AZ-204 Practice Question: Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize Azure solutions
Your 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?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse performance optimization (indexing, consistency) with capacity management; throttling is always a throughput capacity problem, not a query or consistency problem.
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
✓
Increase the provisioned throughput (RU/s) for the container
Throttling (HTTP 429) occurs when the consumed request units per second exceed the provisioned throughput. Increasing the provisioned RU/s for the container directly raises the capacity, allowing more read requests per second without any code changes. This is the simplest and most direct way to eliminate throttling under peak load.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Add a composite index to the container
Why it's wrong here
Adding a composite index primarily optimizes queries that involve multiple WHERE clauses, ORDER BY clauses, or aggregations on several properties. While it can reduce the Request Units (RUs) consumed by complex queries, thereby indirectly freeing up some existing throughput, it does not increase the overall provisioned throughput capacity of the container itself. Throughput is a measure of the total capacity for operations, not the efficiency of individual operations.
- ✓
Increase the provisioned throughput (RU/s) for the container
Why this is correct
Increasing the provisioned throughput, measured in Request Units per second (RU/s), directly expands the total capacity available for all database operations, including reads and writes. Each operation consumes a certain number of RUs, and exceeding the provisioned RU/s results in throttling. By increasing RU/s, the application gains more headroom to execute a higher volume of operations concurrently without encountering rate limiting.
- ✗
Enable multi-region writes for the Cosmos DB account
Why it's wrong here
Enabling multi-region writes for a Cosmos DB account primarily enhances write availability and reduces write latency for geographically distributed users by allowing writes to occur in any configured region. While beneficial for global applications, it does not inherently increase the total provisioned throughput (RU/s) for a specific container. The throughput for a container is provisioned per region, and multi-region writes distribute the source of writes, not the overall capacity.
- ✗
Change the default consistency level to Strong
Why it's wrong here
Changing the default consistency level to Strong ensures that reads always return the most recent committed version of data, even across regions. However, achieving Strong consistency requires more coordination and synchronization across replicas, which typically increases the Request Units (RUs) consumed per operation and can lead to higher latency. This increased RU consumption would reduce the effective throughput capacity of the container, making it less suitable for scenarios requiring higher operational volume.
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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.