AZ-900 Describe cloud concepts Practice Question
According to Microsoft, which factor does NOT affect the SLA percentage for an Azure service?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse operational factors like user load or performance with contractual availability guarantees, assuming that more users might degrade uptime, but Microsoft explicitly excludes user count from SLA calculations.
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
✓
The number of users concurrently accessing the service
The SLA percentage for an Azure service is determined by factors such as redundancy, fault tolerance, and resource configuration, not by the number of concurrent users. Microsoft's SLAs are based on uptime guarantees tied to architectural choices like availability zones, disk types, and availability sets, while user load is managed through scaling and is not a factor in the SLA calculation.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Whether resources are deployed across availability zones
Why it's wrong here
This option is not the correct answer because spanning VMs across availability zones increases the SLA to 99.99%, reflecting fault isolation between physical datacenters. The zone configuration is an SLA input that gives a higher uptime percentage than a single region or availability set, so it clearly influences the contractual availability. Thus it is a relevant factor, not an irrelevant one.
- ✓
The number of users concurrently accessing the service
Why this is correct
This is the correct answer because the Azure SLA is a commitment to service availability—specifically uptime and connectivity—not to elasticity, throughput, or response times under load. Concurrent user count has no bearing on Microsoft's promised uptime percentage; even a completely idle service still receives the same SLA, and a heavily loaded service does not affect the contractual availability guarantee.
- ✗
Whether Premium SSD or Standard HDD disks are used for VMs
Why it's wrong here
This option is incorrect because Azure's VM SLA explicitly depends on the disk tier. For a single VM, using Premium SSD or Ultra Disk backs a 99.9% connectivity guarantee, whereas Standard HDD-backed VMs receive a lower uptime commitment, so the disk type changes the SLA percentage. Consequently, it cannot be the factor that does not affect the SLA.
- ✗
Whether a single VM or availability set is used
Why it's wrong here
This option is wrong because deployment topology is a core SLA differentiator. A single VM is covered by a 99.9% SLA, but two or more VMs placed in an availability set raise the commitment to 99.95%, as the set protects against unplanned hardware failures. Therefore, the choice between a lone VM and an availability set directly shapes Microsoft's availability guarantee.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Consumption-Based Pricing Model
Key term
Fault tolerance
Fault tolerance is the ability of a system to continue operating properly even when one or more of its components fail.
Key term
Availability
Availability is the measure of how often a system or service is operational and accessible when needed, typically expressed as a percentage of uptime.
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