An analytics team keeps quarterly telemetry exports in Azure Blob Storage. The files are accessed only a few times per year, but when they are needed they must remain online and immediately readable without any rehydration delay. Which access tier should you use?

Hot, because it is optimized for frequent reads and writes.

Hot works, but it is not the most cost-efficient choice for data accessed only a few times per year.

Cool, because it is designed for infrequently accessed data that still stays online.

Cool is online and cheaper than Hot, but Cold is the better fit when access is even less frequent.

Archive, because it is the cheapest tier and can be opened directly in the portal.

Archive is offline and requires rehydration before the blob can be read again.

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: Cold, because it is intended for rarely accessed online data with lower storage cost. — Cold is designed for data that is rarely accessed but still needs to stay online and immediately available when requested. That is the key distinction in this scenario. Archive would lower storage cost further, but the team explicitly cannot accept rehydration delay. Hot and Cool are valid online tiers, yet they are less cost-effective than Cold for such infrequent access patterns. Why others are wrong: Hot is needlessly expensive for data read only a few times per year. Cool is online and cheaper than Hot, but it is not the lowest-cost online choice for very infrequent access. Archive is offline, so it violates the immediate-read requirement because a rehydration operation is required before the blob can be opened.

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.