AZ-900 Describe cloud concepts Practice Question
Which statement accurately describes the relationship between availability and SLA percentage?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse the relationship between SLA percentage and downtime, mistakenly thinking a higher percentage allows more downtime, or they assume all Azure services have a uniform SLA, ignoring the impact of redundancy and configuration.
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
✓
Higher SLA percentages mean less allowed downtime and typically require more redundancy
B is correct because SLA (Service Level Agreement) percentage directly correlates to the maximum allowed downtime. A higher SLA percentage, such as 99.99% versus 99%, permits less downtime per year (approximately 52.56 minutes vs. 3.65 days). To achieve higher SLAs, Azure requires implementing redundancy across availability zones or regions, as a single instance typically cannot meet the uptime guarantee.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
A 99.9% SLA allows for more downtime per year than a 99% SLA
Why it's wrong here
This statement reverses the mathematical relationship: a 99.9% SLA allows only 8.76 hours of downtime per year, whereas a 99% SLA allows ten times that, or 87.6 hours. In other words, the higher the percentage (closer to 100%), the shorter the permissible outage. Therefore, 99.9% does not allow more downtime; it is a stricter commitment than 99%. Enterprises should compare these numbers when choosing service tiers to avoid missing availability goals.
- ✓
Higher SLA percentages mean less allowed downtime and typically require more redundancy
Why this is correct
Correct: higher SLA percentages correspond to lower allowed annual downtime, and reaching those higher percentages generally requires additional redundancy. For example, to obtain a 99.99% SLA for a virtual machine workload, you must deploy at least two VMs in an availability zone or availability set, and you must keep them in the same Azure region. Redundancy ensures that a single hardware failure does not take down the entire workload, which is precisely what allows Azure to offer a stronger SLA. This trade-off between cost and availability is a central decision in Azure architecture.
- ✗
SLA percentage has no practical impact on allowed downtime
Why it's wrong here
SLA percentage has a direct and practical effect on the maximum allowed downtime; it is not a theoretical abstraction. For instance, a 99% SLA permits up to 87.6 hours of downtime per year, while 99.99% allows only about 52.6 minutes. Organizations calculate availability requirements precisely from these numbers to decide whether they need added redundancy. Ignoring the percentage can lead to under-provisioned workloads that violate SLAs.
- ✗
All Azure services provide the same SLA regardless of configuration
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft does not apply one uniform SLA across all services; each service has its own published SLA, and that SLA often depends on the customer's configuration. For example, a single Virtual Machine without redundant storage might have a 99.9% SLA, but deploying multiple VMs in an availability set or across availability zones can raise the combined SLA. Similarly, premium configurations like geo-replication in Cosmos DB or multiple region deployments in App Service are prerequisites for higher SLA commitments. Thus, configuration choices directly change 'the' SLA for a workload.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
High Availability and Scalability
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.
Key term
Service Level Agreement
A service level agreement (SLA) is a documented contract that defines the specific level of service a provider guarantees to a customer, including performance metrics, responsibilities, and remedies for failures.
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