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.
Exhibit
Workload notes:
- Region: East US
- Two application VMs will run in the same region
- Requirement: survive planned host maintenance and a host failure
- Requirement: no need for datacenter-level resilience
Based on the exhibit, the business wants two Azure VMs to stay available if a host is patched or fails. A full datacenter outage is not part of the requirement. What should you use?
Workload notes:
- Region: East US
- Two application VMs will run in the same region
- Requirement: survive planned host maintenance and a host failure
- Requirement: no need for datacenter-level resilience
A
Deploy the VMs in an availability set.
An availability set is designed to protect VMs from host-level issues such as planned maintenance and individual hardware failures. It spreads VMs across update and fault domains, which fits the requirement exactly when datacenter-level protection is not needed.
B
Deploy the VMs in the same availability zone.
Why wrong: Availability zones are used when you want protection from an entire datacenter failure. That is more resilience than the scenario requires, so it is not the best fit.
C
Use a virtual machine scale set with autoscale only.
Why wrong: A scale set can provide multiple instances, but autoscale is for scaling capacity and not specifically for host-level fault isolation in this scenario.
D
Place both VMs on a dedicated host.
Why wrong: A dedicated host isolates VMs on physical hardware, but it does not by itself provide the host-update and fault-domain spreading that an availability set provides for this requirement.
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Deploy the VMs in an availability set.
An availability set protects against failures within a single datacenter by distributing VMs across multiple fault domains (physical racks with separate power and network) and update domains (groups that are patched sequentially). This ensures that during host patching or a host failure, at least one VM remains available, meeting the requirement without needing to survive a full datacenter outage.
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 VMs in an availability set.
Why this is correct
An availability set is designed to protect VMs from host-level issues such as planned maintenance and individual hardware failures. It spreads VMs across update and fault domains, which fits the requirement exactly when datacenter-level protection is not needed.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Deploy the VMs in the same availability zone.
Why it's wrong here
Availability zones are used when you want protection from an entire datacenter failure. That is more resilience than the scenario requires, so it is not the best fit.
✗
Use a virtual machine scale set with autoscale only.
Why it's wrong here
A scale set can provide multiple instances, but autoscale is for scaling capacity and not specifically for host-level fault isolation in this scenario.
✗
Place both VMs on a dedicated host.
Why it's wrong here
A dedicated host isolates VMs on physical hardware, but it does not by itself provide the host-update and fault-domain spreading that an availability set provides for this requirement.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse availability zones (which protect against datacenter-level failures) with availability sets (which protect against host-level failures), leading them to choose zones even when the requirement explicitly excludes a full datacenter outage.
Trap categories for this question
Scenario analysis trap
Availability zones are used when you want protection from an entire datacenter failure. That is more resilience than the scenario requires, so it is not the best fit.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
An availability set groups VMs into up to 3 fault domains and up to 20 update domains by default, leveraging the Azure Fabric Controller to ensure each VM is placed on different physical racks with independent power and network switches. During planned maintenance, only one update domain is rebooted at a time, and during unplanned hardware failures, only VMs in the affected fault domain are impacted, guaranteeing a 99.95% SLA for multi-VM deployments. This is distinct from availability zones, which provide 99.99% SLA but require VMs in separate zones to survive a full datacenter outage.
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.
Related glossary terms
Concepts from this question explained
These glossary pages explain the core terms tested in this AZ-104 question in full detail.
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 VMs in an availability set. — An availability set protects against failures within a single datacenter by distributing VMs across multiple fault domains (physical racks with separate power and network) and update domains (groups that are patched sequentially). This ensures that during host patching or a host failure, at least one VM remains available, meeting the requirement without needing to survive a full datacenter outage.
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.
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Question Discussion
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