Question 973 of 1,031

Describe cloud concepts →mediumMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped

AZ-900 Describe cloud concepts Practice Question

This AZ-900 practice question tests your understanding of describe cloud concepts. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. 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.

A retail company hosts an e-commerce website on on-premises servers. During seasonal sales events, the website experiences traffic spikes that last for a few hours. Several years ago, the company purchased additional servers to handle these spikes, but those servers now sit idle for most of the year. The company is considering moving the website to Azure. Which benefit of cloud computing would most directly help the company avoid maintaining idle hardware while still being able to handle traffic spikes?

Question 1mediummultiple choice

Full question →

A
High availability
Why wrong: High availability refers to ensuring that services remain operational and accessible with minimal downtime, often through redundancy. It does not directly address the ability to scale resources dynamically to match fluctuating demand.
B
Elasticity
Elasticity is the ability of a cloud service to automatically increase or decrease the resources allocated to a workload based on real-time demand. This allows the company to handle traffic spikes without maintaining permanently provisioned hardware, and to pay only for what is used.
C
Disaster recovery
Why wrong: Disaster recovery involves processes and tools to restore IT infrastructure and data after a disruptive event (e.g., natural disaster, cyberattack). It does not address the need to dynamically scale resources to handle variable traffic.
D
Geo-redundancy
Why wrong: Geo-redundancy is a data replication feature that copies data to a secondary Azure region for durability and disaster recovery. It does not provide the ability to scale compute or application resources in response to traffic changes.

Full breakdown with real-world context →

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

✓

Elasticity

Elasticity is the correct answer because it allows the company to automatically scale computing resources up during traffic spikes and scale down when demand drops, eliminating the need to maintain idle on-premises servers. In Azure, this is achieved through features like Virtual Machine Scale Sets and autoscale rules that adjust capacity based on metrics such as CPU usage or request count, ensuring the company only pays for resources consumed during peak periods.

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.

✗
High availability
Why it's wrong here
High availability refers to ensuring that services remain operational and accessible with minimal downtime, often through redundancy. It does not directly address the ability to scale resources dynamically to match fluctuating demand.
✓
Elasticity
Why this is correct
Elasticity is the ability of a cloud service to automatically increase or decrease the resources allocated to a workload based on real-time demand. This allows the company to handle traffic spikes without maintaining permanently provisioned hardware, and to pay only for what is used.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Disaster recovery
Why it's wrong here
Disaster recovery involves processes and tools to restore IT infrastructure and data after a disruptive event (e.g., natural disaster, cyberattack). It does not address the need to dynamically scale resources to handle variable traffic.
✗
Geo-redundancy
Why it's wrong here
Geo-redundancy is a data replication feature that copies data to a secondary Azure region for durability and disaster recovery. It does not provide the ability to scale compute or application resources in response to traffic changes.

Common exam traps

Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword

The trap here is that candidates often confuse elasticity with high availability, but high availability ensures uptime during failures, not the ability to dynamically adjust capacity to match variable demand.

Detailed technical explanation

How to think about this question

Under the hood, Azure elasticity relies on Azure Resource Manager and autoscale engines that monitor metrics like average CPU percentage or queue depth, triggering scale-out operations (adding VMs) or scale-in operations (removing VMs) based on defined rules. A subtle behavior is the cool-down period (default 5 minutes) after a scaling event, which prevents rapid flapping; this is critical for cost optimization during short-lived spikes. In a real-world scenario, a retail site might use Azure Functions with consumption-based pricing to handle burst traffic without any idle capacity, achieving near-instant elasticity.

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

An e-commerce site experiences heavy traffic on Black Friday and near-zero traffic during off-peak weeks. Rather than provisioning permanent large VMs, the team uses auto-scaling groups that add capacity automatically under load and reduce it overnight. Questions like this test whether you understand elasticity, availability zones, and cloud compute scaling patterns.

What to study next

Got this wrong? Here's your next step.

Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.

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FAQ

Questions learners often ask

What does this AZ-900 question test?

Describe cloud concepts — This question tests Describe cloud concepts — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..

What is the correct answer to this question?

The correct answer is: Elasticity — Elasticity is the correct answer because it allows the company to automatically scale computing resources up during traffic spikes and scale down when demand drops, eliminating the need to maintain idle on-premises servers. In Azure, this is achieved through features like Virtual Machine Scale Sets and autoscale rules that adjust capacity based on metrics such as CPU usage or request count, ensuring the company only pays for resources consumed during peak periods.

What should I do if I get this AZ-900 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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