AZ-104 Monitor and Maintain Azure Resources Practice Question
You are an Azure administrator for a company that runs critical virtual machines (VMs) in Azure. You need to configure a monitoring solution that will alert you when the average CPU usage of a specific VM exceeds 90% for more than 15 minutes. Which three of the following actions should you take to set up this alert? (Choose three.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse metric alerts with log alerts or diagnostic settings, thinking that log-based monitoring is required for CPU alerts, when in fact metric alerts are the native, simpler solution for host-level metrics like CPU usage.
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
✓
Create a metric alert rule in Azure Monitor targeting the VM's 'Percentage CPU' metric.
A metric alert rule in Azure Monitor is the correct approach because it directly monitors a specific metric like 'Percentage CPU' from the VM without requiring additional data collection. Configuring the condition to fire when the average CPU usage exceeds 90% for a period of 15 minutes ensures the alert triggers only after sustained high usage, reducing noise. Defining an action group with email notification is necessary to alert the operations team when the alert fires, completing the monitoring solution.
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 a metric alert rule in Azure Monitor targeting the VM's 'Percentage CPU' metric.
Why this is correct
Creating a metric alert rule in Azure Monitor targeting the VM's 'Percentage CPU' metric is correct because metric alerts evaluate Azure Monitor platform metrics directly, without requiring agents or Log Analytics ingestion. This provides near-real-time, low-latency detection of CPU spikes, making it ideal for critical VMs where rapid response is essential. Since platform metrics are collected automatically, no additional diagnostic setup is needed for the alert to function.
- ✓
Configure the alert condition to fire when the average CPU usage is greater than 90 for a period of 15 minutes.
Why this is correct
Setting the alert condition to fire when the average CPU usage is greater than 90% over a 15-minute period is correct because it uses a meaningful aggregation window to filter out transient CPU spikes and false positives. The static threshold of 90% with an average aggregation over 15 minutes captures sustained high CPU that genuinely threatens VM performance. This aligns with best practices for alerting on resource-intensive workloads.
- ✓
Define an action group that includes an email notification to the operations team.
Why this is correct
Defining an action group that includes email notification to the operations team is correct because action groups are the central notification mechanism in Azure Monitor, handling delivery channels like email, SMS, webhooks, and ITSM. Attaching the relevant action group to the metric alert rule ensures that when the CPU threshold is breached, the operations team is immediately notified. This completes the alert rule as a fully operational monitoring solution.
- ✗
Create a log alert rule based on the VM's performance counters collected in Log Analytics.
Why it's wrong here
Creating a log alert rule based on the VM's performance counters collected in Log Analytics is wrong for this scenario because log alerts depend on performance data being ingested into a Log Analytics workspace, which requires the Azure Monitor agent and diagnostic settings. This adds complexity and latency compared to a metric alert, which directly evaluates the VM's built-in platform metric. While log alerts are useful for complex cross-resource queries, they are not the optimal or most direct method for a single critical VM's CPU threshold alert.
- ✗
Enable Azure Diagnostic Settings on the VM to send performance data to a storage account.
Why it's wrong here
Enabling Azure Diagnostic Settings on the VM to send performance data to a storage account is wrong because diagnostic settings to a storage account are intended for archival, export, or compliance, not for real-time alerting. This action alone does not generate any alert; you would still need to create a log alert or external processing to analyze the stored data. For immediate CPU notification, a metric alert on the automatically available platform metric is the appropriate and efficient choice.
- ✗
Configure an Application Insights availability test to monitor the VM's CPU.
Why it's wrong here
Configuring an Application Insights availability test to monitor the VM's CPU is wrong because availability tests are designed to monitor the external reachability and response latency of HTTP/HTTPS endpoints, not server-side CPU utilization. They require a public URL and an agent to ping the endpoint from global locations, and they cannot read CPU metrics from an Azure VM. CPU monitoring belongs in Azure Monitor metrics, while availability tests belong to Application Insights web monitoring.
Go deeper
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Managed Identities for Azure Resources
Key term
Group
A group is a collection of users, devices, or other objects that are assigned permissions and policies together for simplified management in identity and governance systems like Microsoft Entra ID.
Key term
Azure Monitor
Azure Monitor is a cloud service that collects, analyzes, and acts on telemetry data from your Azure and on-premises resources to help you understand performance and availability.
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