- A
An availability set
Why wrong: An availability set protects against planned maintenance and some hardware failures, but not a full datacenter outage.
- B
A single virtual machine with Premium SSD
Why wrong: A single VM does not provide redundancy, so it cannot survive a datacenter outage by itself.
- C
Availability zones
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.
- D
A proximity placement group
Why wrong: A proximity placement group reduces latency between resources, but it does not protect against datacenter outages.
AZ-104 Deploy and Manage Azure Compute Practice Question
This AZ-104 practice question tests your understanding of deploy and manage azure compute. 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 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?
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.
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.
- ✗
An availability set
Why it's wrong here
An availability set protects against planned maintenance and some hardware failures, but not a full datacenter outage.
- ✗
A single virtual machine with Premium SSD
Why it's wrong here
A single VM does not provide redundancy, so it cannot survive a datacenter outage by itself.
- ✓
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.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- ✗
A proximity placement group
Why it's wrong here
A proximity placement group reduces latency between resources, but it does not protect against datacenter outages.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often 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.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Availability zones offer a 99.99% SLA for VMs when at least two instances are deployed across zones, compared to 99.95% for availability sets. Each zone is a unique physical location with independent infrastructure, and zone-redundant VMs use Azure Standard Load Balancer or Application Gateway to distribute traffic. In a real-world scenario, if a zone fails due to a natural disaster, the remaining zones continue serving traffic without manual intervention, provided the application is stateless or uses zone-redundant storage.
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
An e-commerce site experiences heavy traffic on Black Friday and near-zero traffic during off-peak weeks. Rather than provisioning permanent large VMs, the team uses auto-scaling groups that add capacity automatically under load and reduce it overnight. Questions like this test whether you understand elasticity, availability zones, and cloud compute scaling patterns.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this AZ-104 question test?
Deploy and Manage Azure Compute — This question tests Deploy and Manage Azure Compute — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: 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.
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.
About these practice questions
Courseiva creates original exam-style practice questions with explanations and wrong-answer analysis. It does not publish real exam questions, exam dumps, or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
Last reviewed: Jun 11, 2026
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.
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