A company plans to deploy a mission-critical application on three Azure virtual machines. The application must remain available even if an entire Azure datacenter becomes unavailable due to a catastrophic event like a fire or flood. The company wants to deploy the VMs across multiple physical locations within a single Azure region, with each location having independent power, cooling, and networking. Which Azure feature 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.
Distractor review
Availability sets
Availability sets protect against failures within a single datacenter by distributing VMs across update domains and fault domains. They do not provide protection if an entire datacenter becomes unavailable.
Best answer
Availability zones
Availability zones are unique physical locations within an Azure region. Each zone is made up of one or more datacenters with independent power, cooling, and networking. By deploying VMs across multiple zones, you can protect your application from a complete datacenter failure.
Distractor review
Azure Site Recovery
Azure Site Recovery is a disaster recovery service that replicates workloads from a primary site to a secondary site, often another Azure region. It does not protect against failures within a single region by using multiple datacenters in that region.
Distractor review
Virtual machine scale sets
Virtual machine scale sets allow you to deploy and manage a set of identical, load-balanced VMs. They can be used for scaling but do not inherently provide protection against an entire datacenter failure unless combined with availability zones.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Many certification questions include familiar terms but test a specific constraint. Read the exact wording before choosing an answer that is generally true but wrong for this case.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
This question should be treated as a scenario, not a definition check. Identify the problem, the constraint and the best action. Then compare each option against those facts.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
- Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
- Use explanations to understand the rule behind the answer.
TExam Day Tips
- Underline the problem statement mentally.
- Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
- Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
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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?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Availability zones — Availability zones are physically separate datacenters within an Azure region. Each zone has independent power, cooling, and networking. Deploying VMs across zones ensures that if one entire datacenter fails, the application continues running in another zone. Availability sets protect against failures within a single datacenter (e.g., rack-level), not against a full datacenter loss. Azure Site Recovery provides disaster recovery across regions, not within a region. Virtual machine scale sets are for scaling out horizontally, not for high availability across datacenters within a region.
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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