Question 1easymultiple choice
Full question →easymultiple choiceObjective-mapped
Two application VMs are in the same Azure region. They must stay available during planned host maintenance, but the business does not require protection from a full datacenter outage. Which placement option should you use?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
A
Best answer
Availability set
An availability set spreads VMs across fault and update domains so planned maintenance affects only part of the group at a time.
B
Distractor review
Availability zone
A zone can improve resilience, but it is more than required when only host maintenance protection is needed.
C
Distractor review
Shared disk
A shared disk supports clustering scenarios, but it does not place VMs to reduce maintenance impact.
D
Distractor review
Snapshot set
Snapshots help capture disk state for recovery, but they do not distribute running VMs across maintenance boundaries.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Many certification questions include familiar terms but test a specific constraint. Read the exact wording before choosing an answer that is generally true but wrong for this case.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
This question should be treated as a scenario, not a definition check. Identify the problem, the constraint and the best action. Then compare each option against those facts.
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.
- Use explanations to understand the rule behind the answer.
TExam Day Tips
- Underline the problem statement mentally.
- 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.
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More questions from this exam
Keep practising from the same exam bank, or move into a focused topic page if this question exposed a weak area.
Question 1
A route table contains these entries: 10.0.0.0/8 with next hop Virtual appliance, and 10.1.1.0/24 with next hop Virtual network gateway. Which next hop will Azure use for traffic to 10.1.1.5?
Question 2
You are deploying a stateless web application on Azure virtual machines. The solution must automatically add and remove instances based on CPU demand and allow all instances to be managed as one logical group. Which Azure compute feature should you deploy?
Question 3
You are deploying a Windows Server VM for an internal app. The VM must support Secure Boot and vTPM later, its OS disk must survive host moves, and the team wants the lowest-cost managed disk tier that still behaves like a normal writable OS disk. Which two choices should you make? Select two.
Question 4
You need to deploy several identical virtual machines and ensure that the failure of a single Azure host does not affect all of them. Which feature should you use?
Question 5
You need to connect VNet-Hub and VNet-Spoke so that resources in both virtual networks can communicate privately over the Microsoft backbone. Both virtual networks are in the same region. What should you configure?
Question 6
You need to create a storage account that provides the lowest-cost redundant storage for non-critical data and only needs protection against local disk or server failure within a single datacenter. Which redundancy option should you choose?
FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this AZ-104 question test?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Availability set — An availability set is the right answer because it protects against planned host maintenance and isolated hardware failures inside a datacenter. Azure places the VMs into different fault and update domains so not all of them are affected at the same time. That matches the requirement when datacenter-level outage protection is not needed and you want simple intra-datacenter availability. Why others are wrong: An availability zone is stronger than necessary and is meant for datacenter-level separation. A shared disk is for certain clustering configurations, not for distributing VMs across update or fault domains. A snapshot set protects data recovery, but it does not help the VMs stay online during maintenance events.
What should I do if I get this AZ-104 question wrong?
Then try more questions from the same exam bank and focus on understanding why the wrong options are tempting.
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