AZ-104 Deploy and Manage Azure Compute Practice Question

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 workload as a virtual machine scale set instead of a standalone VM.

  Why this is correct

  A virtual machine scale set is the Azure compute service that manages a group of identical, load-balanced VMs as a single logical resource, enabling horizontal scaling and high availability. Unlike a standalone VM, a scale set can automatically replace failed instances, distribute across availability zones, and integrate with Azure Load Balancer for continuous service. This architecture directly satisfies the requirement for a stateless web tier to survive a datacenter outage by providing redundant, automatically maintained instances.

• ✓

  Enable zone distribution for the scale set in a region that supports availability zones.

  Why this is correct

  Zone distribution allows the scale set to place instances across zones, improving resilience against a datacenter failure. This is the correct way to add zone-level protection while keeping the workload managed as one scalable unit.

• ✓

  Configure autoscale so the instance count can change according to demand.

  Why this is correct

  Autoscale is the built-in Azure feature that dynamically changes the number of VMSS instances based on metrics such as CPU utilization, memory pressure, or a defined schedule. By configuring autoscale rules, the web tier automatically adds capacity during business hours when demand rises and removes idle instances during off-peak periods. This eliminates the need for manual intervention, aligning with the operational requirement for the workload to adjust capacity on demand while remaining cost-effective.

• ✗

  Place all instances in a single availability set and scale them manually.

  Why it's wrong here

  An availability set protects against hardware failures within a single Azure datacenter by placing VMs across multiple fault and update domains, but it does not span availability zones. In the event of an entire datacenter outage, all instances in that availability set would become unreachable, so it fails to meet the resilience requirement. Furthermore, manually scaling instances is error-prone and cannot react to real-time traffic changes, violating the need for automatic adjustment to business demand.

  When this WOULD be correct

  This option would be correct if the question required high availability within a single datacenter (e.g., protecting against rack failures) and did not mandate automatic scaling. For example: 'A legacy application must be deployed across multiple fault domains in one datacenter with manual scaling.'

• ✗

  Deploy only one zonal VM and use snapshots to recover if the datacenter fails.

  Why it's wrong here

  Deploying a single zonal VM leaves the workload as a single point of failure; if that zone's datacenter goes down, there is no active replica to serve traffic. Snapshots are point-in-time backup artifacts that require creating a new VM and restoring the OS disk, resulting in prolonged downtime and potential data loss from the last snapshot. This approach also provides no scaling mechanism to handle peak business hours, so it does not fulfill either the resilience or the automatic capacity requirement.

  When this WOULD be correct

  This option would be correct for a question asking to minimize cost for a non-critical application that can tolerate downtime, where the requirement is to recover from a disaster rather than provide continuous availability.

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.

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?”

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