AZ-204 Develop for Azure storage Practice Question
You are designing a backup solution for a virtual machine. Monthly backups are large VHD files (up to 1 TB) that must be retained for 7 years. After creation, backups are accessed only rarely (once or twice per year). You need to minimize storage cost. Which storage tier should you use for the VHD files?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently choose Cool tier because they see 'backup' and think 'infrequent' but fail to recognize that 'rarely accessed' (once or twice per year) and 'long retention' (7 years) specifically point to Archive tier as the most cost-effective option, not Cool.
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
✓
Archive tier
The Archive tier is the correct choice because it offers the lowest storage cost for data that is rarely accessed (once or twice per year) and has a long retention period (7 years). Azure Archive storage is optimized for data that can tolerate a retrieval latency of several hours, which is acceptable given the infrequent access pattern of these monthly backup VHD files.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Hot tier
Why it's wrong here
The Hot tier is designed for frequently accessed data, offering the lowest access costs and highest availability, making it suitable for active workloads or data that needs immediate retrieval. While it provides excellent performance, its higher storage costs per GB make it economically inefficient for monthly virtual machine backups, which are typically accessed infrequently for recovery purposes. Opting for Hot tier for long-term backups would lead to unnecessary expenditure compared to more cost-effective archival solutions.
- ✗
Cool tier
Why it's wrong here
The Cool tier is optimized for storing large amounts of data that is accessed infrequently, typically less than once a month but more than once a year, with a minimum retention period of 30 days. It offers lower storage costs than the Hot tier but higher access costs and slightly higher latency. While it's more cost-effective than Hot for infrequent access, for monthly backups intended for long-term archival where retrieval is rare, the Archive tier provides significantly lower storage costs, making Cool tier a suboptimal choice.
- ✓
Archive tier
Why this is correct
The Archive tier is the most cost-effective option for storing data that is rarely accessed and can tolerate retrieval times of several hours, with a minimum retention period of 180 days. It offers the lowest storage costs per GB, making it ideal for long-term backups, historical data, or compliance archives where immediate access is not critical. For monthly virtual machine backups, which are typically stored for extended periods and retrieved only in disaster recovery scenarios, the Archive tier provides the optimal balance of cost savings and acceptable recovery time.
- ✗
Premium tier
Why it's wrong here
The Premium tier is specifically engineered for high-performance block blob workloads requiring very low latency and high transaction rates, backed by solid-state drives (SSDs). It is the most expensive storage tier, designed for critical applications like high-performance computing, interactive gaming, or demanding databases. Using the Premium tier for monthly virtual machine backups would be an extreme misapplication, as the high cost provides no tangible benefit for data that is stored passively and accessed rarely, making it entirely unsuitable for this backup scenario.
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