AZ-400 Practice Question: Design and implement build and release pipelines
You are creating a release pipeline that uses Azure Pipelines to deploy to multiple virtual machines. You need to ensure that the deployment runs on each machine in parallel. Which deployment strategy should you use?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse 'rolling deployment' with parallel execution, but rolling is inherently sequential (batched), while the question explicitly requires parallel execution across all machines, which is only achieved by the 'run once' strategy with parallel execution enabled.
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
✓
Run once deployment with parallel execution
The requirement is to deploy to multiple virtual machines in parallel, which is achieved by configuring a 'run once' deployment strategy with parallel execution in Azure Pipelines. This strategy uses the deployment group's parallel execution settings to run the deployment job simultaneously on all target machines, ensuring each machine receives the deployment at the same time.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Blue-green deployment
Why it's wrong here
Blue-green deployment is incorrect because it operates at the environment level by maintaining two identical environments (blue and green) and switching traffic between them, rather than running jobs on all deployment targets simultaneously. It does not provide parallel execution across individual machines in a deployment group, as the swap is an all-or-nothing switchover.
- ✗
Canary deployment
Why it's wrong here
Canary deployment is incorrect because it gradually shifts a small percentage of user traffic to the new version before releasing it to the full audience. This traffic-based incremental rollout does not execute deployment jobs on all target machines at the same time, so it fails to meet the requirement of parallel execution across all servers.
- ✗
Rolling deployment
Why it's wrong here
Rolling deployment is incorrect because it updates targets sequentially or in small batches, replacing versions incrementally to maintain availability. Since it applies changes to a subset of machines at a time rather than all targets concurrently, it does not achieve parallel execution on every machine simultaneously.
- ✓
Run once deployment with parallel execution
Why this is correct
Run once deployment with parallel execution is correct because it configures the deployment job to run on all targets in the deployment group at the same time, executing the tasks concurrently across every machine. This approach directly fulfills the requirement of running the job on all targets simultaneously, ensuring consistent and synchronized deployment.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Introduction to DevOps and Azure DevOps
Key term
Release pipeline
A Release pipeline is an automated sequence of steps that takes software from code commit to production deployment, ensuring quality and consistency.
Key term
Pipeline
A pipeline is an automated series of steps that takes code from development to production, ensuring quality and speed.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This AZ-400 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-400 exam.