with availability zones, thinking both provide datacenter-level redundancy, but availability sets only cover intra-datacenter faults.
✗A single virtual machine with Premium SSDWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
A single virtual machine with Premium SSD does not provide redundancy; if the datacenter hosting that VM fails, the VM becomes unavailable, failing the requirement to keep running during a datacenter outage.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
This option would be correct for a question asking for the highest performance storage for a single VM with minimal latency, where high availability across datacenters is not required.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may think Premium SSD offers high availability due to its high durability and performance, but it does not protect against datacenter-level failures.
✗A proximity placement groupWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
A proximity placement group reduces network latency between VMs but does not provide redundancy across datacenters; it cannot keep the application running during a datacenter outage.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
When the question asks for minimizing network latency between VMs in a single datacenter, such as for a high-performance computing workload that requires low inter-VM latency.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse proximity placement groups with high availability features, thinking that grouping VMs together ensures they stay up during failures.
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
Learn chapter
Managed Identities for Azure Resources
Key term
Availability
Availability is the measure of how often a system or service is operational and accessible when needed, typically expressed as a percentage of uptime.
Key term
Region
A region is a distinct geographic location where a cloud provider operates multiple data centers that are connected by low-latency networks and provide cloud services.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This AZ-104 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the AZ-104 exam.