Match each Azure VM deployment concept to the description that best fits it.
Drag a concept onto its matching description — or click a concept then click the description.
Spreads VMs across fault and update domains within one datacenter.
Places VMs in separate datacenters within the same Azure region.
Reusable source for creating the same VM build again.
Defines CPU, memory, and temporary storage resources.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
VMSS: Provides auto-scaling of identical VMs
VMSS provides auto-scaling identical VMs; Availability Set groups VMs for redundancy; Availability Zone offers physical separation; Managed Disk is persistent block storage; Azure Bastion provides secure remote access; Dedicated Host gives single-tenant physical servers.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
VMSS: Provides auto-scaling of identical VMs
Why this is correct
VMSS provides automatic scaling of an identical VM fleet, allowing the instance count to scale out/in based on CPU, memory, or custom metrics, and integrates with Azure Load Balancer to distribute traffic; each VM keeps identical configuration, making it the only option matching the 'auto-scaling of identical VMs' description.
Availability Zone: Offers physical separation within a region, with independent power and networking
Why this is correct
An Availability Zone is a set of physically separate datacenters within an Azure region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking; placing VMs in different zones protects against a single datacenter failure, and this description directly matches Availability Zones, not Availability Sets.
Dedicated Host: Single-tenant physical servers dedicated to your workloads
Why this is correct
A Dedicated Host is a single-tenant physical server reserved for your workloads, giving you full control over maintenance and the ability to use your own Windows/Linux licenses; because other customers' VMs cannot share the same host, it satisfies compliance and isolation requirements, exactly as the description states.
Availability Set: Offers physical separation within a region
Why it's wrong here
An Availability Set spreads VMs within the same datacenter across fault domains (racks with independent power/network) and update domains to guarantee 99.95% availability during planned maintenance or a local hardware failure; it does not provide physical separation across buildings, because that requires Availability Zones, so this description is misplaced.
Managed Disk: Provides secure remote access to VMs over SSL
Why it's wrong here
A Managed Disk is a block-storage volume that provides persistent SSD or HDD storage for an Azure VM, offering encryption at rest, snapshots, and disk redundancy; it has nothing to do with remote access, whereas the described 'secure remote access over SSL' is provided by Azure Bastion, which brokers RDP/SSH sessions.
Azure Bastion: Persistent block storage for Azure VMs
Why it's wrong here
Azure Bastion is a fully PaaS-managed service that enables secure RDP/SSH access to VMs through the Azure portal over TLS, directly in a delegated subnet without assigning a public IP; it is not a storage service, so 'persistent block storage' describes Managed Disks, not Bastion, making this pairing incorrect.
Go deeper
Learn chapter
Dynamic Membership Groups
Key term
Availability set
An Availability set is a cloud computing feature that groups virtual machines across multiple fault domains and update domains to ensure high availability during hardware failures or planned maintenance.
Key term
Managed disk
A managed disk is a cloud-based virtual hard drive that Azure automatically creates, manages, and scales for your virtual machines so you don't have to worry about storage infrastructure.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This AZ-104 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the AZ-104 exam.