AZ-204 Practice Question: Connect to and consume Azure services and third-party services
Which TWO services can be used to implement a pub/sub messaging pattern in Azure? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse Azure Queue Storage (a point-to-point queue) with a pub/sub pattern, but it lacks the fan-out capability to multiple independent consumers; only Service Bus topics and Event Grid provide true pub/sub semantics.
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
✓
Azure Service Bus topics
Azure Service Bus topics (B) are correct because a topic supports the publish/subscribe pattern natively: publishers send messages to the topic, and each subscription receives a copy of every message, optionally filtered by rules, enabling one-to-many fan-out delivery. Azure Event Grid (D) is also correct because it is a fully managed event routing service built on a publish/subscribe model, where publishers emit events to topics and subscribers receive them via event subscriptions (webhooks, Functions, Service Bus queues, etc.). Azure Logic Apps (A) is a workflow orchestration service that can consume or trigger on messages but does not itself provide a pub/sub messaging broker. Azure Queue Storage (C) implements point-to-point queue messaging where each message is consumed by a single receiver, not pub/sub fan-out. Azure Data Lake Storage (E) is a storage service for big data analytics and has no messaging pub/sub capability.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Azure Logic Apps
Why it's wrong here
Azure Logic Apps is primarily an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) used for orchestrating workflows and integrating various services. While it can consume messages from or publish messages to actual messaging services like Service Bus or Event Grid, it does not inherently provide pub/sub messaging capabilities itself. It acts as a consumer or publisher client within a pub/sub system, rather than being the pub/sub message broker or dispatcher. Its core function is workflow automation, not message brokering.
- ✓
Azure Service Bus topics
Why this is correct
Azure Service Bus topics are a robust enterprise messaging service specifically designed to implement the publish/subscribe pattern. Publishers send messages to a topic, and multiple independent subscribers can receive copies of those messages by creating subscriptions to that topic. Each subscription can have rules and filters, allowing subscribers to receive only a subset of messages based on their criteria, making it highly flexible for complex messaging scenarios.
- ✗
Azure Queue Storage
Why it's wrong here
Azure Queue Storage provides a simple, durable, and highly available message queue service primarily designed for point-to-point communication. Messages are typically consumed by a single receiver, which then deletes the message from the queue. This "first-in, first-out" (FIFO) or "at-most-once" delivery model with a single consumer per message fundamentally differs from the pub/sub pattern, where multiple subscribers can independently receive the same message.
- ✓
Azure Event Grid
Why this is correct
Azure Event Grid is a fully managed event routing service that natively supports the publish/subscribe pattern, particularly for event-driven architectures. It allows publishers to send events to topics, and multiple event handlers (subscribers) can asynchronously react to these events. Event Grid excels at delivering events from various Azure services and custom sources to multiple destinations with low latency, enabling reactive and decoupled systems.
- ✗
Azure Data Lake Storage
Why it's wrong here
Azure Data Lake Storage is a highly scalable and secure data lake solution designed for big data analytics workloads. Its primary function is to store massive amounts of data in its native format for long-term retention and analytical processing, not for transient message passing between applications. It lacks the real-time delivery, subscription management, and message brokering capabilities inherent to pub/sub messaging services.
Go deeper
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Event Grid Domains and Topics
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.
Key term
Azure Queue Storage
Azure Queue Storage is a cloud service for storing and retrieving large numbers of messages that can be accessed from anywhere, enabling asynchronous communication between application components.
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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.