- A
Deploy the portal instances across availability zones.
Availability zones place instances in separate datacenters, which helps survive a zone-level outage.
- B
Use a virtual machine scale set with autoscale enabled.
A scale set can increase or reduce instances automatically based on demand or schedules.
- C
Place the VMs in an availability set within a single datacenter.
Why wrong: Availability sets protect against host and maintenance issues, but not an entire datacenter outage.
- D
Create a proximity placement group for the portal VMs.
Why wrong: This improves latency between resources, but it does not provide resiliency against datacenter loss.
- E
Use a single larger VM with premium managed disks.
Why wrong: A single VM becomes a single point of failure and cannot scale out automatically.
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.
A stateless customer portal runs on Azure VMs and must keep serving traffic if an entire datacenter in the region fails. The operations team also wants the portal to add and remove instances automatically during daily spikes without managing a Kubernetes cluster. Which two Azure compute capabilities should the administrator configure? 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
Deploy the portal instances across availability zones.
Availability zones protect against a full datacenter failure by distributing VM instances across physically separate datacenters within a region. This ensures that if one datacenter goes down, the portal continues serving traffic from the other zones. Combined with a load balancer, this provides high availability for stateless workloads.
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.
- ✓
Deploy the portal instances across availability zones.
Why this is correct
Availability zones place instances in separate datacenters, which helps survive a zone-level outage.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- ✓
Use a virtual machine scale set with autoscale enabled.
Why this is correct
A scale set can increase or reduce instances automatically based on demand or schedules.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- ✗
Place the VMs in an availability set within a single datacenter.
Why it's wrong here
Availability sets protect against host and maintenance issues, but not an entire datacenter outage.
When this WOULD be correct
If the question asked for high availability within a single datacenter (e.g., protecting against rack or hardware failures) and did not require cross-datacenter resilience, then placing VMs in an availability set would be correct.
- ✗
Create a proximity placement group for the portal VMs.
Why it's wrong here
This improves latency between resources, but it does not provide resiliency against datacenter loss.
When this WOULD be correct
If the question required minimizing network latency between VMs for a tightly coupled, high-performance computing workload (e.g., HPC or low-latency trading), a proximity placement group would be the correct choice.
- ✗
Use a single larger VM with premium managed disks.
Why it's wrong here
A single VM becomes a single point of failure and cannot scale out automatically.
When this WOULD be correct
If the question asked for a cost-effective, high-performance solution for a single VM workload that requires low latency and high IOPS, such as a database server, and did not require high availability or autoscaling, then using a single larger VM with premium managed disks would be correct.
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.
✓Deploy the portal instances across availability zones.Correct answer▾
Why this is correct
Availability zones place instances in separate datacenters, which helps survive a zone-level outage.
✗Place the VMs in an availability set within a single datacenter.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
An availability set protects against rack-level failures within a single datacenter, not against an entire datacenter failure. The question requires resilience if a full datacenter fails, which availability sets cannot provide.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
If the question asked for high availability within a single datacenter (e.g., protecting against rack or hardware failures) and did not require cross-datacenter resilience, then placing VMs in an availability set would be correct.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse availability sets with availability zones, thinking both provide similar fault tolerance, or they may overlook the 'entire datacenter fails' requirement and focus only on general high availability.
✗Create a proximity placement group for the portal VMs.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
A proximity placement group reduces network latency between VMs but does not provide fault isolation across datacenters, so it cannot protect against an entire datacenter failure.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
If the question required minimizing network latency between VMs for a tightly coupled, high-performance computing workload (e.g., HPC or low-latency trading), a proximity placement group would be the correct choice.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse proximity placement groups with availability zones or sets, thinking they provide high availability, when they actually focus on co-location for low latency.
✗Use a single larger VM with premium managed disks.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
The question requires resilience across an entire datacenter failure and automatic scaling. A single larger VM with premium managed disks provides no redundancy—if the datacenter fails, the VM is lost—and does not support autoscaling to handle traffic spikes.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
If the question asked for a cost-effective, high-performance solution for a single VM workload that requires low latency and high IOPS, such as a database server, and did not require high availability or autoscaling, then using a single larger VM with premium managed disks would be correct.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may think premium managed disks offer high availability or performance that compensates for lack of redundancy, or they may confuse premium disks with availability features, not realizing that a single VM is a single point of failure.
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 confusing availability sets (rack-level redundancy) with availability zones (datacenter-level redundancy), leading candidates to pick availability sets for a full datacenter failure scenario.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Availability zones are physically separate datacenters with independent power, cooling, and networking, offering a 99.99% SLA for VMs when at least two instances are deployed across zones. Virtual machine scale sets with autoscale use Azure Monitor metrics (e.g., CPU > 75%) to trigger scale-out/in operations, adding or removing VMs via the VMSS orchestration without manual intervention or Kubernetes overhead.
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.
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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: Deploy the portal instances across availability zones. — Availability zones protect against a full datacenter failure by distributing VM instances across physically separate datacenters within a region. This ensures that if one datacenter goes down, the portal continues serving traffic from the other zones. Combined with a load balancer, this provides high availability for stateless workloads.
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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