Question 1mediummultiple choice
Full question →mediummultiple choiceObjective-mapped
An Azure Automation account runs PowerShell runbooks that must authenticate to Azure resources without embedded secrets. The automation account is recreated periodically during deployment, and the identity must continue to work after recreation without reissuing credentials. Which identity 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.
A
Distractor review
A system-assigned managed identity.
This identity is tied to one resource instance and is removed when that resource is deleted.
B
Best answer
A user-assigned managed identity.
This identity exists independently of the Automation account and survives recreation.
C
Distractor review
A service principal with a client secret stored in Key Vault.
This still depends on a credential and introduces secret rotation and operational overhead.
D
Distractor review
A shared access signature token.
A SAS token is limited to certain data scenarios and is not a general reusable Azure identity.
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: A user-assigned managed identity. — A user-assigned managed identity is the best fit when the identity must outlive a resource instance or be reused across multiple resources. Because it is created as a separate Azure resource, you can recreate the Automation account without losing the identity or reissuing secrets. That keeps the solution secretless, durable, and easier to operationalize in deployment pipelines and automation workflows. Why others are wrong: A system-assigned identity is deleted with the resource and would break when the Automation account is recreated. A service principal still relies on a stored secret or certificate, which increases maintenance. A SAS token is for limited storage access and does not provide general-purpose Azure authentication for runbooks.
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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