A web front end must automatically add or remove instances based on demand. The application is stateless and all instances should be managed as one group. Which Azure service should you use?
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.
Distractor review
A single Azure VM with a larger size
A single VM does not provide instance-based scaling or group management for a stateless workload.
Best answer
Virtual Machine Scale Set
A Virtual Machine Scale Set is designed for multiple similar VMs that need to scale together. It is a good fit for stateless workloads because instances can be added or removed without special per-VM configuration. You can also combine it with autoscale rules to respond to changing demand automatically.
Distractor review
Availability set
An availability set improves resilience, but it does not automatically scale instances up or down.
Distractor review
Managed disk snapshots
Snapshots protect data copies, but they do not provide elastic compute scaling or instance orchestration.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: NAT rules depend on direction and matching traffic
NAT is not only about the public address. The inside/outside interface roles and the ACL or rule that matches traffic are just as important.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
NAT questions usually test address translation, overload/PAT behaviour, static mappings and whether the right traffic is being translated. Read the interface direction and address terms carefully.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
- PAT allows many inside hosts to share one public address using ports.
- Inside local and inside global describe the private and translated addresses.
- NAT ACLs identify traffic for translation, not always security filtering.
TExam Day Tips
- Identify inside and outside interfaces first.
- Check whether the scenario needs static NAT, dynamic NAT or PAT.
- Do not confuse NAT matching ACLs with normal packet-filtering intent.
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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?
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Virtual Machine Scale Set — A Virtual Machine Scale Set is the right service because it is built for multiple identical VMs that can scale together. For a stateless front end, the service can add instances during peak demand and remove them when load drops. That makes it easier to manage and more cost-effective than manually running separate VMs. It also fits the Azure pattern for horizontally scaling compute instead of relying on one larger server. Why others are wrong: A single VM can be resized, but that is vertical scaling and does not meet the requirement for multiple instances. An availability set helps availability, not elasticity. Snapshots are for recovery copies and have no role in compute scaling. For demand-based growth and shrinkage, VM scale sets are the correct compute option.
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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