Question 1mediummultiple choice
Full question →mediummultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A web tier must use identical VMs, keep the desired instance count if one instance becomes unhealthy, and allow future horizontal expansion without creating VMs one by one. What should the administrator deploy?
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.
A
Distractor review
An availability set because it automatically replaces unhealthy instances.
Availability sets do not automatically manage instance count or recreate unhealthy VMs for scaling purposes.
B
Best answer
A virtual machine scale set with health-based instance management.
A virtual machine scale set provides a managed pool of identical VMs and is the right choice when you want Azure to maintain instance count and support horizontal growth. It works well for web tiers because the platform can replace unhealthy instances and let you scale up or down as demand changes. This removes the need to create and maintain each VM individually.
C
Distractor review
An Azure Dedicated Host to keep the VMs on one physical server.
Dedicated Host is about hardware isolation, not autoscaling or automatic replacement of failed instances.
D
Distractor review
A proximity placement group to ensure the VMs are distributed evenly.
Proximity placement groups do not manage scaling or instance replacement, and they are not a compute service.
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: A virtual machine scale set with health-based instance management. — VM scale sets are the best answer because they are designed for identical, horizontally scalable workloads and can maintain the desired instance count. If an instance becomes unhealthy, the platform can replace it according to the scale set's configuration. This gives the operations team consistent deployment behavior and makes future expansion much easier than managing standalone VMs. Why others are wrong: An availability set improves resilience but does not provide automatic horizontal scaling or managed replacement in the same way. Dedicated Host is a hardware-placement choice, not a scale-management feature. A proximity placement group focuses on latency-sensitive placement and is unrelated to the requirement for identical instances and automatic instance maintenance.
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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