AZ-305 Design infrastructure solutions Practice Question
Your company is deploying a critical application on Azure VMs. The application requires a static private IP address that does not change even if the VM is stopped and deallocated. The VM must be placed in an availability zone for high availability. Which networking approach should you use?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse the static IP assignment at the VM NIC level with the static IP of a load balancer or gateway, mistakenly thinking that a load balancer or firewall can provide a static private IP to the VM itself, when in fact the VM's NIC must be explicitly configured with a static private IP address.
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
✓
Assign a static private IP address to the VM's NIC and use a standard public load balancer.
A static private IP address assigned to the VM's NIC persists even when the VM is stopped and deallocated, ensuring the application always uses the same private IP. Placing the VM in an availability zone provides high availability by protecting against zonal failures, and a standard public load balancer can distribute traffic across VMs in different zones while preserving the static private IP for each VM.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use Azure Firewall to provide static private IP and load balancing.
Why it's wrong here
Azure Firewall is a managed network security service that filters and logs traffic using network/application rules, but it is not a load balancer. Its static IP addresses belong to the firewall's own frontend and backend interfaces for routing and NAT, not to a VM's NIC. It cannot perform health checks or distribute inbound connections across backend instances; high availability for a VM requires a dedicated load balancer such as Azure Load Balancer.
- ✓
Assign a static private IP address to the VM's NIC and use a standard public load balancer.
Why this is correct
Assigning a static private IP to the VM's NIC guarantees the address is retained even when the VM is deallocated, preserving internal DNS mappings and dependent integrations. A standard public load balancer provides a public frontend IP, uses health probes to verify backend availability, and forwards traffic according to load-balancing rules. Together, these two mechanisms give the application a stable private identity and robust external accessibility, which is the correct approach for a critical workload.
- ✗
Use Azure Traffic Manager to assign static private IP.
Why it's wrong here
Azure Traffic Manager is a DNS-based global traffic router that steers clients to different endpoints based on methods like priority, performance, or geolocation. It does not allocate, assign, or control any IP addresses on Azure VMs; it simply maps a domain name to existing public endpoints via DNS records. Therefore, Traffic Manager cannot create or guarantee a static private IP for a VM, because that address can only be set on the VM's virtual NIC within the VNet.
- ✗
Use Application Gateway with a static private IP.
Why it's wrong here
Application Gateway is a layer-7 load balancer designed for HTTP/HTTPS traffic, and any static private IP you configure is the frontend address for the gateway appliance itself. The backend VM's own private IP address is still assigned to its NIC independently and will remain dynamic unless explicitly changed to a static assignment in the NIC properties. Thus, placing a static private IP on the gateway does not make the VM's IP static, and the gateway is not intended to solve VM-level IP addressing questions.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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