A company deploys a stateless web application on Azure VMs in a single region. They need to distribute incoming HTTP traffic across multiple VMs and perform health checks. The solution should be highly available within the region. Which Azure load balancing solution should they use?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
Best answer
Azure Load Balancer (Standard) with HTTP health probe.
A Standard Load Balancer distributes incoming TCP traffic (HTTP uses TCP) across backend VMs. It supports HTTP health probes and availability zones, meeting the requirements for high availability within a region.
Distractor review
Azure Application Gateway v2.
Application Gateway is a layer 7 load balancer with features like SSL termination and cookie-based affinity. These are not required, and it is more expensive than needed for simple HTTP distribution.
Distractor review
Azure Traffic Manager.
Traffic Manager is a DNS-based global traffic routing service. It does not provide health probes at the load level and is designed for multi-region scenarios, not single-region high availability.
Distractor review
Azure Front Door.
Front Door is a global application delivery network with layer 7 features. It adds unnecessary latency and cost for a single-region deployment and does not replace a regional load balancer.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: NAT rules depend on direction and matching traffic
NAT is not only about the public address. The inside/outside interface roles and the ACL or rule that matches traffic are just as important.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
NAT questions usually test address translation, overload/PAT behaviour, static mappings and whether the right traffic is being translated. Read the interface direction and address terms carefully.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
- PAT allows many inside hosts to share one public address using ports.
- Inside local and inside global describe the private and translated addresses.
- NAT ACLs identify traffic for translation, not always security filtering.
TExam Day Tips
- Identify inside and outside interfaces first.
- Check whether the scenario needs static NAT, dynamic NAT or PAT.
- Do not confuse NAT matching ACLs with normal packet-filtering intent.
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More questions from this exam
Keep practising from the same exam bank, or move into a focused topic page if this question exposed a weak area.
Question 1
A company is designing hub-and-spoke networking. Spoke VNets must use a central Azure Firewall for outbound internet traffic. Which two configurations are required?
Question 2
A company is designing private access to a PaaS database from workloads in a VNet. The database should not be reachable over its public endpoint. What should be recommended?
Question 3
A data platform must support analytical queries over petabytes of files in a data lake, while preserving hierarchical namespaces and fine-grained ACLs. Which storage service should you design around?
Question 4
A database workload has an RPO of 15 minutes and an RTO of 4 hours. Cost is more important than near-zero data loss. Which design is usually more appropriate than synchronous multi-region replication?
Question 5
A hub-and-spoke Azure network must centralize outbound inspection and still allow spokes to resolve private endpoint DNS names. Which two components are commonly required? (Choose 2.)
Question 6
A multinational company uses Microsoft Entra ID and several Azure subscriptions. Security administrators need to review privileged role assignments every month and require justification for continued access. Which design should be recommended?
FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this AZ-305 question test?
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Azure Load Balancer (Standard) with HTTP health probe. — Azure Standard Load Balancer is a layer 4 load balancer that can distribute TCP traffic (including HTTP) and perform health probes to ensure only healthy VMs receive traffic. It supports availability zones and provides high availability within a region. Application Gateway is layer 7 but is unnecessary if SSL termination and session persistence are not required. Traffic Manager and Front Door are global solutions, not suited for intra-region load balancing.
What should I do if I get this AZ-305 question wrong?
Then try more questions from the same exam bank and focus on understanding why the wrong options are tempting.
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