AZ-104 Monitor and Maintain Azure Resources Practice Question
An administrator enabled Azure VM backup yesterday and now wants to confirm whether the most recent backup job succeeded. Which two places can they check? Select two.
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse the Activity log (which shows who enabled backup) with the actual backup job status, or they mistakenly think Azure Advisor provides operational monitoring, when in fact it only offers proactive recommendations.
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
✓
Recovery Services vault backup jobs
The Recovery Services vault backup jobs (Option C) is correct because it provides a dedicated view of all backup jobs associated with the vault, including status, start time, and duration. Backup Center (Option D) is correct because it offers a centralized, cross-vault, cross-region dashboard to monitor backup jobs and alerts, making it ideal for confirming the success of the most recent backup.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Activity log
Why it's wrong here
The Azure Activity log is a subscription-level control-plane log that records operations such as creating a vault, modifying backup policy, or enabling backup, but it does not contain the data-plane outcome of backup job execution like a successful copy of the VM's disks. While enabling or configuring a backup may produce Activity log entries, the job's completion status, throughput, and error details are not stored there. Thus Activity log cannot confirm whether yesterday's VM backup job succeeded.
When this WOULD be correct
An administrator needs to review all recent management operations on a VM, such as who triggered a backup or when a backup policy was modified. The Activity log would be correct for auditing control plane actions.
- ✗
Azure Advisor
Why it's wrong here
Azure Advisor is a personalized recommendation engine that evaluates Azure resources for reliability, security, performance, and cost optimization. It can generate recommendations about backup configuration, such as enabling backup on unprotected VMs or reviewing backup health best practices, but it does not surface the status of individual backup jobs or a history of failed versus successful runs. Therefore, checking Advisor will not show whether yesterday's VM backup completed successfully.
When this WOULD be correct
In a question asking 'Which tool provides recommendations to improve backup compliance and reliability?', Azure Advisor would be correct as it analyzes backup configurations and suggests best practices.
- ✓
Recovery Services vault backup jobs
Why this is correct
The Recovery Services vault's 'Backup Jobs' blade displays the complete history of backup and restore operations for Azure VMs protected by that vault, including their status (completed, failed, in progress) and detailed error messages if a job failed. When an administrator needs a definitive, per-vault list of job success or failure for a specific backup policy, this is the canonical location to check. It also allows filtering by time range, operation type, and status to isolate yesterday's job.
- ✓
Backup center
Why this is correct
Backup center is the Azure portal's unified management plane that aggregates backup health, inventory, and job status across multiple Recovery Services vaults, subscriptions, and regions. It provides a dashboard view of recent backup jobs with status, so an administrator can see VM backup success or failure without navigating into individual vaults. This is especially useful for reporting on a fleet of VMs, but it does not retain the full historical job log that a vault's Backup Jobs pane does; both are valid for confirming yesterday's backup result.
- ✗
Resource Graph
Why it's wrong here
Azure Resource Graph is a query engine designed for resource inventory and metadata exploration, allowing Azure Resource Manager queries across subscriptions for resource properties. It can enumerate VMs, Recovery Services vaults, and their configuration (for example, whether backup is enabled), but it does not expose transient operational state such as the outcome of a specific backup job. A Resource Graph query cannot yield the backup job status for yesterday, making it unsuitable for this monitoring use case.
When this WOULD be correct
In a scenario where an administrator needs to query all resources across subscriptions to identify which VMs have backup configured or to list backup policies, Resource Graph would be the correct tool to use.
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.
✓Recovery Services vault backup jobsCorrect answer▾
Why this is correct
The Recovery Services vault's 'Backup Jobs' blade displays the complete history of backup and restore operations for Azure VMs protected by that vault, including their status (completed, failed, in progress) and detailed error messages if a job failed. When an administrator needs a definitive, per-vault list of job success or failure for a specific backup policy, this is the canonical location to check. It also allows filtering by time range, operation type, and status to isolate yesterday's job.
✗Activity logWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
The Activity log records administrative operations like starting/stopping backup jobs, but does not show the success/failure status of individual backup jobs. It lacks the granularity to confirm a specific backup job's outcome.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
An administrator needs to review all recent management operations on a VM, such as who triggered a backup or when a backup policy was modified. The Activity log would be correct for auditing control plane actions.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may think the Activity log tracks all events including backup job results, confusing it with the backup job monitoring capabilities found in Recovery Services vault or Backup center.
✗Azure AdvisorWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Azure Advisor provides recommendations for optimizing Azure resources, not real-time backup job status. It does not show the success or failure of individual backup jobs.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
In a question asking 'Which tool provides recommendations to improve backup compliance and reliability?', Azure Advisor would be correct as it analyzes backup configurations and suggests best practices.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse Azure Advisor's monitoring and recommendation capabilities with operational status checking, assuming it can report on backup job outcomes.
✗Resource GraphWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Resource Graph is a query service for exploring Azure resources, not for monitoring backup job status. It does not provide direct access to backup job success/failure details.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
In a scenario where an administrator needs to query all resources across subscriptions to identify which VMs have backup configured or to list backup policies, Resource Graph would be the correct tool to use.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may think Resource Graph can be used to query backup job status because it can query metadata about Azure resources, but it does not expose operational backup job results.
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
Recovery Services vault
A Recovery Services vault is a secure storage container in Microsoft Azure that holds backup data and replication settings for virtual machines, databases, and other cloud resources, enabling you to restore them if something goes wrong.
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.
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 →
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.