AZ-204 Develop for Azure storage Practice Question
You are designing a data archiving solution for compliance. Data must be stored for 7 years, with immediate deletion prohibited until the retention period expires. The solution must minimize storage costs while ensuring data is not modifiable. Which THREE Azure features should you combine?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse Azure Files or Azure Backup as viable archiving solutions, overlooking that only Blob Storage with immutable policies provides the WORM guarantee required for compliance-driven data retention.
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 Blob Storage
Azure Blob Storage is the correct foundational service because it supports immutable storage, which enforces a WORM (Write Once, Read Many) policy. This ensures data cannot be modified or deleted during the retention period, meeting compliance requirements. Combined with time-based retention policies and cool/archive tiers, it provides a cost-effective, unmodifiable archive solution.
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 Blob Storage
Why this is correct
Azure Blob Storage is the foundational, highly scalable, and durable object storage service in Azure, making it the primary choice for storing large volumes of unstructured data like archives. Its inherent design supports massive scale, high availability, and cost-effectiveness, providing the essential platform upon which advanced archiving features like immutability and tiered storage are built for compliance solutions.
- ✓
Immutable storage with time-based retention policy
Why this is correct
Immutable storage with a time-based retention policy is a critical feature for compliance archiving, as it enforces a Write Once, Read Many (WORM) state on blobs for a specified duration. This policy prevents any modification or deletion of the data until the retention period expires, ensuring data integrity and non-repudiation, which is essential for meeting stringent regulatory requirements such as SEC 17a-4(f) or FINRA 4511(c).
- ✗
Azure Files
Why it's wrong here
Azure Files provides fully managed file shares that can be accessed via SMB or NFS protocols, making it suitable for traditional file-based workloads and shared access scenarios. However, it is not designed for the cost-optimized, high-volume, object-based storage requirements of long-term data archiving, nor does it inherently offer the same level of granular immutability features as Azure Blob Storage for compliance purposes.
- ✓
Cool or Archive access tier
Why this is correct
The Cool and Archive access tiers are specifically designed to reduce the cost of storing infrequently accessed or long-term archived data within Azure Blob Storage. The Cool tier offers lower storage costs but higher access costs and slightly increased latency compared to Hot, while the Archive tier provides the lowest storage costs but significantly higher access costs and retrieval times, making them ideal for data that needs to be retained for compliance but rarely accessed.
- ✗
Azure Backup
Why it's wrong here
Azure Backup is a disaster recovery service focused on creating point-in-time copies of data for operational recovery from accidental deletion, corruption, or other data loss events. While it retains data, its primary purpose is not long-term, regulatory-compliant archiving with WORM principles; it lacks the direct immutability controls and cost-optimized tiers specifically tailored for static, infrequently accessed compliance archives that Azure Blob Storage offers.
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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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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