AZ-204 Practice Question: Connect to and consume Azure services and third-party services
Which THREE factors should be considered when choosing between Azure Service Bus and Azure Event Hubs for a messaging solution? (Choose 3)
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse the throughput capabilities of Event Hubs with Service Bus, assuming both can handle high-throughput telemetry equally, but Service Bus is limited to approximately 2000 messages per second per namespace and is not designed for massive data ingestion.
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
✓
Event Hubs is optimized for high-throughput telemetry ingestion
Option B is correct because Azure Event Hubs is a big-data streaming platform designed for high-throughput telemetry ingestion, capable of ingesting millions of events per second with low latency, making it the right choice for event streaming and telemetry scenarios. Option C is correct because Azure Service Bus natively supports topics and subscriptions, enabling publish/subscribe patterns with features like filters and rules, which Event Hubs does not provide in the same way. Option E is correct because both Event Hubs and Service Bus are cloud services that can be integrated with on-premises systems through hybrid architectures using VPN, ExpressRoute, or on-premises connectors, so hybrid cloud support is a valid consideration for either. Option A is incorrect because Event Hubs provides a Kafka endpoint that is compatible with Apache Kafka client applications, so it can be used with Kafka clients. Option D is incorrect because Service Bus does support the AMQP 1.0 protocol, which is one of its primary messaging protocols alongside HTTP.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Event Hubs cannot be used with Apache Kafka client applications
Why it's wrong here
Azure Event Hubs provides a Kafka endpoint that is compatible with Apache Kafka client applications. This means existing Kafka applications can connect to Event Hubs with minimal or no code changes, leveraging the Kafka protocol for both producing and consuming events. This capability allows organizations to benefit from the scalability and managed service aspects of Event Hubs while retaining their investment in Kafka-based tooling and expertise. It effectively bridges the gap between Kafka ecosystems and Azure's cloud-native messaging services.
- ✓
Event Hubs is optimized for high-throughput telemetry ingestion
Why this is correct
Azure Event Hubs is specifically engineered for ingesting millions of events per second from various sources, making it ideal for big data streaming scenarios like telemetry and log processing. Its partitioned consumer model allows multiple consumers to read from different partitions concurrently, ensuring high throughput and low latency for event streams. This optimization is crucial for real-time analytics and processing of massive volumes of data generated by IoT devices, applications, and infrastructure.
- ✓
Service Bus supports topics and subscriptions for publish/subscribe patterns
Why this is correct
Azure Service Bus Premium tier offers topics and subscriptions, which are fundamental components for implementing the publish/subscribe messaging pattern. Publishers send messages to a topic, and multiple subscribers can receive copies of those messages by creating subscriptions, each with its own filtering rules. This decoupled architecture enables flexible communication between different application components, allowing for fan-out scenarios and complex message routing without direct sender-receiver coupling.
- ✗
Service Bus does not support the AMQP protocol
Why it's wrong here
Azure Service Bus fully supports the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) 1.0, which is an open-standard, efficient, and reliable messaging protocol. AMQP enables interoperability with various client libraries and platforms, providing a robust and secure communication channel for messaging between applications. This support allows for flexible integration with diverse systems and ensures reliable message delivery across different environments.
- ✓
Both services can be used in a hybrid cloud architecture with on-premises systems
Why this is correct
Both Azure Event Hubs and Azure Service Bus are designed to integrate seamlessly into hybrid cloud architectures, enabling communication between on-premises systems and cloud-based applications. On-premises applications can send events to Event Hubs for cloud processing or send messages to Service Bus queues/topics for cloud-based worker processing. This facilitates scenarios such as data ingestion from on-premises IoT devices or integrating legacy systems with modern cloud microservices, leveraging secure network connectivity like Azure ExpressRoute or VPNs.
Quick reference
VPN Protocol Comparison
| Protocol | Port | Encryption | Authentication | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IKEv2 / IPsec | UDP 500 / 4500 | AES-256 | Certificates / PSK | Site-to-site & remote access |
| SSL / TLS VPN | TCP 443 | TLS 1.3 | Certificates / MFA | Clientless remote access |
| L2TP / IPsec | UDP 1701 | AES (IPsec) | PSK / Certificates | Legacy remote access |
| WireGuard | UDP 51820 | ChaCha20 | Public keys | Modern high-performance VPN |
| PPTP | TCP 1723 | MPPE (weak) | MS-CHAPv2 | Legacy — avoid in production |
PPTP is considered insecure. IKEv2/IPsec and SSL VPN are the current recommended options.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Event Hubs: Partitions, Consumer Groups, Capture
Key term
Azure Event Hubs
Azure Event Hubs is a cloud-based service that ingests and processes millions of events per second from devices, applications, and services in real time.
Key term
Azure Relay
Azure Relay is a cloud service that securely exposes on-premises web services to the public internet or other cloud applications without opening firewall ports.
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JA
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.