Question 1,089 of 1,049
AZ-104 Deploy and Manage Azure Compute Practice Question
Exhibit
Environment notes: - Region: East US 2 - Workload: two identical web VMs behind a load balancer - Requirement: the application must keep running if one datacenter in the region becomes unavailable - Current plan: both VMs would be placed in the same availability set
Based on the exhibit, which deployment change best meets the resilience requirement for the application VMs?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse availability sets (which protect against rack-level failures within a single data center) with availability zones (which protect against full data center outages), leading them to choose Option A thinking it provides sufficient resilience.
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
✓
Place each VM in a different availability zone and keep the load balancer in front.
Deploying each VM into a different availability zone ensures that the VMs are physically separated across distinct data centers within an Azure region, protecting against zone-level failures. The load balancer in front distributes traffic across the VMs, providing high availability even if one zone goes offline. This meets the resilience requirement by eliminating a single point of failure at the data center level.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Keep both VMs in the same availability set to spread them across update domains only.
Why it's wrong here
An availability set spreads VMs across both fault domains and update domains, but those domains reside within the same datacenter. Even if you deliberately focus on update-domain placement, this design protects only against planned Azure maintenance and individual hardware failures, not against a whole datacenter losing power or connectivity. Because both VMs remain tied to one physical location, the workload has no automatic failover path if that datacenter becomes unavailable.
When this WOULD be correct
If the requirement were to protect against planned maintenance or hardware failures within a single datacenter, and the VMs must remain in the same datacenter for low latency, then placing them in the same availability set would be correct.
- ✓
Place each VM in a different availability zone and keep the load balancer in front.
Why this is correct
Availability zones provide isolation across datacenters within the same region. By placing the two VMs in different zones, the workload can continue if one zone or datacenter becomes unavailable. The load balancer can direct traffic to the surviving VM. This design matches the stated requirement more closely than an availability set, which only spreads VMs across fault and update domains inside a single datacenter cluster.
- ✗
Deploy both VMs into a proximity placement group to reduce latency between them.
Why it's wrong here
A proximity placement group is designed to co-locate VMs in the same datacenter or even the same rack to minimize network latency between them. It deliberately increases failure correlation because the VMs share the same underlying infrastructure, so it does not provide any isolation across datacenters. Adding a load balancer in front of a PPG does not introduce a second physical failure domain. This option is therefore optimized for performance, not for high availability.
When this WOULD be correct
This option would be correct in a scenario where the requirement is to minimize network latency between VMs for a tightly coupled, low-latency application, such as a high-performance computing (HPC) workload, and resilience is not the primary concern.
- ✗
Move the VMs into a single availability set and add more managed disks for redundancy.
Why it's wrong here
Placing both VMs in the same availability set and adding extra managed disks does not address compute resilience. Availability sets distribute VMs across fault and update domains within a single datacenter, so they cannot survive a full datacenter or zone outage. Additional managed disks only provide durable storage replication, not another compute host in a separate failure domain. Thus this change fails the requirement for business continuity during a datacenter incident.
When this WOULD be correct
This option would be correct in a scenario where the requirement is to ensure data durability and high availability for the managed disks themselves, such as when using Azure Site Recovery or backup policies that require multiple disks for redundancy.
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.
✓Place each VM in a different availability zone and keep the load balancer in front.Correct answer▾
Why this is correct
Availability zones provide isolation across datacenters within the same region. By placing the two VMs in different zones, the workload can continue if one zone or datacenter becomes unavailable. The load balancer can direct traffic to the surviving VM. This design matches the stated requirement more closely than an availability set, which only spreads VMs across fault and update domains inside a single datacenter cluster.
✗Keep both VMs in the same availability set to spread them across update domains only.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
An availability set only protects against rack-level failures and update domain reboots, not against a full datacenter outage. The question's resilience requirement demands protection against a zonal failure, which only availability zones provide.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
If the requirement were to protect against planned maintenance or hardware failures within a single datacenter, and the VMs must remain in the same datacenter for low latency, then placing them in the same availability set would be correct.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates often confuse availability sets with availability zones, thinking that spreading across update domains provides sufficient resilience for all failure scenarios, or they underestimate the scope of a datacenter outage.
✗Deploy both VMs into a proximity placement group to reduce latency between them.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
The question focuses on resilience (high availability), not latency. A proximity placement group reduces network latency but does not protect against zonal or rack-level failures, so it fails to meet the resilience requirement.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
This option would be correct in a scenario where the requirement is to minimize network latency between VMs for a tightly coupled, low-latency application, such as a high-performance computing (HPC) workload, and resilience is not the primary concern.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse 'resilience' with 'performance' or think that grouping VMs close together improves availability, not realizing that proximity placement groups actually increase the risk of simultaneous failure.
✗Move the VMs into a single availability set and add more managed disks for redundancy.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Adding more managed disks does not provide VM resilience; it only increases storage redundancy. The question requires application VM resilience, which is about compute availability, not disk redundancy.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
This option would be correct in a scenario where the requirement is to ensure data durability and high availability for the managed disks themselves, such as when using Azure Site Recovery or backup policies that require multiple disks for redundancy.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse disk redundancy with VM resilience, thinking that more disks automatically make the application more resilient, or they may overgeneralize the concept of redundancy from storage to compute.
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?”
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Last reviewed: Jun 11, 2026
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