AZ-204 Develop for Azure storage Practice Question
You are building a compliance solution that stores terabytes of data in Azure Blob Storage. Data is appended frequently and never modified. Regulatory requirements mandate that no data can be overwritten or deleted for 7 years. Which storage configuration should you enable?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse immutability policies with soft delete or versioning, thinking that preserving previous versions or recovering deleted blobs satisfies the 'no overwrite or delete' requirement, but only immutability policies provide a hard enforcement that prevents the operation from succeeding in the first place.
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
✓
Enable immutability policy (time-based retention)
A is correct because a time-based retention policy under Azure Blob Storage immutability policy ensures that blobs cannot be overwritten or deleted for a specified duration (here, 7 years). This meets the regulatory requirement of write-once-read-many (WORM) compliance, and the policy is enforced at the storage container level, preventing any modifications or deletions even by the storage account owner.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Enable immutability policy (time-based retention)
Why this is correct
Enabling an immutability policy with time-based retention places blobs into a Write Once, Read Many (WORM) state for a specified duration. This prevents any modification or deletion of the blob data, including metadata and properties, until the retention period expires. This feature is specifically designed to meet stringent regulatory compliance requirements by ensuring data integrity and non-repudiation over long periods.
- ✗
Enable blob soft delete
Why it's wrong here
Blob soft delete is a data protection feature that retains deleted or overwritten blobs for a specified period, allowing for recovery. While it prevents immediate permanent data loss, it does not prevent blobs from being overwritten in the first place, nor does it prevent a user from explicitly deleting a blob (which then enters the soft delete state). Therefore, it fails to enforce true immutability, as the active version of a blob can still be modified or removed.
- ✗
Enable blob versioning
Why it's wrong here
Blob versioning automatically creates a new version of a blob each time it is modified or deleted, preserving previous states. While this provides a history of changes and allows rollback, it fundamentally permits the modification or deletion of the *current* blob version. The primary purpose of versioning is data recovery and historical tracking, not to enforce a Write Once, Read Many (WORM) state for the active data, thus failing to meet immutability compliance.
- ✗
Enable change feed
Why it's wrong here
The Azure Blob Storage change feed provides an ordered, guaranteed, and durable log of all changes that occur to blobs in a storage account. It records events like blob creation, modification, and deletion, making it useful for auditing, analytics, and data synchronization. However, the change feed is a passive logging mechanism; it does not prevent any modifications or deletions from occurring, nor does it enforce any immutability on the blobs themselves.
Quick reference
Azure Blob Storage Tier Comparison
| Tier | Storage Cost | Retrieval Cost | Latency | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hot | Highest | Lowest | Immediate | Active data, frequent reads |
| Cool | Lower | Higher | Immediate | Data accessed < once / month |
| Cold | Lower still | Higher | Immediate | Data accessed < once / quarter |
| Archive | Lowest | Highest + rehydration delay | Hours | Long-term compliance retention |
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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.