AZ-204 · domain
Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize Azure solutions
This domain covers instrumenting Azure apps with Application Insights and the Azure Monitor SDK, reading telemetry with KQL, configuring caching and CDN, and scaling. The exam tests it through scenario questions on diagnosing failures, choosing between Redis and CDN, and interpreting metrics, logs, and autoscale rules rather than isolated definitions.
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What to know about Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize Azure solutions
Instrument apps with Application Insights and query telemetry using KQL in Log Analytics; configure Azure Cache for Redis and Azure CDN for performance. The key is choosing the right tool: Redis for session/data caching, CDN for static content edge delivery.
Instrumenting .NET apps with Application Insights SDK, TelemetryClient, and dependency tracking
Writing KQL queries over Log Analytics tables like requests, traces, and exceptions
Configuring Azure Cache for Redis, including TTL, eviction policies, and connection resilience
Implementing autoscale rules, Azure CDN caching, and App Service scaling decisions
Watch out for
Common Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize Azure solutions exam traps
- ▸Assuming Application Insights samples or ingests telemetry instantly, when sampling and ingestion latency can hide events during debugging.
- ▸Confusing Azure Cache for Redis eviction policies or treating it as durable storage rather than an in-memory cache with data loss risk.
- ▸Mixing up autoscale scale-out versus scale-up, or forgetting cooldown periods cause rules to fire slower than expected.
Question index
All Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize Azure solutions questions (102)
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Your Azure web app is running in a production environment. Users report that the app is slow. You need to identify the root cause without impacting production traffic. Which approach should you use?
Medium2You are monitoring an Azure Web App using Application Insights. You need to track the duration and status code of an external API call made by the app. Which Application Insights feature should you use?
Medium3Your e-commerce application sends telemetry to Application Insights. You need to reduce ingestion costs while preserving the ability to detect trends in performance metrics. Which sampling type should you configure?
Medium4You are using Application Insights to monitor a web application. You notice that a specific request is slow. You want to see the complete end-to-end transaction details, including all dependency calls and exceptions for that single request. Which feature should you use?
Easy5Application Insights ingestion cost is rising because a high-traffic app emits large telemetry volume. The team needs statistically useful telemetry while reducing ingestion. What should be configured?
Hard6Which TWO actions should you take to optimize costs for an Azure SQL Database that is underutilized? (Choose two.)
Medium7You are a developer for a large e-commerce company. The company has a global customer base and runs a critical web application on Azure App Service (Premium v3 plan) deployed in multiple regions. The application uses Azure Cosmos DB (multi-region writes enabled) for product catalog and session state. Recently, the operations team reported that during peak shopping hours (e.g., Black Friday), the application becomes slow and some users experience timeouts. You have implemented Application Insights to collect telemetry. After analyzing the data, you find that the Cosmos DB write operations are experiencing high latency (average 200ms) and occasional throttling (429 errors). The read latency is acceptable. The App Service instances are scaled out to 20 instances during peak, and CPU usage is around 70%. You need to optimize the solution to reduce write latency and eliminate throttling without over-provisioning resources. The solution must be cost-effective and require minimal code changes. What should you do?
Hard8You need to emit a custom metric in Application Insights that tracks the number of page views per browser. You expect high volume (millions of events per day). Which API should you use to ensure efficient pre-aggregation and avoid performance issues?
Hard9You are monitoring an Azure App Service web app that is experiencing intermittent high CPU usage. You need to configure alerts and troubleshoot the issue. Which TWO actions should you take? (Choose two.)
Easy10You have an Azure Logic App that processes orders. Occasionally, the Logic App fails due to a transient error from a downstream API. You want to automatically retry the failed action after 10 seconds, up to 3 times, with exponential backoff. Which configuration should you set on the action?
Hard11A production API needs proactive alerting for high telemetry cost. Which two elements are required for a useful Azure Monitor alert?
Hard12You are using Application Insights to monitor a web application. The business team wants to track how many users click a specific button on the page. You need to send custom telemetry data from the client-side JavaScript. Which Application Insights JavaScript SDK method should you call?
Easy13Which TWO Azure Monitor features can help troubleshoot a web app that returns slow response times intermittently?
Medium14You are optimizing an Azure API Management instance that handles 10,000 requests per second. You notice that caching is not effective. The cache hit ratio is below 10%. You need to increase the cache hit ratio. What should you do?
Hard15You are troubleshooting an Azure Function that intermittently throws exceptions. You have enabled Application Insights. You need to capture the exact line of code that caused the exception, even for exceptions that occur during high load. Which feature should you use?
Medium16You are a developer for a company that runs a critical e-commerce application on Azure. The application consists of an Azure App Service web app, an Azure SQL Database, and an Azure Cache for Redis. The web app experiences occasional performance degradation that you suspect is due to inefficient database queries caused by caching issues. You have enabled Application Insights on the web app. You need to identify the root cause of the performance issues and optimize the solution. The solution must minimize cost and administrative overhead. You have the following options: Option A: Configure Azure SQL Database Intelligent Insights to automatically tune database queries. Option B: Use Application Insights Profiler to capture and analyze database query performance. Option C: Implement Redis cache-aside pattern and ensure that all database queries check the cache first. Option D: Enable Azure SQL Database Query Performance Insight to identify the most costly queries and then implement caching. Which option should you recommend?
Medium17Your Azure Functions app uses Durable Functions to orchestrate a workflow. The orchestration sometimes fails with a 'FunctionRuntimeException' due to a timeout. You need to increase the maximum orchestration time. What should you modify?
Hard18Three microservices collaborate on a single user transaction: an App Service API, an Azure Function that processes a Service Bus message, and a downstream storage service. Traces appear separately in Application Insights with no parent-child relationship. What is needed to correlate all three into a single end-to-end trace?
Hard19Your team monitors Azure Functions with Application Insights. After a recent deployment, cold start latency increased. Which feature should you enable to mitigate this?
Medium20You need to analyze all exceptions that occurred in the last 24 hours from an application monitored by Application Insights. You want to group them by exception type, and for each type show the URL where it occurred and the count. Which Log Analytics Kusto query should you use?
Hard21You need to monitor the performance of an Azure App Service web app. Which metric indicates high CPU usage?
Easy22You are monitoring an Azure App Service using Application Insights. You want to alert when the average server response time exceeds 2 seconds over a 5-minute window. What should you create?
Easy23Your application uses Azure Cosmos DB with the SQL API. You notice that read requests are being throttled (HTTP 429) during peak hours. You need to improve read performance without changing the application code. Which action should you take?
Hard24You are using Azure Monitor to collect logs from multiple Azure resources. You need to query logs to find all error events from the last 24 hours. Which query language should you use?
Easy25You are monitoring an Azure Function app that processes messages from an Event Hub. You want to be alerted if the function is failing to process messages (e.g., exceptions) and automatically restart the function host. Which Azure service should you use?
Easy26Refer to the exhibit. You deployed an Azure Storage account with this ARM template. Users outside the allowed IP range receive '403 Forbidden' errors. What is the MOST likely cause?
Hard27You are using Application Insights to monitor an ASP.NET Core web API. Users report that a specific endpoint is slow, but you cannot reproduce the issue in development. You need to identify which line of code is causing the delay in production. Which Application Insights feature should you use?
Medium28You are deploying a microservices application on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). You need to monitor the resource consumption of each pod and set up alerts when CPU usage exceeds 80% for 5 minutes. What should you use?
Easy29You are monitoring an Azure web application with Application Insights. You want to create a custom dashboard that shows the number of requests over time and the average server response time. Which Application Insights feature should you use to create this dashboard?
Easy30You have an Azure Cosmos DB container with a high number of physical partitions. You observe that some partitions are hitting the request unit (RU) limit while others are underutilized. What should you do to better distribute the workload?
Easy31Your web app hosted on Azure App Service is experiencing high memory usage. You need to capture a memory dump for analysis without restarting the app. Which diagnostic feature should you use?
Easy32You are running an Azure App Service web app on the Basic tier. Users report slow initial responses due to cold starts. You need to keep the app warm without upgrading the hosting plan. Which feature should you enable?
Medium33Match each Azure monitoring tool to its purpose.
Medium34You need to monitor the real-time CPU utilization of an Azure virtual machine. Which Azure Monitor feature is designed for this purpose?
Easy35Arrange the steps to configure auto-scaling for an Azure App Service in the correct order.
Medium36Your Azure Functions app (running on the Consumption plan) processes messages from an Azure Storage queue. Occasionally, the function fails due to a timeout after 5 minutes. You need to increase the maximum execution time without changing the plan. What should you do?
Medium37Match each Azure container service to its primary use case.
Medium38You are monitoring a web application with Application Insights. The application occasionally returns HTTP 500 errors. You want to be notified immediately when the error rate exceeds 5% of all requests in a rolling 5-minute window. Which feature of Application Insights should you configure?
Medium39You deploy a microservices architecture on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Some pods report OOMKilled errors. Which diagnostic step should you take first?
Hard40You are using Azure Application Insights to monitor a web application. You need to create a custom dashboard that shows the number of failed requests per endpoint over the last 24 hours. Which query language should you use?
Easy41You need to diagnose why an Azure App Service web app returns HTTP 503 errors during peak traffic. Which Application Insights feature should you use?
Easy42You are investigating a slow API call in your Azure web app. Application Insights shows that the request took 10 seconds. You need to view all the dependencies (database calls, external HTTP requests) that contributed to this request. What should you use?
Medium43You are troubleshooting an Azure App Service that runs a Node.js application. The application returns HTTP 500 errors intermittently. Application Insights is configured. Which telemetry item should you examine first to find the root cause?
Medium44You are optimizing an Azure SQL Database that runs a heavy reporting workload. Queries are slow due to high logical reads. Which index strategy should you recommend?
Hard45Your Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster experiences node failures. Which Azure service provides automated node repair?
Medium46An application uses Azure Application Insights for monitoring. You need to write a query to analyze the number of failed requests and exceptions over the past hour. Which query language should you use?
Easy47You have an Azure Function app that uses Durable Functions. You notice that some orchestrations are taking longer than expected. You need to monitor the history of orchestration instances. What should you use?
Medium48You query Application Insights with the KQL query in the exhibit. The chart shows a spike in 500 errors at 2:00 PM. What is the next step to diagnose the cause?
Hard49Your team is using Azure DevOps to deploy an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster. You want to automatically roll back a deployment if the new version causes a high error rate. Which Azure service should you use to implement this?
Medium50Which TWO Azure services can be used to monitor and diagnose performance issues in an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster?
Medium51You are monitoring an Azure App Service using Application Insights. You notice that the server response time is high for certain requests. You need to drill down to see which external dependencies (like databases or APIs) are causing the delay. Which Application Insights feature should you use?
Medium52Refer to the exhibit. You run these Azure CLI commands for an Azure Function app. When the app is accessed from https://app.contoso.com, what is the expected behavior?
Hard53Arrange the steps to create a CI/CD pipeline using Azure DevOps for an Azure App Service in the correct order.
Medium54A developer needs to run a Kusto query against application request data to identify 95th percentile latency by operation. Where should the query be run? The architecture review board prefers a managed Azure-native control.
Medium55You have a web application monitored by Application Insights. You want to receive an alert when the average server response time exceeds 2 seconds for a rolling 5-minute period. Which alert rule type should you create?
Medium56You deploy a web app to Azure App Service. Users report intermittent 500 errors. How should you enable detailed error logging?
Easy57You are monitoring an Azure web app using Application Insights. You need to create a query that returns the average duration of requests for each HTTP method (GET, POST, etc.) over the last hour, sorted by duration. Which Kusto query should you use?
Medium58You are monitoring an Azure Web App with Application Insights. You notice that the dependency duration for a SQL database call has significantly increased. You need to identify the specific SQL query that is causing the slowness. Which Application Insights feature should you use?
Medium59You have an App Service web app with Application Insights configured. You want to create an alert that fires when the server response time exceeds 2 seconds for a rolling 10-minute window. Which type of alert rule should you create?
Medium60An Azure web app is experiencing high memory usage. You want to collect memory dumps periodically to analyze the issue without restarting the app. Which Azure App Service diagnostic feature should you use?
Medium61You are monitoring an Azure App Service with Application Insights. You need to create a custom dashboard that shows the number of requests over time and the average server response time. Which Application Insights feature should you use to create this dashboard?
Easy62Your team uses Azure DevOps to deploy a web app to Azure App Service. The deployment fails intermittently with a '500 Internal Server Error' after successful code upload. You want to capture a memory dump of the process when the error occurs. What should you configure?
Hard63The team needs to receive an email when an App Service's HTTP 5xx error rate exceeds 5 percent for more than five consecutive minutes. No custom code should be written. What combination of Azure Monitor features implements this requirement?
Easy64A developer needs to run a Kusto query against application request data to identify 95th percentile latency by operation. Where should the query be run? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
Medium65You are using Application Insights to monitor a web app. You want to automatically analyze and alert on sudden increases in request failure rates, without manually setting static thresholds. Which Application Insights feature should you use?
Medium66Your application running on Azure App Service is experiencing intermittent timeouts. You have configured Application Insights to collect telemetry. Which metric should you analyze in the Azure portal to identify the slowest dependencies?
Medium67You are monitoring an ASP.NET Core web API with Application Insights. You want to view the SQL queries being executed, including the command text and duration, in the Application Insights portal. Which actions must you take? (Select all that apply.) (Choose 2.)
Medium68You need to monitor the CPU and memory usage of an Azure Virtual Machine (VM) over the last 30 days. Which Azure service should you use?
Easy69You need to diagnose a slow-performing Azure Function. Application Insights shows that the function's dependency calls to an external API take an unusually long time. Which Application Insights feature should you use to visualize the end-to-end request flow?
Medium70Your application running on Azure App Service is experiencing intermittent high latency. You have enabled Application Insights and noticed that the 'Server response time' metric spikes during peak hours. What is the most likely cause of this issue?
Easy71An Azure Function processes events from Event Hubs. You need to monitor the number of events that were successfully processed and those that were dropped due to processing errors. Which approach should you use?
Medium72Which THREE tools can you use to diagnose performance issues in an Azure App Service? (Choose three.)
Hard73You are using Application Insights to monitor a web application. You need to create an alert that triggers when the server response time exceeds 5 seconds for more than 10% of requests in a 5-minute window. Which type of Azure Monitor alert should you create?
Easy74You are monitoring an Azure Web App with Application Insights. You notice a sudden spike in failed requests. You need to quickly identify which specific URL path is causing the most failures. Which blade in the Application Insights portal should you use?
Easy75You are debugging a performance issue in a live web application monitored by Application Insights. You need to see real-time metrics such as request rate, response times, and any exceptions as they occur, without waiting for the usual telemetry pipeline. Which Application Insights feature should you use?
Easy76You have an Azure CDN profile that caches content from a storage account. Users in Europe report that images load slowly. You need to improve performance for European users. What should you do?
Medium77A high-traffic API sends approximately 80,000 telemetry events per second to Application Insights. Monthly ingestion costs are too high. The team wants to reduce data volume by roughly 80 percent while still seeing representative samples of all request types. What should the developer configure?
Medium78An Azure App Service application has availability failures. The developer needs distributed tracing across requests and dependencies. What should be enabled?
Medium79You need to monitor the CPU utilization of an Azure VM in real-time and set up an alert when it exceeds 90%. Which Azure Monitor feature should you use?
Easy80Which TWO actions can help you reduce latency for a globally distributed web application? (Choose two.)
Easy81You are monitoring an Azure web application with Application Insights. You notice a sudden increase in the number of failed requests. You want to be notified automatically when such anomalies occur, without manually setting static thresholds. Which Application Insights feature should you use?
Easy82Your Azure Logic Apps workflow fails intermittently with timeout errors. What should you do to improve reliability?
Medium83An e-commerce application emits a high volume of telemetry data to Azure Application Insights. You need to reduce the cost of data ingestion while preserving statistical accuracy for performance metrics. Which sampling technique should you use?
Medium84You need to reduce costs for an Azure Functions app that runs intermittently. The current Consumption plan bills for execution time. Which change would be MOST cost-effective?
Hard85Refer to the exhibit. You run this KQL query in Azure Monitor Logs. What does the timechart display?
Medium86You manage a web application hosted on Azure App Service. You need to monitor the application's availability from multiple geographic locations. The test should check that the homepage loads successfully and returns HTTP 200 within 5 seconds. You want to receive an alert if the test fails from any location. Which type of Application Insights test should you create?
Medium87You have enabled Application Insights on your Azure Web App. You notice that some server-side exceptions are not appearing in the Application Insights portal. What is the most likely reason?
Easy88Which TWO approaches can help you optimize the cost of Azure Storage accounts that store infrequently accessed data? (Choose two.)
Medium89You need to monitor the performance of an Azure web app. You want to track the average response time and the number of failed requests over the last hour. Which Azure service should you use?
Easy90Users of a web application hosted on App Service are randomly signed out when the app is scaled out to three instances. Investigation shows that session data stored in in-process memory is not available when subsequent requests hit a different instance. What is the recommended solution?
Medium91You are developing a solution that uses Azure Functions with a consumption plan. The function processes messages from an Azure Service Bus queue. During a load test, you notice that the function takes a long time to start processing messages after a period of inactivity. What is the most likely cause of this cold start delay?
Medium92Application Insights ingestion cost is rising because a high-traffic app emits large telemetry volume. The team needs statistically useful telemetry while reducing ingestion. What should be configured? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
Hard93A production API needs proactive alerting for unexpected exceptions. Which two elements are required for a useful Azure Monitor alert?
Hard94An Azure App Service application has slow API requests. The developer needs distributed tracing across requests and dependencies. What should be enabled?
Medium95A developer needs to run a Kusto query against application request data to identify 95th percentile latency by operation. Where should the query be run?
Medium96You have an Azure App Service web app that experiences intermittent slowness. You enable Application Insights and notice that the "Failed Requests" metric is low, but "Server Response Time" is high for a subset of requests. You want to identify the specific code path causing the delay. Which feature should you use?
Hard97You are monitoring an Azure App Service using Application Insights. You notice that HTTP 500 errors are increasing, but the standard server response time metric remains normal. You suspect that the errors are occurring in an external API call made by the application. How can you identify the dependency that is failing?
Hard98You are monitoring an Azure web application with Application Insights. You need to identify the top 5 slowest API endpoints over the last 7 days. The results should show the endpoint URL, average response time, and request count. Which feature or query should you use?
Medium99You are monitoring an Azure Web App with Application Insights. You notice that certain requests have high server response times. You need to identify which specific database queries are causing the delays. Which Application Insights feature should you use?
Medium100Which TWO actions should you take to reduce the cost of an Azure App Service plan that is underutilized?
Medium101After deploying a new version to the staging slot and swapping to production, users report a 60-second spike in 503 errors. The application takes 45 seconds to initialize its connection pools and caches before it can serve traffic. What is the root cause, and what should the developer configure to prevent this?
Medium102You are developing a web app that experiences intermittent slow responses. You enable Application Insights and notice that the server-side request duration is normally under 200ms, but some requests take over 5 seconds. Which diagnostic tool should you use to identify the root cause?
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Frequently asked questions
- What does the Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize Azure solutions domain cover on the AZ-204 exam?
- Instrument apps with Application Insights and query telemetry using KQL in Log Analytics; configure Azure Cache for Redis and Azure CDN for performance. The key is choosing the right tool: Redis for session/data caching, CDN for static content edge delivery.
- How many questions are in this domain?
- This page lists all 102 Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize Azure solutions questions in the AZ-204 question bank. The actual exam draws from this domain proportionally to its weighting in the official exam blueprint.
- What is the best way to practise this domain?
- Start with a short focused session (10 questions) to identify gaps, then work through explanations. Repeat with a longer session once the weak areas feel solid.
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