AZ-204 Practice Question: Connect to and consume Azure services and third-party services
Your company uses Azure API Management to expose APIs to external partners. You need to implement rate limiting per subscription key to prevent abuse, but you also want to allow burst traffic up to a certain limit. Which policy should you configure?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse 'rate-limit' (which supports burst) with 'rate-limit-by-key' (which does NOT support burst and is typically used for custom keys like IP addresses or user IDs), or 'quota-per-key' (which does not support burst and operates over longer periods). Another common mistake is assuming any rate-limit policy inherently allows bursts without explicitly configuring the 'burst-count' parameter.
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
✓
Add a 'rate-limit' policy with a renewal period of 60 seconds and a burst count of 10.
The 'rate-limit' policy in Azure API Management allows you to set a rate limit (e.g., requests per 60 seconds) with a burst count, enabling short bursts of traffic beyond the steady-state limit. When applied at the product scope, it effectively enforces per-subscription throttling, meeting the requirement to prevent abuse while allowing burst traffic.
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 'quota-per-key' policy with a renewal period of 1 day.
Why it's wrong here
The 'quota-per-key' policy is used for enforcing a total number of calls over a longer period, not rate limiting with burst traffic.
- ✗
Add a 'limit' policy with a condition on subscription key.
Why it's wrong here
There is no built-in 'limit' policy in Azure API Management; the relevant policy for rate limiting with burst is 'rate-limit'.
- ✗
Add a 'rate-limit-by-key' policy with a counter key of 'subscription-key'.
Why it's wrong here
While 'rate-limit-by-key' exists, it does not support a burst parameter; the 'rate-limit' policy is required to allow burst traffic.
- ✓
Add a 'rate-limit' policy with a renewal period of 60 seconds and a burst count of 10.
Why this is correct
The 'rate-limit' policy supports both a steady-state rate limit and an optional burst count, making it suitable for this scenario.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 881 original AZ-204 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.