AZ-104 Monitor and Maintain Azure Resources Practice Question

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✓

  Create an Azure Monitor metric alert and link it to an action group.

  Why this is correct

  An Azure Monitor metric alert continuously evaluates the VM's platform metric for Percentage CPU (a value emitted by Azure Monitor from the VM's hypervisor) against a defined threshold. When the average CPU usage exceeds the threshold, the alert fires and activates a linked action group, which delivers notifications via email, SMS, webhook, ITSM, or automation runbook. This is the intended mechanism for real-time, metric-based performance alerting on a VM.

• ✗

  Create an Azure Advisor recommendation alert.

  Why it's wrong here

  Azure Advisor is a continuous assessment service that reviews resource configuration and emits recommendations for high availability, security, performance, and cost efficiency. It does not monitor a VM's CPU utilization in real time, and its alerts are triggered when a recommendation is generated or updated, not when a numeric metric crosses a threshold. Even a performance-oriented Advisor recommendation, like resizing an underutilized VM, is based on periodic telemetry analysis and is not a substitute for a metric alert on CPU usage.

  When this WOULD be correct

  You need to be alerted when Azure Advisor identifies a recommendation for your VM, such as 'Right-size underutilized VMs' or 'Enable backup for VMs'. An Advisor recommendation alert would email the team when such a recommendation is generated.

• ✗

  Create an activity log alert for the virtual machine.

  Why it's wrong here

  Activity log alerts inspect the subscription's activity log for control-plane (management plane) events, such as VM create, delete, restart, or scale operations. CPU usage percentage is a telemetry value collected as a resource metric, not an entry in the activity log, so an activity log alert cannot evaluate threshold conditions against it. You could alert on an administrator restarting the VM, but not on utilization crossing a performance threshold.

  When this WOULD be correct

  You need to be notified when a virtual machine is deleted or stopped. An activity log alert for the 'Delete Virtual Machine' or 'Deallocate Virtual Machine' operation would be correct.

• ✗

  Create a subscription budget alert.

  Why it's wrong here

  Subscription budget alerts are part of Azure Cost Management and track actual or forecasted spending against a monetary budget amount defined per subscription, resource group, or service. They trigger when cost aggregates exceed a percentage or absolute amount, not when performance metrics like average CPU usage reach a threshold. A VM CPU spike creates no cost event by itself, so a budget alert would never fire in response to that condition.

  When this WOULD be correct

  If the question asked for notification when the cost of VM-App01 exceeds a certain amount (e.g., $500) for a month, then a subscription budget alert 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.

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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