AZ-305 Practice Question: Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions
You are designing a monitoring solution for a critical application running on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). The application generates custom metrics that need to be queried in real-time for dashboards. You also need to retain logs for one year for compliance. Which combination of services should you use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse Prometheus as the only way to collect custom metrics in AKS, but Azure Monitor Metrics natively supports custom metrics via the Azure Monitor agent and does not require a separate Prometheus deployment for real-time dashboards.
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 Monitor Metrics and Azure Monitor Logs
Azure Monitor Metrics is the correct choice for real-time querying of custom metrics because it stores numeric time-series data with sub-minute granularity and supports near real-time alerting and dashboarding via Azure Dashboards or Grafana. Azure Monitor Logs (Log Analytics) is required for retaining logs for one year, as it offers configurable retention up to 730 days (2 years) and supports KQL queries for compliance and audit needs. Together, they provide a unified monitoring solution for AKS that meets both real-time metric querying and long-term log retention requirements.
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 Monitor Metrics and Azure Monitor Logs
Why this is correct
Azure Monitor Metrics provides lightweight, high-granularity time-series data with sub-minute ingestion for real-time dashboards and alert rules, while Azure Monitor Logs stores verbose diagnostic and resource logs for years, enabling powerful KQL queries and trend analysis. Together they deliver both immediate operational visibility and deep historical investigation without any additional tooling, making them the natural native pair for AKS monitoring.
- ✗
Prometheus and Azure Monitor Logs
Why it's wrong here
Prometheus is a metrics-only scraper that excels with Kubernetes, but Azure Monitor already includes a managed Metrics pipeline for AKS, so adding Prometheus introduces redundant collection and operational overhead. Pairing it with Monitor Logs gives you log retention, yet it lacks the unified, out-of-the-box real-time dashboards and near-real-time alerts that Azure Monitor Metrics provides, leaving a gap in operational responsiveness.
- ✗
Azure Data Explorer and Azure Blob Storage
Why it's wrong here
Azure Data Explorer (ADX) is a high-performance analytics engine designed for massive ad-hoc queries, not for continuous monitoring, so using it would require custom collectors and ingestion logic for every AKS signal. Blob Storage is purely object storage with no query engine, meaning historical logs are inert and cannot be searched unless you build an entirely separate processing pipeline. This combination fails to provide the native collection, alerting, and visualization needed for a critical monitoring solution.
- ✗
Application Insights and Azure Storage
Why it's wrong here
Application Insights is scoped to application performance telemetry like requests, dependencies, and exceptions, so it won't capture node-level CPU, pod memory, or container restart metrics from AKS. Azure Storage serves only as a cheap archival tier for raw logs and offers no built-in real-time query interface or alerting mechanism. Thus this pairing misses infrastructure monitoring and forces you to create custom tooling for any log analysis, making it unsuitable for real-time operational visibility.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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