AZ-305 Practice Question: Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions
This AZ-305 practice question tests your understanding of design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. 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.
You need to assign permissions to an Azure resource group so that a user can create and manage virtual machines but cannot delete the resource group. What should you use?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Assign the Contributor role at the resource group level.
The Contributor role at the resource group level grants full management access to all resources within the resource group, including creating and managing virtual machines, but explicitly prevents the user from deleting the resource group itself. This meets the requirement because the Contributor role cannot perform management operations on the resource group scope, such as deletion, which is reserved for the Owner role.
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.
✗
Assign the Owner role at the resource group level.
Why it's wrong here
Owner can delete the resource group.
✗
Assign the Reader role at the resource group level.
Why it's wrong here
Reader cannot create or manage VMs.
✓
Assign the Contributor role at the resource group level.
Why this is correct
Contributor allows management of resources but not deletion of the resource group.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Assign the User Access Administrator role at the resource group level.
Why it's wrong here
This role only manages access.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse the Contributor role with the Owner role, assuming Contributor can delete the resource group, or they mistakenly think the Reader role provides sufficient permissions for VM management.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Under the hood, Azure RBAC uses a deny-by-default model where permissions are additive. The Contributor role includes the 'Microsoft.Resources/subscriptions/resourceGroups/write' action but not 'Microsoft.Resources/subscriptions/resourceGroups/delete', ensuring the resource group cannot be deleted. In a real-world scenario, this is commonly used to delegate VM management to a DevOps team while preventing accidental deletion of the resource group, which would remove all contained resources.
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
A startup's cloud architect reviews their monthly bill and notices costs are higher than expected for a long-running batch job. Switching from on-demand instances to Reserved Instances — or using Spot/Preemptible VMs — can reduce compute costs by up to 72 %. Questions like this test whether you understand the tradeoffs between commitment, flexibility, and cost across cloud pricing models.
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 identity, governance, and monitoring solutions — This question tests Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Assign the Contributor role at the resource group level. — The Contributor role at the resource group level grants full management access to all resources within the resource group, including creating and managing virtual machines, but explicitly prevents the user from deleting the resource group itself. This meets the requirement because the Contributor role cannot perform management operations on the resource group scope, such as deletion, which is reserved for the Owner role.
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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