AZ-204 Practice Question: Connect to and consume Azure services and third-party services
An application calls a Service Bus topic through HTTP. The developer must implement retries without overwhelming the remote system during partial outages. Which retry pattern is best?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse 'exponential backoff' with 'immediate retries' or 'infinite retries,' overlooking the critical need for jitter and a maximum retry limit to prevent overwhelming the remote system during partial outages.
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
✓
Exponential backoff with jitter and a maximum retry limit
Exponential backoff with jitter and a maximum retry limit is the best pattern because it progressively increases the delay between retries, preventing the client from overwhelming the Service Bus topic during partial outages. The jitter randomizes the delay to avoid thundering herd problems, while the maximum retry limit ensures the system doesn't retry indefinitely, aligning with Azure's recommended retry guidance for HTTP-based calls to Service Bus.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Disable all timeout settings
Why it's wrong here
Removing timeout settings lets hung HTTP calls block indefinitely, exhausting connection pools and worsening the outage. Timeouts exist to fail fast and free resources; disabling them is never a retry strategy. Configuring them is correct when diagnosing latency, not for resilient Service Bus retries.
- ✗
Immediate infinite retries
Why it's wrong here
Retrying immediately without delay or a cap floods the already-struggling Service Bus endpoint, amplifying the partial outage. Infinite immediate retries suit idempotent local operations that cannot fail remotely; for remote HTTP calls, exponential backoff with jitter and a maximum count is required.
- ✗
Retry only after restarting the application
Why it's wrong here
Restarting the application discards in-flight state and cannot retry the failed HTTP call, so the operation simply fails. Application restarts suit recovering from leaked resources or corrupted in-memory state, not for handling transient Service Bus throttling or partial outages.
- ✓
Exponential backoff with jitter and a maximum retry limit
Why this is correct
Exponential backoff with jitter spaces retries increasingly apart and randomises the delay, preventing synchronised retry storms that would overwhelm the remote system during partial outages. The maximum retry limit bounds total attempts, satisfying the requirement to avoid overwhelming the service.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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