AZ-204 Practice Question: Connect to and consume Azure services and third-party services
A developer needs to store session state for a web app that runs on multiple instances behind a load balancer. The state must be persisted across restarts. Which Azure service should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse durable storage (like Table Storage or SQL Database) with the need for fast, in-memory session state, overlooking that Azure Cache for Redis is the only service purpose-built for this exact scenario with built-in session providers and low-latency access.
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
✓
Azure Cache for Redis
Azure Cache for Redis is the correct choice because it provides a high-performance, in-memory data store that supports session state persistence across multiple web app instances behind a load balancer. It offers built-in session state providers for ASP.NET and ASP.NET Core, ensuring state is preserved across restarts and scale-out scenarios with low-latency access.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Azure Table Storage
Why it's wrong here
Azure Table Storage is a NoSQL key-value store optimized for large-scale, semi-structured data, not for high-frequency, low-latency session state. Its typical latency for individual item retrieval and lack of built-in session state providers make it inefficient for the rapid read/write operations required by web application session data, which is often volatile and frequently accessed.
- ✗
Azure SQL Database
Why it's wrong here
Azure SQL Database is a fully managed relational database service, primarily designed for transactional workloads and complex queries requiring data integrity and persistence. While it can technically store session data, using a full relational database for this purpose introduces significant overhead due to its transactional nature, schema validation, and disk-based operations, resulting in much higher latency and cost compared to an in-memory cache.
- ✗
Azure Blob Storage
Why it's wrong here
Azure Blob Storage is an object storage solution primarily designed for storing large amounts of unstructured data like images, videos, and documents. Accessing individual session state items would involve reading entire blobs, which is highly inefficient and incurs significant latency. Its design is optimized for throughput of large files, not for the rapid, granular read/write operations characteristic of session state management.
- ✓
Azure Cache for Redis
Why this is correct
Azure Cache for Redis is an in-memory data store based on the open-source Redis project, providing extremely low-latency access to data. It is specifically designed for caching, session state management, and message brokering, offering high performance and scalability. Its native support for various session state providers in frameworks like ASP.NET makes it an ideal, efficient, and cost-effective solution for storing volatile session data.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This AZ-204 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-204 exam.