AZ-900 Describe cloud concepts Practice Question
Which cloud computing characteristic allows a single set of physical hardware to serve multiple customers with isolated virtual environments?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse multi-tenancy with high availability or elasticity, thinking that sharing hardware implies redundancy or scaling, but the core concept is about logical isolation of tenants on shared physical infrastructure.
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
✓
Multi-tenancy
Multi-tenancy is the cloud computing characteristic that enables a single set of physical hardware to host multiple customers (tenants) while keeping their virtual environments isolated from one another. This is achieved through hypervisor-level virtualization, where each tenant runs in its own virtual machine (VM) with dedicated memory, CPU, and storage allocations, preventing cross-tenant access. In Azure, multi-tenancy is fundamental to the public cloud model, allowing shared infrastructure without compromising security or privacy.
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 is a resilience design principle focused on keeping workloads operational with minimal downtime, typically achieved through redundancy such as paired regions or availability zones and automated failover. It does not describe the underlying physical hardware sharing model; even a single-tenant dedicated host can be configured for high availability. Therefore, although Azure offers HA capabilities, the term does not explain how multiple customers' resources coexist on the same physical servers.
- ✗
Geo-distribution
Why it's wrong here
Geo-distribution refers to intentionally placing cloud resources across multiple Azure regions to optimize latency, meet data sovereignty requirements, and improve disaster recovery. This architectural strategy is about choosing where workloads run, not about how the cloud provider pools and shares its physical hardware. A geo-distributed deployment could use dedicated, non-shared infrastructure, so this term does not match the concept of multiple customers sharing the same hardware.
- ✓
Multi-tenancy
Why this is correct
Multi-tenancy is the cloud model where a single physical server's compute, memory, and storage are shared by multiple independent customers, called tenants, with strict logical isolation enforced by the hypervisor. Each tenant's virtual machines and data operate as if they were on their own private hardware, yet they all run on the same underlying physical machine controlled by the provider. This shared, virtualized infrastructure is what makes Azure's cost-efficient, pay-as-you-go service model possible without exposing one tenant's data or workloads to another.
- ✗
Elasticity
Why it's wrong here
Elasticity is the cloud characteristic that allows resources to scale out or in automatically in response to current load, so you provision just the capacity needed and avoid overpaying. It is a dynamic, demand-driven behavior of the platform, not a static description of hardware ownership or sharing. Because a single-tenant, dedicated environment can also scale elastically, elasticity does not convey the concept of multiple customers co-existing on shared physical hardware.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
What is Cloud Computing?
Key term
Security
Security in IT is the practice of protecting systems, networks, and data from unauthorized access, damage, or theft.
Key term
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the internet, allowing users to access computing power, storage, and applications without owning physical hardware.
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every AZ-900 question from scratch — 981 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.