AZ-104 Deploy and Manage Azure Compute Practice Question
A stateless customer portal runs on Azure VMs and must keep serving traffic if an entire datacenter in the region fails. The operations team also wants the portal to add and remove instances automatically during daily spikes without managing a Kubernetes cluster. Which two Azure compute capabilities should the administrator configure? Select two.
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse availability sets (rack-level redundancy) with availability zones (datacenter-level redundancy), leading candidates to pick availability sets for a full datacenter failure scenario.
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
✓
Deploy the portal instances across availability zones.
Availability zones protect against a full datacenter failure by distributing VM instances across physically separate datacenters within a region. This ensures that if one datacenter goes down, the portal continues serving traffic from the other zones. Combined with a load balancer, this provides high availability for stateless workloads.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Deploy the portal instances across availability zones.
Why this is correct
Availability zones are physically separate datacenters within an Azure region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking. By deploying the stateless portal instances across multiple zones, the application remains available even if an entire datacenter experiences an outage, because other zones continue to serve traffic. This configuration directly satisfies the requirement for high availability and should be paired with an Azure Load Balancer or Application Gateway to distribute requests across zone-redundant instances.
- ✓
Use a virtual machine scale set with autoscale enabled.
Why this is correct
A virtual machine scale set with autoscale enabled dynamically adjusts the number of VM instances based on CPU load, memory pressure, or a defined schedule. Because the portal is stateless, instances can be added or removed without affecting existing sessions, letting the application handle traffic spikes automatically and reduce costs during low demand. To also achieve availability, the scale set should be configured with multiple instances spread across availability zones or availability sets, but the autoscale behavior itself is a key reason this option is correct for a scalable stateless workload.
- ✗
Place the VMs in an availability set within a single datacenter.
Why it's wrong here
An availability set distributes VM instances across multiple fault domains and update domains, but these domains reside within a single datacenter. That protects against server hardware failures, disk failures, and planned maintenance within that datacenter, yet an outage that brings down the entire datacenter will still take all instances offline. Therefore, while availability sets improve availability, they do not satisfy the requirement to survive a full datacenter loss.
When this WOULD be correct
If the question asked for high availability within a single datacenter (e.g., protecting against rack or hardware failures) and did not require cross-datacenter resilience, then placing VMs in an availability set would be correct.
- ✗
Create a proximity placement group for the portal VMs.
Why it's wrong here
A proximity placement group is designed to minimize network latency by co-locating VMs in the same Azure region or availability zone. It does nothing to protect against a datacenter-level outage; in fact, all VMs in the group may be placed in the same datacenter, making them fail together. This option improves performance for tightly coupled workloads but fails to meet the core requirement of behavioral continuity if a zone fails.
When this WOULD be correct
If the question required minimizing network latency between VMs for a tightly coupled, high-performance computing workload (e.g., HPC or low-latency trading), a proximity placement group would be the correct choice.
- ✗
Use a single larger VM with premium managed disks.
Why it's wrong here
Using a single larger VM with premium managed disks is an anti-pattern for high availability because the VM itself is a single point of failure—if it crashes or the underlying host has an outage, the portal is unavailable. Premium managed disks offer high performance and durable storage, but they do not replicate the compute layer or provide automatic failover. A stateless portal needs multiple instances and a load balancer to scale and survive failures; a bigger single VM cannot achieve this.
When this WOULD be correct
If the question asked for a cost-effective, high-performance solution for a single VM workload that requires low latency and high IOPS, such as a database server, and did not require high availability or autoscaling, then using a single larger VM with premium managed disks would be correct.
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.
✓Deploy the portal instances across availability zones.Correct answer▾
Why this is correct
Availability zones are physically separate datacenters within an Azure region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking. By deploying the stateless portal instances across multiple zones, the application remains available even if an entire datacenter experiences an outage, because other zones continue to serve traffic. This configuration directly satisfies the requirement for high availability and should be paired with an Azure Load Balancer or Application Gateway to distribute requests across zone-redundant instances.
✗Place the VMs in an availability set within a single datacenter.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
An availability set protects against rack-level failures within a single datacenter, not against an entire datacenter failure. The question requires resilience if a full datacenter fails, which availability sets cannot provide.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
If the question asked for high availability within a single datacenter (e.g., protecting against rack or hardware failures) and did not require cross-datacenter resilience, then placing VMs in an availability set would be correct.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse availability sets with availability zones, thinking both provide similar fault tolerance, or they may overlook the 'entire datacenter fails' requirement and focus only on general high availability.
✗Create a proximity placement group for the portal VMs.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
A proximity placement group reduces network latency between VMs but does not provide fault isolation across datacenters, so it cannot protect against an entire datacenter failure.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
If the question required minimizing network latency between VMs for a tightly coupled, high-performance computing workload (e.g., HPC or low-latency trading), a proximity placement group would be the correct choice.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse proximity placement groups with availability zones or sets, thinking they provide high availability, when they actually focus on co-location for low latency.
✗Use a single larger VM with premium managed disks.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
The question requires resilience across an entire datacenter failure and automatic scaling. A single larger VM with premium managed disks provides no redundancy—if the datacenter fails, the VM is lost—and does not support autoscaling to handle traffic spikes.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
If the question asked for a cost-effective, high-performance solution for a single VM workload that requires low latency and high IOPS, such as a database server, and did not require high availability or autoscaling, then using a single larger VM with premium managed disks would be correct.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may think premium managed disks offer high availability or performance that compensates for lack of redundancy, or they may confuse premium disks with availability features, not realizing that a single VM is a single point of failure.
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
Load balancer
A load balancer is a device or software that distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers so no single server gets overwhelmed.
Key term
Kubernetes cluster
A set of machines, called nodes, that work together to run and manage containerized applications using Kubernetes orchestration software.
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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.