AZ-900 Describe cloud concepts Practice Question
What is a key characteristic of the public cloud model?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse 'shared resources' with 'shared security' or 'no isolation,' but in reality, public cloud providers implement strong multi-tenant isolation through hypervisors, virtual networks, and encryption, making the model secure despite resource sharing.
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
✓
Resources are shared among multiple tenants over the internet
The public cloud model is defined by multi-tenancy, where computing resources such as virtual machines, storage, and networks are shared across multiple customers (tenants) over the internet. Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud all operate on this principle, using hypervisor-level isolation to ensure each tenant's data and workloads remain separate. This shared infrastructure enables the cloud provider to achieve economies of scale, offering pay-as-you-go pricing and elastic scalability.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Resources are dedicated exclusively to one organization
Why it's wrong here
Resources being dedicated exclusively to one organization describes a private cloud or dedicated hosting environment, not a public cloud. In a public cloud, the provider's physical infrastructure is pooled and shared across many tenants, with isolation achieved through logical constructs such as hypervisors, virtual networks, and access policies. Even when a customer uses reserved instances or dedicated hosts, the underlying service is still provisioned from the provider's shared, multi-tenant cloud platform rather than being exclusively dedicated by default.
- ✓
Resources are shared among multiple tenants over the internet
Why this is correct
A public cloud is defined by multi-tenant infrastructure: the cloud provider operates a shared pool of compute, storage, and network resources that many different customers (tenants) use simultaneously over the internet. Each tenant's data and workloads are logically isolated through technologies like virtualization, virtual local area networks (VLANs), and identity-based access controls, yet they all run on the same physical hardware. This shared, internet-delivered model enables the scale, elasticity, and cost-efficiency that characterize public cloud offerings such as Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud.
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Resources are always hosted on-premises
Why it's wrong here
Public cloud resources are always hosted in the cloud provider's data centers, not on the customer's premises. The phrase 'always hosted on-premises' describes an on-premises or traditional private data center model, where the organization physically owns and manages its own infrastructure. In contrast, public cloud services run off-premises in provider-managed facilities and are accessed remotely over the internet or through private connections, making this statement the opposite of the public cloud model.
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The organization owns all hardware
Why it's wrong here
In the public cloud, the cloud provider owns and maintains all physical hardware, including servers, storage devices, and networking equipment. Customers do not purchase or own this infrastructure; instead, they rent access to it on a pay-as-you-go or subscription basis, paying only for the resources they consume. The statement that the organization owns all hardware is characteristic of on-premises or private cloud deployments, not public cloud, where the provider manages the underlying assets and the customer retains ownership only of its data and applications.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
What is Cloud Computing?
Key term
Scalability
Scalability is the ability of a system, network, or process to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources, either by making the existing resources more powerful (vertical scaling) or by adding more resources (horizontal scaling).
Key term
Hypervisor
A hypervisor is software that creates and runs virtual machines by allowing multiple operating systems to share a single hardware host.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This AZ-900 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-900 exam.