AZ-104 Monitor and Maintain Azure Resources Practice Question
A storage account becomes unavailable because Azure has a regional platform issue. The operations team wants a notification whenever Azure marks the resource or region unhealthy, and they want to avoid continuous log ingestion just to detect the outage. What should they configure?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse application-level monitoring (e.g., log alerts on HTTP 503 errors) with Azure's own platform health signals, leading them to choose a log-based solution that requires continuous ingestion and misses the native Service Health alert capability.
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
✓
A Service Health alert based on the Activity log, scoped appropriately.
A Service Health alert, configured from the Azure Activity log, provides proactive notifications when Azure services or regions experience an outage or degradation. This alert is triggered by Azure's own health signals, eliminating the need for continuous log ingestion or custom metric monitoring to detect platform-level issues.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
A metric alert on storage capacity with an action group.
Why it's wrong here
Metric alerts on storage capacity monitor usage metrics like BlobCapacity, FileCapacity, or QueueCapacity, which are designed for capacity planning and cost management, not for detecting platform availability. During an actual outage, metric samples may stop being emitted rather than exceeding a threshold, so an action group tied to a capacity threshold would not fire. Even if capacity metrics spike, that is orthogonal to a service incident that leaves the storage account unreachable, making this option ineffective for the stated goal.
When this WOULD be correct
A metric alert on storage capacity would be correct if the question asked for a notification when storage usage exceeds a threshold (e.g., 80% capacity) to plan scaling or cleanup, not for detecting Azure platform issues.
- ✗
A log alert on storage diagnostic logs that watches for 503 responses.
Why it's wrong here
A log alert watching diagnostic logs for 503 responses depends on continuous export of StorageRead/StorageWrite logs to a Log Analytics workspace, which introduces ingestion latency and operational cost. If the storage account or the Azure platform is degraded, those diagnostic logs may be incomplete or missing entirely, so the alert can silently fail during the exact incident it is meant to detect. Additionally, 503 responses can result from client-side throttling or retries rather than a regional service outage, leading to noisy or misleading notifications instead of a reliable health signal.
When this WOULD be correct
This option would be correct if the question asked for a way to detect application-level errors (e.g., 503 Service Unavailable) from the storage account due to client-side issues or throttling, and the team is already collecting diagnostic logs.
- ✓
A Service Health alert based on the Activity log, scoped appropriately.
Why this is correct
Service Health alerts are the right choice when you need to know about Azure platform incidents, regional issues, or service degradations that affect a resource or region. They are generated from the Activity log and do not require you to ingest operational logs continuously just to detect an outage. This makes them both efficient and appropriate for platform availability monitoring.
- ✗
An Azure Policy assignment that audits the storage account state.
Why it's wrong here
An Azure Policy assignment evaluates or enforces configuration such as allowed storage SKUs, public network access, or TLS versions, but it does not inspect the runtime health of a storage account. The audit effect only records compliance states in the Activity Log; it has no built-in alerting mechanism to notify operators about live platform incidents or regional outages. It is a governance tool, not an availability monitoring or incident-notification solution.
When this WOULD be correct
A question asking how to enforce that storage accounts are deployed only in specific regions or with certain encryption settings would make Azure Policy the correct answer, as it audits and enforces compliance rules.
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.
✓A Service Health alert based on the Activity log, scoped appropriately.Correct answer▾
Why this is correct
Service Health alerts are the right choice when you need to know about Azure platform incidents, regional issues, or service degradations that affect a resource or region. They are generated from the Activity log and do not require you to ingest operational logs continuously just to detect an outage. This makes them both efficient and appropriate for platform availability monitoring.
✗A metric alert on storage capacity with an action group.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Metric alerts on storage capacity monitor performance metrics like used capacity, not service health or regional outages. They cannot detect when Azure marks a resource or region as unhealthy, which is the specific requirement.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
A metric alert on storage capacity would be correct if the question asked for a notification when storage usage exceeds a threshold (e.g., 80% capacity) to plan scaling or cleanup, not for detecting Azure platform issues.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse metric alerts with health monitoring, thinking any alert on a storage account can detect outages, or they may not understand that Service Health alerts are separate from resource-level metrics.
✗A log alert on storage diagnostic logs that watches for 503 responses.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
A log alert on storage diagnostic logs requires continuous log ingestion, which the operations team wants to avoid. Additionally, it watches for 503 responses from the storage account itself, not for Azure platform health notifications.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
This option would be correct if the question asked for a way to detect application-level errors (e.g., 503 Service Unavailable) from the storage account due to client-side issues or throttling, and the team is already collecting diagnostic logs.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may think that monitoring HTTP error codes is a direct way to detect outages, and they overlook the requirement to avoid continuous log ingestion and the need for platform-level health notifications.
✗An Azure Policy assignment that audits the storage account state.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Azure Policy audits compliance but does not generate real-time notifications for service health issues; it is a governance tool, not an alerting mechanism for regional platform outages.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
A question asking how to enforce that storage accounts are deployed only in specific regions or with certain encryption settings would make Azure Policy the correct answer, as it audits and enforces compliance rules.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse Azure Policy's audit capability with monitoring and alerting, thinking it can detect and notify on resource state changes, but it lacks real-time alerting for service health events.
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
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.
Key term
Storage account
A cloud storage account is a container that holds a set of cloud storage services and their data, providing a unique namespace and access policies for storing and managing unstructured data.
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every AZ-104 question from scratch — 1,049 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
Same concept, more angles
1 more way this is tested on AZ-104
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A storage account experiences a brief regional platform issue. The team wants an alert whenever Azure marks the resource as unavailable, even if no custom metric changes are detected. What should the administrator use?
medium- A.A metric alert on the account's transaction count.
- ✓ B.A Resource Health alert for the storage account.
- C.A diagnostic setting that sends logs only to a storage account.
- D.An Azure Policy assignment that denies writes to the storage account.
Why B: A Resource Health alert is designed to monitor the health of Azure resources and trigger notifications when Azure detects that the resource is unavailable due to platform issues, even if no custom metric thresholds are breached. This alert uses signals from the Azure Resource Health service, which tracks the current and historical health status of resources, making it the correct choice for detecting regional platform unavailability without relying on custom metrics.
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.