- A
Availability Zones for Workload A
Zones protect the workload from a datacenter-level outage.
- B
Availability Set for Workload B
Availability sets help with host faults and planned maintenance.
- C
Virtual Machine Scale Set without zones
Why wrong: Scale alone does not provide the required fault isolation.
- D
Proximity Placement Group
Why wrong: Improves latency placement, but does not provide failure protection.
- E
Single VM with premium SSD
Why wrong: A single VM still leaves a single point of failure.
Question 550 of 1,170
AZ-104 Deploy and Manage Azure Compute Practice Question
This AZ-104 practice question tests your understanding of deploy and manage azure compute. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
Two workloads have different resilience requirements. Workload A must stay available if a single datacenter in the region fails. Workload B only needs protection from planned maintenance and a single hardware host failure. Which two deployment models should the administrator use? Select two.
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
✓
Availability Zones for Workload A
Workload A requires protection against a full datacenter failure within a region. Availability Zones are physically separate datacenters within an Azure region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking. Deploying VMs across multiple zones ensures that if one zone (datacenter) fails, the workload remains available in another zone. Workload B only needs protection from planned maintenance and a single hardware host failure. An Availability Set distributes VMs across multiple fault domains (hardware hosts) and update domains (planned maintenance cycles), providing resilience against these specific failure scenarios without requiring zone-level separation.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Availability Zones for Workload A
Why this is correct
Zones protect the workload from a datacenter-level outage.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- ✓
Availability Set for Workload B
Why this is correct
Availability sets help with host faults and planned maintenance.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- ✗
Virtual Machine Scale Set without zones
Why it's wrong here
Scale alone does not provide the required fault isolation.
When this WOULD be correct
A question requiring automatic scaling of a stateless web application across multiple VMs without needing high availability against datacenter failures, such as 'Which deployment model should be used for a web app that needs to scale out based on CPU usage and can tolerate a single VM failure?'
- ✗
Proximity Placement Group
Why it's wrong here
Improves latency placement, but does not provide failure protection.
When this WOULD be correct
When the question asks for minimizing inter-VM network latency for a latency-sensitive application (e.g., HPC or real-time data processing) and does not require high availability or fault tolerance.
- ✗
Single VM with premium SSD
Why it's wrong here
A single VM still leaves a single point of failure.
When this WOULD be correct
A question that asks for a cost-effective solution for a single, non-critical application that must survive a local disk failure without data loss, and where downtime for maintenance is acceptable.
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.
✓Availability Zones for Workload ACorrect answer▾
Why this is correct
Zones protect the workload from a datacenter-level outage.
✗Virtual Machine Scale Set without zonesWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Virtual Machine Scale Set without zones does not protect against a full datacenter failure, as it operates within a single datacenter. It also does not provide the planned maintenance and single host failure protection that an Availability Set offers for Workload B.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
A question requiring automatic scaling of a stateless web application across multiple VMs without needing high availability against datacenter failures, such as 'Which deployment model should be used for a web app that needs to scale out based on CPU usage and can tolerate a single VM failure?'
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse Scale Sets with high availability features, assuming they inherently provide resilience across datacenters, or they may think Scale Sets are equivalent to Availability Sets for planned maintenance protection.
✗Proximity Placement GroupWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Proximity Placement Groups reduce network latency between VMs but do not provide resilience against datacenter failures or planned maintenance; they are not a deployment model for high availability.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
When the question asks for minimizing inter-VM network latency for a latency-sensitive application (e.g., HPC or real-time data processing) and does not require high availability or fault tolerance.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse proximity placement groups with availability sets or zones, thinking they offer some form of redundancy due to the word 'placement' or because they group VMs together.
✗Single VM with premium SSDWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
A single VM with premium SSD does not provide high availability; it protects only against disk failure, not datacenter or host failure, failing both Workload A's requirement for datacenter failure resilience and Workload B's need for planned maintenance protection.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
A question that asks for a cost-effective solution for a single, non-critical application that must survive a local disk failure without data loss, and where downtime for maintenance is acceptable.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may think premium SSD's high durability and performance are sufficient for resilience, overlooking that it does not address compute or datacenter-level failures.
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?”
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse Availability Zones with Availability Sets, mistakenly thinking an Availability Set can protect against a full datacenter failure, or they assume a Virtual Machine Scale Set inherently provides zone-level resilience without explicitly configuring zones.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Availability Zones provide a 99.99% SLA when two or more VMs are deployed across zones, as each zone is a separate fault and update domain with a minimum physical distance of several kilometers. Availability Sets offer a 99.95% SLA by distributing VMs across up to 3 fault domains (each representing a separate rack with independent power and network) and up to 20 update domains (ensuring only a subset of VMs are rebooted during planned maintenance). Under the hood, Azure's Fabric Controller manages the placement of VMs within an Availability Set to ensure no two VMs in the same fault domain share the same hardware host, while zone-level placement uses the region's physical datacenter boundaries.
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.
TExam Day Tips
- 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.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
An e-commerce site experiences heavy traffic on Black Friday and near-zero traffic during off-peak weeks. Rather than provisioning permanent large VMs, the team uses auto-scaling groups that add capacity automatically under load and reduce it overnight. Questions like this test whether you understand elasticity, availability zones, and cloud compute scaling patterns.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this AZ-104 question test?
Deploy and Manage Azure Compute — This question tests Deploy and Manage Azure Compute — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Availability Zones for Workload A — Workload A requires protection against a full datacenter failure within a region. Availability Zones are physically separate datacenters within an Azure region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking. Deploying VMs across multiple zones ensures that if one zone (datacenter) fails, the workload remains available in another zone. Workload B only needs protection from planned maintenance and a single hardware host failure. An Availability Set distributes VMs across multiple fault domains (hardware hosts) and update domains (planned maintenance cycles), providing resilience against these specific failure scenarios without requiring zone-level separation.
What should I do if I get this AZ-104 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
About these practice questions
Courseiva creates original exam-style practice questions with explanations and wrong-answer analysis. It does not publish real exam questions, exam dumps, or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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Last reviewed: Jun 11, 2026
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