A company operates a fleet of on-premises servers running legacy applications. Due to strict regulatory compliance requirements, these servers cannot be migrated to Azure. However, the IT team wants to centrally manage these servers using Azure tools, including applying Azure Policy to enforce configuration standards and using Azure Monitor for log collection and performance monitoring. The team needs to treat these on-premises servers as Azure resources without moving them. Which Azure service should the company use?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
Best answer
Azure Arc
Azure Arc enables you to project non-Azure (on-premises, multi-cloud) resources into Azure Resource Manager, allowing you to manage them with Azure tools like Azure Policy and Azure Monitor. This directly meets the requirement to manage on-premises servers without migration.
Distractor review
Azure Stack Edge
Azure Stack Edge is a purpose-built hardware appliance for edge computing, data preprocessing, and running Azure services locally. It is not used to manage existing on-premises servers from Azure; rather, it deploys Azure services on-premises.
Distractor review
Azure Site Recovery
Azure Site Recovery is a disaster recovery service that replicates workloads to Azure for failover. It does not provide ongoing management, policy enforcement, or monitoring for the source servers; its primary role is business continuity.
Distractor review
Azure Policy
Azure Policy is a governance service that enforces rules on Azure resources. However, by itself it cannot apply to on-premises servers unless those servers are first integrated with Azure, which requires Azure Arc to make them appear as Azure resources.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: NAT rules depend on direction and matching traffic
NAT is not only about the public address. The inside/outside interface roles and the ACL or rule that matches traffic are just as important.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
NAT questions usually test address translation, overload/PAT behaviour, static mappings and whether the right traffic is being translated. Read the interface direction and address terms carefully.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
- PAT allows many inside hosts to share one public address using ports.
- Inside local and inside global describe the private and translated addresses.
- NAT ACLs identify traffic for translation, not always security filtering.
TExam Day Tips
- Identify inside and outside interfaces first.
- Check whether the scenario needs static NAT, dynamic NAT or PAT.
- Do not confuse NAT matching ACLs with normal packet-filtering intent.
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More questions from this exam
Keep practising from the same exam bank, or move into a focused topic page if this question exposed a weak area.
Question 1
A developer is building a serverless application that requires integration with an on-premises SQL Server database for real-time data processing. The on-premises network is connected to Azure via a site-to-site VPN. Which Azure service would allow the function to securely access the on-premises database without exposing it to the public internet?
Question 2
A solutions architect is designing a storage solution for a large media company. The company needs to store video files that are accessed infrequently but must be retained for several years for compliance. Which two Azure storage options meet these requirements? (Select two.)
Question 3
A company deploys a multi-tier application using Azure virtual machines. The web tier VMs must be evenly distributed across two distinct data centers within an Azure region to avoid a single point of failure from an infrastructure outage. Which Azure construct should they use to meet this requirement?
Question 4
A company wants to enforce a set of security policies across all their Azure subscriptions. They have created several individual policy definitions. Which Azure construct should they use to group these policies together and assign them as a single package?
Question 5
A company deploys a line-of-business application on an Azure virtual machine. The IT team wants to ensure the application remains secure. According to the shared responsibility model, which of the following security tasks is the sole responsibility of the customer (the company)?
Question 6
A company develops a web API that runs on Azure App Service. The development team wants to deploy a new version of the API to a staging environment, run integration tests against it, and then gradually shift production traffic to the new version. If any issues are detected, they want to immediately roll back to the previous version without redeploying. Which Azure App Service feature should the team use to meet these requirements?
FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this AZ-900 question test?
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Azure Arc — Azure Arc extends Azure's management capabilities to any infrastructure, including on-premises servers, edge devices, or servers in other clouds. It allows you to apply Azure Policy, use Azure Monitor, and manage these resources as if they were native Azure resources, all without migrating them. Azure Stack Edge is a hardware appliance for edge compute and storage, not for managing existing servers. Azure Site Recovery is a disaster recovery service for replicating workloads, but it does not provide ongoing management or policy enforcement. Azure Policy alone cannot manage on-premises servers directly; it requires Azure Arc to project those servers into Azure.
What should I do if I get this AZ-900 question wrong?
Then try more questions from the same exam bank and focus on understanding why the wrong options are tempting.
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