- A
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.
- B
Azure Application Gateway v2.
Why wrong: 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.
- C
Azure Traffic Manager.
Why wrong: 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.
- D
Azure Front Door.
Why wrong: 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.
AZ-305 Design infrastructure solutions Practice Question
This AZ-305 practice question tests your understanding of design infrastructure solutions. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
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
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Azure Load Balancer (Standard) with HTTP health probe.
Azure Load Balancer (Standard) operates at Layer 4 (TCP/UDP) and can distribute HTTP traffic across VMs in a single region while performing health checks via HTTP health probes. It provides high availability within a region by distributing traffic across availability zones or availability sets, meeting the requirement for a stateless web application without needing Layer 7 features.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
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 Load Balancer (Standard) with HTTP health probe.
Why this is correct
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.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- ✗
Azure Application Gateway v2.
Why it's wrong here
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.
- ✗
Azure Traffic Manager.
Why it's wrong here
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.
- ✗
Azure Front Door.
Why it's wrong here
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 traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often choose Azure Application Gateway v2 because they assume HTTP traffic requires a Layer 7 load balancer, but Azure Load Balancer can handle HTTP traffic at Layer 4 with HTTP health probes, making it the simpler and more cost-effective choice for a stateless web application within a single region.
Trap categories for this question
Scenario analysis trap
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.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Azure Load Balancer uses a five-tuple hash (source IP, source port, destination IP, destination port, protocol) to distribute traffic, ensuring session persistence if needed. HTTP health probes work by sending GET requests to a specified endpoint (e.g., /health) and marking the VM as unhealthy if it fails to respond with a 200 OK within the timeout period (default 5 seconds). In a production scenario, you would configure the probe to check application-specific endpoints rather than just the root path to avoid false positives from a healthy web server that is not serving the application.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
- Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
- Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
- Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
An e-commerce site experiences heavy traffic on Black Friday and near-zero traffic during off-peak weeks. Rather than provisioning permanent large VMs, the team uses auto-scaling groups that add capacity automatically under load and reduce it overnight. Questions like this test whether you understand elasticity, availability zones, and cloud compute scaling patterns.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this AZ-305 question test?
Design infrastructure solutions — This question tests Design infrastructure solutions — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Azure Load Balancer (Standard) with HTTP health probe. — Azure Load Balancer (Standard) operates at Layer 4 (TCP/UDP) and can distribute HTTP traffic across VMs in a single region while performing health checks via HTTP health probes. It provides high availability within a region by distributing traffic across availability zones or availability sets, meeting the requirement for a stateless web application without needing Layer 7 features.
What should I do if I get this AZ-305 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
About these practice questions
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Last reviewed: Jun 11, 2026
This AZ-305 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-305 exam.
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