AZ-104 Implement and Manage Storage Practice Question
You manage a storage account named contosostore that contains a blob container named contracts. A legal hold has been placed on the container because of an active litigation. Your manager asks you to delete a specific blob named contract-2023.pdf from the container because it was uploaded by mistake. What happens when you attempt to delete the blob while the legal hold is in place?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is assuming that soft delete or geo-replication can bypass a legal hold, when in fact immutability policies block the delete operation entirely.
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
✓
The delete operation fails with an error indicating the blob is under an immutable policy, and the blob remains unchanged.
A legal hold is an immutable retention policy that prevents modification or deletion of blobs for an indefinite period. When a blob is under a legal hold, any delete request fails with an immutability error, and the blob remains unchanged. The hold must be explicitly cleared before deletion can succeed, ensuring compliance with litigation requirements.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The delete operation succeeds, but the blob is moved to the soft-delete container and can be recovered for the remaining retention period.
Why it's wrong here
While soft delete can preserve deleted blobs, a legal hold takes precedence and blocks the delete request entirely. The operation returns a failure rather than moving the blob to a soft-deleted state, so the blob remains in its original container and is not recoverable through soft-delete because it was never deleted.
- ✓
The delete operation fails with an error indicating the blob is under an immutable policy, and the blob remains unchanged.
Why this is correct
A legal hold is a type of immutability policy that blocks write and delete operations on the protected blob. When you attempt to delete a blob under a legal hold, Azure Storage returns an error such as BlobImmutableDueToPolicy, and the blob stays intact. This ensures litigation data cannot be altered or removed until the hold is cleared.
- ✗
The blob is deleted immediately, and the legal hold is automatically removed from the container.
Why it's wrong here
A legal hold is an immutable retention policy that prevents deletion or modification of blobs. Azure will not silently remove the hold to allow a delete operation. The hold must be explicitly cleared by someone with appropriate permissions before any deletion can succeed, so this outcome cannot occur.
- ✗
The blob is deleted, but a copy is automatically created in a secondary region and retained for the duration of the legal hold.
Why it's wrong here
Azure Storage does not create an automatic secondary copy of a blob when a delete is attempted under a legal hold. Geo-replication copies data at the storage account level, but it does not override immutability policies. The delete request is simply denied, and no secondary copy is generated as a result of the attempt.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Immutable Blob Storage: Legal Hold and Time-Based Retention
Key term
Container
A container is a lightweight, standalone software package that includes everything needed to run an application, such as code, runtime, system tools, and libraries.
Key term
Retention policy
A retention policy is a set of rules that determines how long an organization keeps its data and what happens to it when the retention period expires.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Microsoft exam blueprint
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.