AZ-305 Design data storage solutions Practice Question
A company wants to cache frequently accessed session state and product data for their e-commerce website. They need the cache to be highly available with a 99.9% SLA and provide fast read and write access. The solution must be fully managed. Which Azure Cache tier should they choose?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often choose the Premium tier for high availability, not realizing that the Standard tier already provides a 99.9% SLA with replication, and Premium adds features like data persistence and clustering that are not required by the question.
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 Redis Cache Standard tier
The Standard tier of Azure Redis Cache provides a 99.9% SLA through built-in replication with two nodes (primary and replica) in the same region, ensuring high availability. It is fully managed, supports fast read/write access for session state and product data, and meets the requirement without the additional cost or complexity of the Premium tier.
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 Redis Cache Basic tier
Why it's wrong here
Azure Redis Cache Basic tier runs on a single virtual node and provides no SLA or built-in replication. Because there is no secondary replica, any node failure or patching event makes the cache completely unavailable and causes all session state and cached data to be lost, so it cannot satisfy a high availability requirement. The Basic tier is intended only for development and testing scenarios, not production workloads where downtime or data loss is unacceptable.
- ✓
Azure Redis Cache Standard tier
Why this is correct
Azure Redis Cache Standard tier is a fully managed in-memory cache that runs on two replicas in the same datacenter, with automatic failover and a 99.9% SLA. For session state and frequently accessed product data, this replication provides the required high availability while keeping the architecture simple and cost-effective. It also supports standard Redis features such as expiration policies and cache-aside patterns, making it a natural fit for stateless web front ends that need a resilient shared state store.
- ✗
Azure Redis Cache Premium tier
Why it's wrong here
Azure Redis Cache Premium tier includes advanced capabilities such as Redis clustering, data persistence to storage, virtual network injection, and zone redundancy, but these features are not necessary for the stated requirement of caching session state and product data with high availability. While Premium also provides a 99.9% SLA, Standard tier already delivers the same replication and SLA at a significantly lower cost. Choosing Premium here would introduce unnecessary operational complexity and expense, so it is not the best answer for the requirement as written.
- ✗
Azure Content Delivery Network
Why it's wrong here
Azure Content Delivery Network is an edge caching service that replicates static files—such as images, CSS, JavaScript, videos—to globally distributed points of presence, not an application state store. It cannot dynamically read or write session state because it has no execution context for application code, and it does not support Redis commands or arbitrary object caching. Additionally, CDN caching is optimized for long-lived content with explicit cache control, not for frequently changing product data or user sessions that require consistency and immediate invalidation, so it is wrong for this scenario.
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