A stateless application must keep serving traffic if one datacenter in the region fails, and it must also add or remove instances during daily load spikes. Which two deployment choices should the administrator make? Select two.
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.
Best answer
Deploy the application on a virtual machine scale set.
Correct. A VM scale set supports adding and removing identical instances automatically as demand changes.
Best answer
Configure the deployment to use availability zones.
Correct. Availability zones place instances in separate datacenters within the region for better outage resilience.
Distractor review
Use a single availability set with one VM to reduce complexity.
Incorrect. A single VM cannot scale out and remains a single point of failure.
Distractor review
Use a proximity placement group for the workload.
Incorrect. Proximity placement groups improve latency locality, but they do not provide zone resilience or autoscale.
Distractor review
Deploy one larger VM with a premium SSD instead of multiple instances.
Incorrect. One larger VM still leaves a single instance failure risk and cannot absorb datacenter loss by itself.
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 application on a virtual machine scale set. — The requirement combines two separate needs: elastic scale during demand spikes and protection from a zone-level outage. A virtual machine scale set addresses the first need by managing identical instances as a group. Availability zones address the second by spreading instances across independent datacenters in the region. Together they provide both operational elasticity and stronger availability than a single availability set or one oversized VM. Why others are wrong: A single availability set or single VM does not provide enough resiliency or scale. A proximity placement group is about performance consistency, not failure isolation. A larger VM may raise capacity but it does not remove the single point of failure or satisfy the need to scale out during spikes.
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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