- A
A metric alert on storage capacity with an action group.
Why wrong: Capacity metrics do not indicate platform outage conditions or regional service health events.
- B
A log alert on storage diagnostic logs that watches for 503 responses.
Why wrong: This depends on continuous log collection and may miss the platform-level health signal the team wants.
- C
A Service Health alert based on the Activity log, scoped appropriately.
Service Health alerts are the right choice when you need to know about Azure platform incidents, regional issues, or service degradations that affect a resource or region. They are generated from the Activity log and do not require you to ingest operational logs continuously just to detect an outage. This makes them both efficient and appropriate for platform availability monitoring.
- D
An Azure Policy assignment that audits the storage account state.
Why wrong: Policy can report compliance, but it does not notify operators about live availability incidents.
AZ-104 Monitor and Maintain Azure Resources Practice Question
This AZ-104 practice question tests your understanding of monitor and maintain azure resources. 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 storage account becomes unavailable because Azure has a regional platform issue. The operations team wants a notification whenever Azure marks the resource or region unhealthy, and they want to avoid continuous log ingestion just to detect the outage. What should they configure?
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
A Service Health alert based on the Activity log, scoped appropriately.
Option C is correct because a Service Health alert, configured from the Azure Activity log, provides proactive notifications when Azure services or regions experience an outage or degradation. This alert is triggered by Azure's own health signals, eliminating the need for continuous log ingestion or custom metric monitoring to detect platform-level issues.
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.
- ✗
A metric alert on storage capacity with an action group.
Why it's wrong here
Capacity metrics do not indicate platform outage conditions or regional service health events.
When this WOULD be correct
A metric alert on storage capacity would be correct if the question asked for a notification when storage usage exceeds a threshold (e.g., 80% capacity) to plan scaling or cleanup, not for detecting Azure platform issues.
- ✗
A log alert on storage diagnostic logs that watches for 503 responses.
Why it's wrong here
This depends on continuous log collection and may miss the platform-level health signal the team wants.
When this WOULD be correct
This option would be correct if the question asked for a way to detect application-level errors (e.g., 503 Service Unavailable) from the storage account due to client-side issues or throttling, and the team is already collecting diagnostic logs.
- ✓
A Service Health alert based on the Activity log, scoped appropriately.
Why this is correct
Service Health alerts are the right choice when you need to know about Azure platform incidents, regional issues, or service degradations that affect a resource or region. They are generated from the Activity log and do not require you to ingest operational logs continuously just to detect an outage. This makes them both efficient and appropriate for platform availability monitoring.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- ✗
An Azure Policy assignment that audits the storage account state.
Why it's wrong here
Policy can report compliance, but it does not notify operators about live availability incidents.
When this WOULD be correct
A question asking how to enforce that storage accounts are deployed only in specific regions or with certain encryption settings would make Azure Policy the correct answer, as it audits and enforces compliance rules.
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.
✓A Service Health alert based on the Activity log, scoped appropriately.Correct answer▾
Why this is correct
Service Health alerts are the right choice when you need to know about Azure platform incidents, regional issues, or service degradations that affect a resource or region. They are generated from the Activity log and do not require you to ingest operational logs continuously just to detect an outage. This makes them both efficient and appropriate for platform availability monitoring.
✗A metric alert on storage capacity with an action group.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Metric alerts on storage capacity monitor performance metrics like used capacity, not service health or regional outages. They cannot detect when Azure marks a resource or region as unhealthy, which is the specific requirement.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
A metric alert on storage capacity would be correct if the question asked for a notification when storage usage exceeds a threshold (e.g., 80% capacity) to plan scaling or cleanup, not for detecting Azure platform issues.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse metric alerts with health monitoring, thinking any alert on a storage account can detect outages, or they may not understand that Service Health alerts are separate from resource-level metrics.
✗A log alert on storage diagnostic logs that watches for 503 responses.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
A log alert on storage diagnostic logs requires continuous log ingestion, which the operations team wants to avoid. Additionally, it watches for 503 responses from the storage account itself, not for Azure platform health notifications.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
This option would be correct if the question asked for a way to detect application-level errors (e.g., 503 Service Unavailable) from the storage account due to client-side issues or throttling, and the team is already collecting diagnostic logs.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may think that monitoring HTTP error codes is a direct way to detect outages, and they overlook the requirement to avoid continuous log ingestion and the need for platform-level health notifications.
✗An Azure Policy assignment that audits the storage account state.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Azure Policy audits compliance but does not generate real-time notifications for service health issues; it is a governance tool, not an alerting mechanism for regional platform outages.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
A question asking how to enforce that storage accounts are deployed only in specific regions or with certain encryption settings would make Azure Policy the correct answer, as it audits and enforces compliance rules.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse Azure Policy's audit capability with monitoring and alerting, thinking it can detect and notify on resource state changes, but it lacks real-time alerting for service health events.
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 that candidates confuse application-level monitoring (e.g., log alerts on HTTP 503 errors) with Azure's own platform health signals, leading them to choose a log-based solution that requires continuous ingestion and misses the native Service Health alert capability.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Service Health alerts are based on the Azure Resource Health and Azure Service Health events that appear in the Activity log under the 'Service Health' category. These events are emitted by Azure's backend health monitoring system, which uses a combination of heartbeat probes, telemetry, and manual incident declarations to determine service availability. In a real-world scenario, configuring a Service Health alert for a storage account ensures the operations team receives an email or SMS (via an action group) the moment Azure marks the region or resource as 'unhealthy', without any custom instrumentation or log ingestion costs.
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
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
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?
Monitor and Maintain Azure Resources — This question tests Monitor and Maintain Azure Resources — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: A Service Health alert based on the Activity log, scoped appropriately. — Option C is correct because a Service Health alert, configured from the Azure Activity log, provides proactive notifications when Azure services or regions experience an outage or degradation. This alert is triggered by Azure's own health signals, eliminating the need for continuous log ingestion or custom metric monitoring to detect platform-level issues.
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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