AZ-305 Practice Question: Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions
Which TWO actions should you take to design a monitoring solution for a multi-tier application running on Azure VMs? (Select TWO.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse 'VM Insights' (a feature that provides visualizations and dependency mapping) with the underlying agent installation, or they think that creating a Log Analytics workspace is a primary monitoring action rather than a prerequisite, leading them to select options A, C, or E instead of the correct combination of agent-based collection and application instrumentation.
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
✓
Configure Azure Monitor Agent to collect metrics and logs from each tier
Azure Monitor Agent is the modern, unified agent that collects metrics and logs from Azure VMs and sends them to Azure Monitor, Log Analytics workspaces, and other destinations. For a multi-tier application, collecting data from each tier is essential for end-to-end monitoring. Option D is correct because Application Insights provides application performance monitoring (APM) by instrumenting the application code itself, capturing telemetry like request rates, dependency calls, and exceptions, which is critical for understanding the behavior of a multi-tier application.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Deploy VM Insights on each VM
Why it's wrong here
VM Insights is a feature of Azure Monitor, not a separate monitoring tool. Deploying it on each VM gives you health, performance, and dependency maps, but it does not collect application-level telemetry. As an action, it only supplements infrastructure visibility after you've already established agent-based data collection and a Log Analytics workspace.
- ✓
Configure Azure Monitor Agent to collect metrics and logs from each tier
Why this is correct
Configuring the Azure Monitor Agent (AMA) is the foundational action for infrastructure monitoring because AMA collects metrics and logs from VMs in each tier and sends them to Azure Monitor Metrics and Log Analytics workspaces. Using data collection rules (DCRs), you can define exactly which counters and logs to capture per workload. This directly addresses the requirement to monitor all tiers, making it a correct primary action.
- ✗
Create a Log Analytics workspace and connect all VMs
Why it's wrong here
Creating a Log Analytics workspace is a prerequisite, but the instruction to 'connect all VMs' is not an independent action—it is accomplished by deploying the Azure Monitor Agent and configuring data collection rules. Without the agent, a workspace just stores no VM data. This option conflates the destination with the collection mechanism, so it is incomplete and not one of the two required design actions.
- ✓
Instrument the application with Application Insights
Why this is correct
Instrumenting the application with Application Insights is the complementary correct action because it captures request rates, dependency failures, exceptions, and page-view telemetry from the application itself, not just the VMs. This is application performance monitoring, and it provides end-to-end transaction tracing across the tiers. A complete monitoring solution needs both infrastructure and application-layer data, so this is required.
- ✗
Enable Azure Monitor for VMs on all VMs
Why it's wrong here
Enabling Azure Monitor for VMs—the VM Insights feature—provides VM health, guest OS performance, and network map visibility, but it does not instrument the application code. It also depends on the Azure Monitor Agent and a Log Analytics workspace already being in place, making it an optional add-on rather than a foundational design action. Since the goal is to monitor the whole solution, enabling this alone would miss application-level diagnostics.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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.