The correct answer is Azure Load Balancer and Azure Availability Zones. This combination provides automatic failover within a region by distributing traffic across VMs in different zones; if one zone fails, the Standard Load Balancer instantly reroutes traffic to healthy VMs in another zone, ensuring high availability for your web app without manual intervention. On the AZ-305 exam, this scenario tests your understanding of intra-region resilience versus cross-region disaster recovery—a common trap is confusing Traffic Manager or Site Recovery, which handle cross-region failover, with zone-level protection. Remember that Azure Load Balancer (Standard SKU) paired with Availability Zones gives you automatic, low-latency failover within a single region, while Traffic Manager and Site Recovery are for multi-region scenarios. A quick memory tip: think “Zones + Balancer = Regional Safety Net” to distinguish from cross-region tools.
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 is designing a highly available architecture for a web application on Azure VMs. The solution must protect against both planned and unplanned downtime and provide automatic failover. Which TWO Azure services should the company use together? (Choose two.)
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Azure Availability Zones
Option A (Azure Load Balancer) distributes traffic but does not provide automatic failover across zones. Option B (Azure Traffic Manager) provides DNS-based failover across regions. Option C (Azure Application Gateway) provides load balancing and WAF but is regional. Option D (Azure Availability Zones) protects against datacenter failures within a region. Option E (Azure Site Recovery) provides disaster recovery across regions. To achieve high availability within a region, use Availability Sets or Availability Zones along with a load balancer. The correct combination for automatic failover across zones is Azure Load Balancer (or App Gateway) with Availability Zones. But the options include Load Balancer and Availability Zones. Option B is for cross-region, not intra-region. The best answer is A and D: Azure Load Balancer (standard SKU) with Availability Zones provides automatic failover within a region.
Key principle: NAT direction and interface roles matter as much as the IP address mapping. Inside/outside designation controls which traffic is translated.
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 Availability Zones
Why this is correct
Availability Zones place VMs in different physical locations within a region, providing fault isolation.
Related concept
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
✗
Azure Site Recovery
Why it's wrong here
Site Recovery is for cross-region disaster recovery, not high availability within a region.
✗
Azure Traffic Manager
Why it's wrong here
Traffic Manager is for cross-region failover, not intra-region.
✓
Azure Load Balancer
Why this is correct
Standard Load Balancer supports zone-redundant frontends and distributes traffic across VMs in different zones.
Related concept
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
✗
Azure Application Gateway
Why it's wrong here
Application Gateway is also regional and can be used with zones, but the question asks for two services; Load Balancer is more fundamental.
Common exam traps
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.
Detailed technical explanation
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.
Key takeaway
NAT direction and interface roles matter as much as the IP address mapping. Inside/outside designation controls which traffic is translated.
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.
Review the four NAT address types (inside local, inside global, outside local, outside global), PAT port overload, and static vs dynamic NAT use cases. Then practise related AZ-305 NAT questions on configuration and troubleshooting.
Design infrastructure solutions — This question tests Design infrastructure solutions — Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Azure Availability Zones — Option A (Azure Load Balancer) distributes traffic but does not provide automatic failover across zones. Option B (Azure Traffic Manager) provides DNS-based failover across regions. Option C (Azure Application Gateway) provides load balancing and WAF but is regional. Option D (Azure Availability Zones) protects against datacenter failures within a region. Option E (Azure Site Recovery) provides disaster recovery across regions. To achieve high availability within a region, use Availability Sets or Availability Zones along with a load balancer. The correct combination for automatic failover across zones is Azure Load Balancer (or App Gateway) with Availability Zones. But the options include Load Balancer and Availability Zones. Option B is for cross-region, not intra-region. The best answer is A and D: Azure Load Balancer (standard SKU) with Availability Zones provides automatic failover within a region.
What should I do if I get this AZ-305 question wrong?
Review the four NAT address types (inside local, inside global, outside local, outside global), PAT port overload, and static vs dynamic NAT use cases. Then practise related AZ-305 NAT questions on configuration and troubleshooting.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
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