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 web application on multiple Azure VMs within an availability set. They need to distribute incoming HTTP traffic evenly across the VMs and provide health probe monitoring. The solution must support SSL termination and source IP affinity (session persistence). Which Azure load balancing solution should they choose?
Why wrong: Load Balancer operates at layer-4 and cannot terminate SSL; it also lacks session affinity capabilities.
B
Azure Load Balancer (Standard)
Why wrong: Standard Load Balancer also operates at layer-4; it does not provide SSL termination and has limited session affinity options.
C
Azure Application Gateway v2
Application Gateway is a layer-7 load balancer that offers SSL termination, cookie-based session affinity, and health probes, meeting all requirements.
D
Azure Traffic Manager
Why wrong: Traffic Manager is a DNS-level traffic router for global distribution and does not perform SSL termination or local load balancing with session persistence.
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Azure Application Gateway v2
Azure Application Gateway v2 is the correct choice because it is a Layer 7 load balancer that supports SSL termination, source IP affinity (session persistence), and health probe monitoring. It can distribute HTTP traffic evenly across VMs in an availability set while offloading SSL processing from the backend VMs.
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 (Basic)
Why it's wrong here
Load Balancer operates at layer-4 and cannot terminate SSL; it also lacks session affinity capabilities.
✗
Azure Load Balancer (Standard)
Why it's wrong here
Standard Load Balancer also operates at layer-4; it does not provide SSL termination and has limited session affinity options.
✓
Azure Application Gateway v2
Why this is correct
Application Gateway is a layer-7 load balancer that offers SSL termination, cookie-based session affinity, and health probes, meeting all requirements.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Azure Traffic Manager
Why it's wrong here
Traffic Manager is a DNS-level traffic router for global distribution and does not perform SSL termination or local load balancing with session persistence.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse Layer 4 load balancers (Azure Load Balancer) with Layer 7 application delivery controllers (Application Gateway), assuming that SSL termination and session persistence are available in all load balancing tiers, but these features require application-layer processing only provided by Application Gateway.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Under the hood, Azure Application Gateway v2 uses a Web Application Firewall (WAF) policy and supports end-to-end TLS encryption with certificate management. Session persistence (source IP affinity) is implemented via a cookie-based affinity mechanism or client IP hash, ensuring requests from the same client are routed to the same backend VM. Health probes can be configured for HTTP/HTTPS endpoints with custom intervals and thresholds, enabling automatic removal of unhealthy VMs from the backend pool.
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.
Related glossary terms
Concepts from this question explained
These glossary pages explain the core terms tested in this AZ-305 question in full detail.
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 Application Gateway v2 — Azure Application Gateway v2 is the correct choice because it is a Layer 7 load balancer that supports SSL termination, source IP affinity (session persistence), and health probe monitoring. It can distribute HTTP traffic evenly across VMs in an availability set while offloading SSL processing from the backend VMs.
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.
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Question Discussion
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