Courseiva

DP-203 · domain

Secure, monitor, and optimize data storage and data processing

Practise Microsoft Azure Data Engineer Associate DP-203 Secure, monitor, and optimize data storage and data processing practice questions — original exam-style scenarios with answer choices, explanations, and analysis of common mistakes.

223 questions64 easy86 medium73 hard

Focused practice

Practice Secure, monitor, and optimize data storage and data processing questions

Scored sessions drawing only from this domain — pick a length below.

Start 20-question practice test →

What this domain covers

What to know about Secure, monitor, and optimize data storage and data processing

Secure, monitor, and optimize data storage and data processing questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.

How the topic appears in realistic exam-style scenarios.

Which detail in the question changes the correct answer.

How to eliminate plausible but wrong options.

How to connect the question back to the wider exam objective.

Watch out for

Common Secure, monitor, and optimize data storage and data processing exam traps

  • Answering from memory before reading the full scenario.
  • Missing a constraint such as cost, availability, security, scope or command context.
  • Choosing a broad answer when the question asks for the most specific fix.
  • Ignoring why the wrong options are tempting.

Question index

All Secure, monitor, and optimize data storage and data processing questions (223)

Click any question to see the full explanation, or start a practice session above.

1

You are securing an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account that contains sensitive data. Which TWO of the following should you implement to protect data from unauthorized access?

Medium
2

You are monitoring Azure Data Factory pipelines. You need to set up an alert when a pipeline run fails. What is the most efficient way to achieve this?

Easy
3

Which THREE methods can you use to authenticate an Azure Data Factory pipeline to access Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2? (Choose THREE)

Easy
4

Your company uses Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 and needs to implement a data retention policy that automatically deletes files older than 90 days in a specific container. What should you use?

Medium
5

You need to secure data at rest for an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account that contains sensitive financial data. Which configuration should you enable to ensure that data is encrypted using a customer-managed key stored in Azure Key Vault, and that access to the key is logged?

Easy
6

Refer to the exhibit. You have an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account with hierarchical namespace enabled. The exhibit shows an Azure CLI command output that lists access permissions. User user@contoso.com is a member of group-analysts@contoso.com. What level of access does user@contoso.com have to the /data/analytics/ directory?

Hard
7

You are monitoring an Azure Data Factory pipeline that runs daily to load data from an on-premises SQL Server to Azure Synapse Analytics. The pipeline has been failing intermittently with timeout errors. You need to configure alerts to notify the team when the pipeline fails. What is the most efficient way to achieve this?

Easy
8

Your organization uses Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 for a data lake. You need to prevent accidental deletion of data by enabling a soft delete policy. Which configuration is required?

Medium
9

Your team uses Azure Databricks for data processing. You need to implement a cost-control strategy that automatically terminates idle clusters after 30 minutes of inactivity, but allows users to override this policy for specific workloads that require long-running clusters. What is the most efficient approach?

Hard
10

You have an Azure Databricks workspace that processes sensitive data. The security team requires that all access to the workspace be authenticated using Microsoft Entra ID and that all API calls be audited. Which configuration should you implement?

Medium
11

Your organization uses Azure Data Factory to orchestrate data pipelines. You need to ensure that sensitive data is not exposed in pipeline logs. What should you configure?

Easy
12

Your company uses Azure Purview for data governance. You need to ensure that sensitive data in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 is automatically detected and classified. What should you configure in Purview?

Medium
13

Your Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool is experiencing high resource utilization. You need to identify queries that are consuming excessive memory. Which THREE DMVs should you query?

Hard
14

You need to monitor the performance of your Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. Which metric should you use to identify queued queries due to concurrency limits?

Easy
15

You are monitoring an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool and notice that queries are experiencing excessive wait time due to concurrency slots being exhausted. What is the recommended approach to improve concurrency without increasing cost?

Medium
16

Your company uses Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool to query data in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. You need to monitor query performance and identify queries that are consuming excessive resources. Which Azure tool should you use?

Medium
17

Refer to the exhibit. You are reviewing an Azure Policy definition that was created to audit diagnostic settings for Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. The policy is assigned to a management group containing several storage accounts. You notice that the policy is not flagging storage accounts that lack diagnostic settings. What is the most likely cause?

Hard
18

You are designing a data pipeline in Azure Data Factory that reads data from an Azure SQL Database and writes to Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. The pipeline will run hourly and process incremental changes. You need to ensure that the pipeline handles retries for transient failures and logs all activities for audit purposes. What should you configure?

Medium
19

You are optimizing an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. A frequent query scans a large fact table and filters on a date column. You notice that the query uses a full table scan. What is the most effective way to improve query performance?

Hard
20

Which TWO Azure services can be used to monitor and analyze query performance in Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool?

Medium
21

You are designing a data lake architecture using Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. You need to implement a least-privilege security model. Which authorization mechanism should you use for granular control?

Medium
22

You are monitoring an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool using dynamic management views (DMVs). You want to identify queries that are experiencing excessive memory grants causing concurrency issues. Which DMV should you query?

Medium
23

Which THREE best practices should be followed when designing a data lake in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 for optimal performance?

Easy
24

You are using Azure Data Factory to load data from an on-premises SQL Server to Azure Synapse Analytics. The data size is 500 GB, and you need to minimize the load time. The network bandwidth is limited. Which approach should you use?

Medium
25

You are running an Azure Stream Analytics job that reads from an Event Hub and writes to a Power BI dataset. The job is falling behind and processing latency is increasing. What should you do to improve performance?

Easy
26

You need to ensure that data in an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account is encrypted at rest using a customer-managed key. Which feature should you configure?

Easy
27

Your organization uses Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 and needs to prevent accidental deletion of data by enabling soft delete. You also need to ensure that deleted blobs are recoverable for 30 days. What should you configure?

Easy
28

You have an Azure Data Factory pipeline that copies data from an on-premises SQL Server to Azure Blob Storage. The pipeline runs successfully but you notice that the data transfer is taking longer than expected. You need to improve the transfer performance without increasing the cost significantly. Which configuration change should you make?

Medium
29

You are designing a data processing solution using Azure Databricks with Delta Live Tables (DLT). The solution must handle late-arriving data and ensure that updates to the delta table are processed exactly once. Which DLT pipeline setting should you configure?

Hard
30

Which THREE security features are available in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 to protect data at rest and in transit? (Choose three.)

Hard
31

Refer to the exhibit. You deploy the ARM template to create a storage account. After deployment, a developer reports that they cannot access the storage account from an Azure Databricks notebook running in the same virtual network as specified in the subnet rule. What is the most likely reason?

Hard
32

Your team uses Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool to query data in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. You notice that queries are running slower than expected. You need to improve query performance by reducing the amount of data scanned. Which two features should you implement? (Select two.)

Medium
33

Which THREE metrics should you monitor for an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool to ensure optimal performance?

Hard
34

Your organization uses Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 with hierarchical namespace enabled. You need to implement a security strategy that allows users to read only specific folders within a container. Which authorization method should you use?

Hard
35

You need to monitor the performance of an Azure Stream Analytics job in real time. Which Azure service should you use to track the job's resource utilization (e.g., SU % utilization) and set up alerts when the job is approaching its capacity?

Easy
36

Which TWO Azure services can be used to monitor Azure Data Factory pipeline runs and set up alerts?

Medium
37

Your organization uses Azure Synapse Analytics to run large-scale queries. You need to implement a solution that automatically pauses the dedicated SQL pool when no activity is detected for a specified period, and resumes it when a connection is attempted. What should you configure?

Medium
38

You are designing a data ingestion pipeline for Azure Synapse Analytics. The pipeline will load sensitive financial data from an on-premises SQL Server to a dedicated SQL pool. The data must be encrypted at rest and in transit. Which combination of features should you use?

Medium
39

You are designing a solution to monitor the performance of Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pools. You need to identify queries that are consuming more than 100 GB of memory and have been running for more than 30 minutes. Which DMV should you query?

Medium
40

You are optimizing an Azure Data Factory pipeline that moves data from Azure Blob Storage to Azure SQL Database. The pipeline currently uses a Copy activity with a staging setting enabled. You notice high DTU consumption on the Azure SQL Database during the copy operation. How can you reduce the impact on the source database?

Medium
41

Which TWO actions should you take to secure access to Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 when using Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pools? (Choose two.)

Hard
42

You have an Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool. You need to monitor the number of queries that are currently executing. Which dynamic management view should you query?

Easy
43

You are configuring Microsoft Purview to scan an Azure Data Explorer (ADX) cluster. You define the JSON shown in the exhibit. However, the scan fails with an authentication error. What is the most likely cause?

Hard
44

You are designing a data pipeline that uses Azure Data Factory to copy data from an Azure SQL database to Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. The data contains personally identifiable information (PII) that must be masked. Which Data Factory feature should you use?

Easy
45

Which TWO Azure services can be used to audit data access and changes in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2? (Choose two.)

Easy
46

Your company uses Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 as a data lake. You need to monitor for unauthorized access attempts and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. You want to be alerted when someone attempts to access data without proper permissions. What should you configure?

Easy
47

You are monitoring an Azure Data Factory pipeline that runs hourly. You notice that the pipeline occasionally fails due to transient errors. Which monitoring solution should you use to get alerts on failures and analyze trends over time?

Easy
48

Which TWO actions should you take to secure data at rest in Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pools?

Medium
49

A company uses Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool to query data in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. They notice that queries are slow and want to improve performance by reducing the amount of data read. What is the most effective strategy?

Hard
50

Which TWO Azure features can be used to encrypt data at rest in Azure Blob Storage? (Choose two.)

Easy
51

You are optimizing the performance of an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. Which THREE of the following actions will most likely improve query performance?

Hard
52

You need to ensure that an Azure Data Factory pipeline retries a failed activity up to three times with a 5-minute delay between retries. How should you configure the activity?

Easy
53

Your organization uses Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 with hierarchical namespace enabled. You need to implement a monitoring strategy to detect and alert on unusual access patterns that could indicate a security breach. Which THREE services or features should you use? (Choose three.)

Hard
54

You are a data engineer for a healthcare company. You have a production Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool (DW500c) that hosts patient data. The pool is used for both ETL and reporting. You need to ensure that reporting queries always get resources even during heavy ETL loads. You also need to monitor query performance and set up alerts when certain queries exceed a threshold. You have configured workload management using workload groups and classifiers. However, reporting queries are still waiting for resources when ETL is running. You check the sys.dm_pdw_exec_requests DMV and see that ETL queries are using the largest resource class. You need to modify the configuration to guarantee resources for reporting. What should you do?

Hard
55

Your company uses Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. You need to ensure that data at rest is encrypted using a customer-managed key stored in Azure Key Vault. What should you configure?

Easy
56

You are designing a data lake in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 for a large enterprise. You need to ensure that only authorized users can access the data, and you must implement the principle of least privilege. Which security mechanism should you use to grant fine-grained access to specific directories and files without modifying the underlying storage account firewall settings?

Hard
57

You are configuring Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. To optimize query performance for a large fact table that is frequently filtered on date and region columns, which table distribution and indexing strategy should you recommend?

Easy
58

You are optimizing an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool that is experiencing high concurrency and frequent resource class contention. You need to improve query performance and reduce contention without changing the workload. Which two actions should you take? (Choose two.)

Hard
59

You are configuring security for an Azure Synapse Analytics workspace that uses a serverless SQL pool. The workspace is connected to Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 via a managed identity. You need to ensure that only the Synapse workspace can access the storage account, and no other Azure service or user can access it directly. The storage account should not be accessible from the public internet. What should you do?

Medium
60

Your Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool is experiencing performance degradation. You notice that some queries are being queued due to resource class conflicts. What should you implement to optimize performance and reduce queuing?

Medium
61

You have an Azure Data Factory pipeline that copies data from an FTP server to Azure Blob Storage. The pipeline runs successfully most of the time, but occasionally fails with a 'FTP server connection refused' error during peak hours. You need to minimize these failures with minimal cost. What should you do?

Easy
62

You are designing a data processing solution using Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool. The solution will query data stored in Parquet files in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. You need to ensure that the queries are optimized for performance. Which action should you take?

Hard
63

Which TWO actions should you take to ensure that data at rest is encrypted in Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool?

Medium
64

Your organization uses Azure Purview for data governance. You need to ensure that sensitive data is properly classified and that access to it is monitored. Which THREE actions should you take? (Choose three.)

Hard
65

You are designing a data pipeline in Azure Data Factory that processes streaming data from Azure Event Hubs and stores it in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. The data must be encrypted at rest and in transit. Which configuration ensures encryption in transit?

Easy
66

You need to monitor the performance of an Azure Data Factory pipeline that copies data from an on-premises SQL Server to Azure Blob Storage. The pipeline runs on a self-hosted integration runtime. Which metric is most important to monitor to ensure the self-hosted IR is not a bottleneck?

Easy
67

An organization is using Azure Synapse Analytics and wants to implement column-level security to restrict access to sensitive columns. Which feature should they use?

Easy
68

You are optimizing cost for an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account that stores historical data. The data is accessed infrequently after 30 days and must be retained for 7 years. Which lifecycle management rule should you apply?

Medium
69

You are reviewing an Azure Data Factory pipeline JSON. Based on the exhibit, what will be the behavior of the Copy activity when copying files from a source folder that contains subfolders?

Hard
70

You are reviewing a script to create an external data source in Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool. Based on the exhibit, what is the purpose of the SAS token?

Medium
71

You are monitoring the performance of an Azure Data Factory pipeline that uses a Copy activity to load data into Azure Synapse Analytics. Which THREE metrics should you monitor to identify potential performance bottlenecks?

Medium
72

Contoso Ltd. runs a real-time analytics solution on Azure Databricks with data streaming from Event Hubs. They need to ensure that all data in transit between Event Hubs and Databricks is encrypted using TLS 1.2 or higher. Currently, the Event Hubs namespace is configured with the default TLS version (1.0). The Databricks cluster uses a public endpoint. Compliance requires that only TLS 1.2 is accepted. You need to configure the environment to enforce TLS 1.2 without disrupting ongoing streaming. What should you do?

Hard
73

Which THREE methods can you use to monitor and optimize the performance of an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account?

Hard
74

You need to monitor the performance of an Azure Stream Analytics job that processes real-time IoT data. Which metric indicates the number of events that are being dropped or delayed due to insufficient processing capacity?

Easy
75

Which THREE metrics should you monitor to evaluate the performance of an Azure Stream Analytics job?

Hard
76

You manage an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool that contains a large fact table 'Orders' with 500 million rows. The table is hash-distributed on 'OrderDate' and uses a clustered columnstore index. Query performance has degraded over time. You check the system DMVs and find that the columnstore segments have poor quality, with many deleted rows and compressed rowgroups below 1 million rows. You need to improve query performance without blocking writes to the table. What should you do?

Hard
77

Your company has an Azure Data Factory pipeline that ingests data from multiple sources into Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. The pipeline uses a self-hosted integration runtime (IR) running on an on-premises Windows server. Recently, the pipeline started failing with 'Connection timed out' errors during peak hours. You suspect network congestion. You need to resolve this issue with minimal cost and without modifying the pipeline activities. What should you do?

Medium
78

You are monitoring an Azure Data Factory pipeline that copies data from an on-premises SQL Server to Azure Blob Storage. You notice frequent failures due to transient network errors. Which TWO actions should you take to improve reliability?

Easy
79

Your organization uses Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 to store parquet files. You need to secure the data at rest and control access. Which THREE methods should you implement?

Medium
80

Which TWO actions should you take to secure data in transit between an Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool and a client application?

Medium
81

Your team has deployed an Azure Stream Analytics job that writes output to Azure Cosmos DB. You need to monitor the job for data latency and ensure it meets a service-level agreement (SLA) of under 10 seconds from input to output. Which metric should you track in Azure Monitor?

Easy
82

Which THREE metrics should you monitor to optimize the performance of an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool? (Choose three.)

Medium
83

Your organization uses Microsoft Purview to catalog data assets. You need to ensure that sensitive data such as credit card numbers are automatically detected and labeled. Which Purview feature should you configure?

Easy
84

Which TWO actions can you take to optimize the performance of an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool? (Choose two.)

Medium
85

Refer to the exhibit. You have created the custom RBAC role shown and assigned it to a security group. Members of the group report that they can read blobs in the storage account but cannot list the contents of the container. What is the most likely reason for this issue?

Hard
86

You are optimizing an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool that runs a mix of reporting and ETL workloads. The ETL jobs often encounter resource wait times due to concurrent reporting queries. You need to ensure that ETL jobs always get the resources they need. Which two actions should you take? (Choose two.)

Hard
87

You are monitoring an Azure Data Factory pipeline that runs hourly. The pipeline executes a stored procedure in an Azure SQL Database. Recently, you have observed that the pipeline occasionally fails with a 'Deadlock' error when the stored procedure runs. The Azure SQL Database is configured with the 'Read Committed Snapshot' isolation level enabled. You need to resolve the deadlock issue with minimal impact on performance. The stored procedure updates multiple tables in a single transaction and is critical for reporting. What should you do?

Easy
88

You have an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account that stores sensitive customer data. You need to implement security controls to prevent data exfiltration by a malicious insider who has Contributor role access. Which Azure feature should you use?

Easy
89

You are designing a data pipeline in Azure Data Factory that processes sensitive customer data. The pipeline must use a copy activity to move data from Azure Blob Storage to Azure Synapse Analytics. You need to ensure that data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and that the pipeline uses the most secure authentication method. Which authentication method should you use for the sink dataset?

Medium
90

Which TWO actions should you take to secure data at rest in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2? (Choose TWO)

Medium
91

Which TWO methods can you use to optimize the cost of storing data in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2?

Easy
92

A company uses Azure Databricks for data processing. They want to monitor the performance of Spark jobs and set up alerts for job failures. Which Azure service should they use?

Medium
93

Your organization uses Azure Synapse Analytics with serverless SQL pools. You need to ensure that only users with specific Microsoft Entra ID roles can query external tables referencing Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. What should you configure?

Medium
94

You are reviewing an Azure Resource Manager template for an Azure SQL Database auditing policy. Based on the exhibit, which of the following is true?

Medium
95

You have an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool that stores sensitive customer data. You need to ensure that only users with a specific Microsoft Entra ID role can access the data, and all access must be logged for auditing. What should you implement?

Medium
96

Your company uses Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 for a data lake. You need to implement a security strategy that meets the following requirements: 1) All data must be encrypted at rest using customer-managed keys stored in Azure Key Vault. 2) Access to the storage account must be restricted to specific virtual networks. 3) Users must authenticate using Microsoft Entra ID and be granted read-only access to the 'landing' container. You have configured the storage account with Azure Storage Service Encryption (SSE) using customer-managed keys. You have also configured firewall rules to allow access only from the required virtual network. However, users cannot access the 'landing' container even though they have the Storage Blob Data Reader role. What is the most likely issue?

Medium
97

Your Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool is experiencing performance degradation. Queries that previously completed in seconds now take minutes. You suspect memory pressure and concurrency issues. What should you first review to diagnose the problem?

Medium
98

You need to ensure that an Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool automatically pauses after 2 hours of inactivity to save costs. Which feature should you configure?

Medium
99

You are reviewing an Azure Data Factory JSON definition for a linked service. The linked service uses a service principal to connect to Azure Data Lake Storage Gen1. What is a security concern with this configuration?

Medium
100

Your Azure Data Factory pipeline uses a Copy activity to load data from an on-premises SQL Server to Azure Blob Storage. You notice that the pipeline is running slower than expected. You need to identify the bottleneck. Which Data Factory monitoring metric should you analyze first?

Hard
101

Your organization uses Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. You need to ensure that all data at rest in the SQL pool is encrypted using a customer-managed key stored in Azure Key Vault. What should you configure?

Medium
102

Your team has deployed an Azure Stream Analytics job that reads from an Event Hubs input and writes to Azure Synapse Analytics. The job is falling behind, causing a growing backlog in Event Hubs. You have already scaled the Stream Analytics job to maximum streaming units. What should you do to improve throughput?

Medium
103

Your Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool is experiencing performance degradation. You suspect that the workload is generating excessive data movement due to suboptimal distribution. Which dynamic management view (DMV) should you query to identify queries that are causing significant data movement?

Medium
104

You have an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool that handles both high-priority real-time queries and low-priority batch jobs. You need to ensure that high-priority queries always get the resources they need, while batch jobs do not starve. What should you configure?

Medium
105

You are designing a data pipeline using Azure Synapse Pipelines. The pipeline ingests data from multiple sources, performs transformations using a notebook, and loads the results into a dedicated SQL pool. You need to ensure that if the notebook fails, the entire pipeline stops and sends an alert. What is the most efficient way to configure this?

Hard
106

An Azure Data Factory pipeline runs multiple times daily, loading data from an on-premises SQL Server to Azure Blob Storage. You notice that the pipeline sometimes fails due to transient network errors. You need to implement a retry policy with exponential backoff. Which configuration should you apply?

Hard
107

You are reviewing an Azure Data Factory pipeline JSON that copies data from Azure Blob Storage to Azure SQL Database using a stored procedure. The pipeline fails with a 'Parameter supplied for object is not valid' error. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
108

You are designing a data pipeline in Azure Data Factory that copies data from Azure Blob Storage to Azure SQL Database. The data contains personally identifiable information (PII). What should you use to protect the data during transit?

Easy
109

Your team uses Azure Data Factory to orchestrate data movement. You need to monitor pipeline runs and set up alerts when a pipeline fails more than three times in an hour. What is the most efficient approach?

Medium
110

You are using Azure Data Factory to ingest data from a REST API into Azure Synapse Analytics. The API has a rate limit of 100 requests per minute. You need to ensure that the pipeline respects the rate limit and retries on failure. Which two settings should you configure in the copy activity? (Choose two.)

Medium
111

You are monitoring an Azure Stream Analytics job that processes streaming data from Event Hubs to Azure Synapse Analytics. Which TWO Azure Monitor metrics should you set alerts on to detect data loss or processing delays?

Easy
112

Which TWO actions should you take to secure access to an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account using Microsoft Entra ID?

Medium
113

Which THREE metrics should you monitor to optimize the performance of an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool? (Choose three.)

Hard
114

Your company uses Azure Databricks for data processing. You need to ensure that spark jobs cannot access certain storage accounts. What is the most secure approach?

Easy
115

Your Azure Data Factory pipeline is failing with the error: 'Operation on target Copy data1 failed: The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.' The source is Azure Blob Storage and the sink is Azure SQL Database. You have verified the SQL Database firewall rules allow Azure services. What is the most likely cause?

Easy
116

You have an Azure Data Factory pipeline that uses a Self-Hosted Integration Runtime (SHIR) to copy data from an on-premises Oracle database to Azure Blob Storage. The pipeline is failing with a connectivity error. You have verified that the SHIR is running and the network firewall allows outbound traffic to Azure. What is the most likely cause of the failure?

Medium
117

You have an Azure Data Factory pipeline defined as shown. The pipeline is failing because the preCopyScript truncates the staging table before each run, but the table is empty on the first run. What change would you make to ensure the pipeline works correctly?

Hard
118

You have an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool that is used for reporting. You notice that the tempdb database is growing rapidly and causing queries to fail. Which two actions should you take to mitigate the issue? (Select two.)

Hard
119

Your organization uses Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool to query data in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. You notice that queries are taking longer than expected. You need to identify which queries are consuming the most resources and optimize them. What should you do first?

Medium
120

Which TWO actions should you take to secure sensitive data in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2? (Choose two.)

Medium
121

You are monitoring an Azure Data Factory pipeline that runs daily. You notice that some runs are failing due to transient network errors. You want to automatically retry the failed activities with a 5-minute delay, up to 3 times. How should you configure this?

Easy
122

You are monitoring an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool and notice that some queries are taking longer than expected. You need to identify queries that are experiencing significant memory pressure. Which dynamic management view (DMV) should you query?

Medium
123

Your Azure Synapse Analytics pipeline uses PolyBase to load data from Azure Blob Storage into a dedicated SQL pool. The load is slow and suffers from high latency. Which optimization should you apply first?

Hard
124

You are designing a data ingestion pipeline for Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 using Azure Databricks. The source is an on-premises SQL Server database with incremental changes captured via change data capture (CDC). The requirement is to ensure exactly-once semantics for each row while minimizing latency. Which approach should you recommend?

Hard
125

Which TWO actions should you take to secure data in Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool? (Choose two.)

Medium
126

Your Azure Synapse Analytics workspace uses serverless SQL pools for ad-hoc querying. Users report that queries are slow. You examine the execution plan and see that the query scans multiple partitions in the openrowset. What is the best way to improve performance?

Hard
127

You need to monitor resource utilization for an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. Which Azure Monitor metric shows the percentage of allocated DWU being used?

Easy
128

You are using Azure Stream Analytics to process real-time data from an event hub and output to Azure Synapse Analytics. You need to ensure exactly-once delivery semantics to the output. What should you configure?

Easy
129

You are monitoring an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool and notice that some queries are experiencing high wait times due to concurrency slots being exhausted. You need to optimize the workload to reduce contention. Which three actions should you take? (Select three.)

Medium
130

You have an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account that stores sensitive customer data. You need to prevent data exfiltration to unauthorized external IP addresses. Which TWO actions should you take?

Medium
131

Your team is troubleshooting slow query performance on a dedicated SQL pool in Azure Synapse Analytics. The query uses a hash-distributed fact table with 60 distributions. After reviewing the execution plan, you notice a high number of data moves. Which action would most likely reduce data movement?

Medium
132

You are an Azure administrator. You apply the Azure Policy shown in the exhibit to a management group. What is the outcome of this policy?

Medium
133

You are a data engineer for a global e-commerce company. The company uses Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool for its data warehouse. The environment includes a large fact table 'Sales' distributed by hash on 'CustomerID', and dimension tables 'Customer' (hash-distributed on 'CustomerID') and 'Product' (replicated). Recently, queries that join Sales and Customer are performing poorly. You run a query to check data skew on the Sales table and find that one distribution has 40% more rows than the average. Additionally, the Customer table has high data movement during joins. You need to optimize the performance of these joins. What should you do?

Hard
134

You are designing an Azure Data Factory pipeline to ingest data from an on-premises SQL Server into Azure Synapse Analytics. The data must be encrypted in transit. Which integration runtime type should you use and what additional configuration is required?

Medium
135

You have an Azure Data Factory pipeline that loads data from an on-premises SQL Server to Azure Synapse Analytics. The pipeline fails intermittently with network connectivity errors. You need to ensure reliable data transfer with minimal latency. Which solution should you recommend?

Hard
136

You are monitoring an Azure Data Factory pipeline that runs hourly. You notice that the pipeline has been failing intermittently with an error indicating 'Activity timeout'. Which Azure Monitor metric should you set an alert on to proactively detect such failures?

Easy
137

You are designing a data lake architecture using Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. Sensitive customer data must be encrypted at rest using customer-managed keys stored in Azure Key Vault. Additionally, access must be audited at the file level. Which combination of features should you implement?

Hard
138

Which THREE features should you use to optimize query performance in Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool? (Choose three.)

Hard
139

Your company has a data lake in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 that stores sensitive customer information. You need to implement fine-grained access control so that data engineers can read all data, data scientists can read only anonymized data, and auditors can view access logs. The solution must use Azure role-based access control (RBAC) and access control lists (ACLs). You also need to enable auditing of read operations. What should you do?

Hard
140

You need to ensure that sensitive data stored in Azure SQL Database is encrypted at rest. Which feature should you enable?

Easy
141

Your company uses Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 with hierarchical namespace enabled. You need to ensure that only the 'data-scientists' group can read files in the 'processed' container, while denying access to all other users. You have already configured the storage account firewall to allow access only from your corporate network. What should you do next?

Hard
142

You have an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account that stores log files. You need to implement a data retention policy so that logs older than 90 days are automatically deleted. What should you use?

Easy
143

You need to monitor the performance of Azure Stream Analytics jobs. Which Azure Monitor metric can be used to detect if the job is falling behind in processing input data?

Easy
144

Refer to the exhibit. You are creating an Azure Storage account using an ARM template with the above snippet. After deployment, a security auditor reviews the configuration and notes that the storage account is not using a customer-managed key for encryption. What is the most likely reason?

Hard
145

You run the PowerShell command shown in the exhibit for an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. Which configuration will be applied?

Hard
146

You are designing a security strategy for Azure Synapse Analytics. The solution must prevent users from accessing sensitive columns in a dedicated SQL pool, such as Social Security numbers, unless they have explicit permission. Which feature should you use?

Medium
147

Refer to the exhibit. You are reviewing the workload classifier configuration for an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. You notice that the 'HeavyLoader' classifier has a queryExecutionTimeoutSeconds of 0. What is the implication of this setting?

Hard
148

You have an Azure Databricks workspace with a cluster that uses a Standard_LRS managed disk. You need to ensure that data at rest is encrypted using a customer-managed key (CMK). What should you configure?

Medium
149

You are a data engineer at a financial services company. Your Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool contains a fact table named 'Transactions' with 10 billion rows. The table is hash-distributed on 'AccountID' and partitioned by month. You notice that queries filtering on 'TransactionDate' (a date column) are performing slowly despite partition elimination. You also observe that the 'Transactions' table is frequently joined with a 'DimAccount' dimension table on 'AccountID'. You need to optimize query performance for the most common workload: monthly reports that aggregate transaction amounts by account for the last 12 months. Additionally, you need to ensure that the solution minimizes maintenance overhead. What should you do?

Hard
150

You are optimizing the performance of an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. Which TWO actions can help reduce data movement during query execution?

Hard
151

You need to ensure that data stored in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 is encrypted at rest using customer-managed keys. Which Azure service should you use to manage the keys?

Easy
152

Your organization has an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool that stores sensitive customer data. You need to ensure that only authorized users can access the data, and auditing must be enabled to track all access attempts. What should you do first?

Medium
153

You are monitoring Azure Stream Analytics job performance. The job is falling behind in processing real-time data. You notice that the SU (Streaming Unit) utilization is consistently at 90% or higher. What is the most appropriate action to improve throughput?

Easy
154

You need to monitor the performance of Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool queries. Which Azure service should you use to identify long-running queries and resource bottlenecks?

Easy
155

Your company uses Azure Data Factory to orchestrate data pipelines that ingest data from on-premises SQL Server to Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. The network team has implemented a firewall that only allows outbound traffic on port 443. The on-premises SQL Server is not accessible via public endpoint. You need to configure a secure connection that complies with the firewall rules and uses managed identity for authentication. What should you use?

Hard
156

You have an Azure Databricks workspace that uses a managed resource group. The security team requires that all cluster nodes use no public IP addresses and that all outbound traffic goes through a firewall. What should you configure?

Medium
157

Your Azure Databricks workspace contains sensitive customer data. You need to ensure that only users with a specific Microsoft Entra ID role can access the workspace, and all access must be logged and monitored. You also need to audit data access at the table level. What should you implement?

Hard
158

You are a data engineer at Northwind Traders. You have an Azure Synapse Analytics workspace with dedicated SQL pools. You need to monitor query performance to identify slow-running queries and understand resource consumption. The solution must provide historical data for the last 30 days and allow alerting when queries exceed a certain duration. You also need to export the data to a Log Analytics workspace for correlation with other metrics. What should you use?

Medium
159

You are optimizing a batch processing job in Azure Databricks that reads data from Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 and writes aggregated results back. The job currently runs slowly due to high shuffle writes. You plan to use Delta Lake and optimize the table layout. Which two actions should you take to reduce shuffle writes? (Select two.)

Hard
160

You are reviewing an ARM template that assigns a role. What role is being assigned, and at what scope?

Easy
161

You are reviewing an Azure PowerShell script that sets permissions on a directory in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. The script sets a default ACL for a user on the path 'sales/2024/01/'. What is the effect of the -DefaultScope parameter?

Hard
162

You are troubleshooting an Azure Databricks job that writes data to Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. The job fails with '403 Forbidden' error. The Databricks workspace uses a managed identity (system-assigned) for authentication. What should you verify?

Easy
163

An organization is using Azure Data Factory to ingest data from multiple on-premises SQL Server databases into Azure Synapse Analytics. They need to ensure that sensitive data is masked during ingestion before landing in the staging area. What is the best approach?

Hard
164

Which THREE actions can improve the performance of a dedicated SQL pool in Azure Synapse Analytics?

Medium
165

You are monitoring an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account using Azure Monitor. You need to be alerted when the number of storage account requests exceeds 20,000 per hour. What is the most efficient way to set up this alert?

Medium
166

You need to ensure that an Azure Data Factory pipeline can copy data from an Azure SQL Database that is behind a private endpoint. The Data Factory should use a managed virtual network. What should you configure?

Easy
167

Your Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account stores sensitive data. You need to audit who accesses the data and when, and you want to send the audit logs to a Log Analytics workspace for analysis. What should you configure?

Easy
168

Refer to the exhibit. You have an Azure Data Factory with two triggers defined as shown. The DailyTrigger runs the CopyPipeline every day at midnight UTC. The BlobTrigger runs the ProcessPipeline when a blob is created in the /input/ folder. You notice that the ProcessPipeline is not executing even though blobs are being created. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
169

Your company runs an Azure Data Factory pipeline that copies data from an FTP server to Azure Blob Storage daily. Recently, the pipeline has been failing with the error: 'Failure happened on 'Source' side. ErrorCode=UserErrorFailedFileOperation, Error details: The remote server returned an error: (550) File unavailable (e.g., file not found, no access).' The FTP server administrator confirms that the file exists and the credentials are correct. You need to resolve the issue with minimal administrative effort. What should you do?

Easy
170

Which TWO features can be used to audit access to data in Azure Storage? (Choose two.)

Medium
171

Your company uses Azure Data Factory to orchestrate data movement. You need to monitor pipeline runs across multiple factories and create a dashboard that shows success and failure rates over the past 30 days. What is the most efficient approach?

Medium
172

You are designing a data processing solution in Azure Databricks that uses Unity Catalog. The security team requires that all users authenticate using Microsoft Entra ID and that access to tables is governed by attribute-based access control (ABAC) using table tags. Which feature should you enable?

Hard
173

You have an Azure Data Factory pipeline that copies data from an on-premises SQL Server to Azure Blob Storage. The pipeline is failing with a 'Gateway is offline' error. What is the most likely cause?

Easy
174

A company uses Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. They notice that queries against a large fact table are slow. They have already created statistics on all columns used in WHERE clauses and JOIN predicates. What should they do next to improve query performance?

Medium
175

Your organization uses Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pools to query data in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. You need to ensure that only authorized users can access the data via the serverless SQL endpoint, while minimizing administrative overhead. What should you use?

Medium
176

You need to monitor the health of your Azure Data Factory pipelines and set up alerts for failures. Which Azure service should you use to collect and analyze pipeline run logs?

Easy
177

You have an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. You notice that some queries are taking longer than expected due to excessive data movement operations. You need to minimize data movement without changing the distribution columns. Which table design approach should you recommend?

Hard
178

You are using Azure Purview to scan an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account. After scanning, you notice that some files are not classified. What is the most likely reason?

Medium
179

You are monitoring an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool that is experiencing performance degradation during peak hours. You notice that some queries are being queued due to resource contention. You need to optimize query performance without scaling the Data Warehouse Units (DWUs). Which action should you take?

Hard
180

You are a data engineer for a company that uses Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. You need to implement security best practices to protect sensitive data. Which TWO actions should you take? (Choose two.)

Medium
181

You are designing a data processing solution in Azure Synapse Analytics. The solution must prevent unauthorized access to data at rest and in transit. Which combination of features should you implement?

Medium
182

You deploy the Azure Security Center automation shown in the exhibit. What is the purpose of this automation?

Hard
183

Refer to the exhibit. You run the Kusto query in Azure Monitor Logs to analyze Data Factory pipeline runs. What is the purpose of this query?

Easy
184

You are configuring security for an Azure Synapse Analytics workspace. You need to ensure that only users in the 'DataScientists' Microsoft Entra group can read data from the 'sales' schema in the serverless SQL pool. What should you configure?

Medium
185

Your company uses Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 with hierarchical namespace enabled. You need to optimize costs for a large dataset that is accessed only once a month for reporting. The data must be retained for 7 years. Which storage tier and lifecycle management rule should you configure?

Hard
186

A company uses Azure Stream Analytics to process real-time data from IoT devices. They need to ensure that the output to Azure Synapse Analytics is optimized for high throughput and low latency. What should they configure in the Stream Analytics job?

Hard
187

You are reviewing an ARM template for Azure SQL Database security alert policy. Based on the exhibit, which threats will trigger an alert?

Hard
188

Which THREE metrics from Azure Monitor should you use to evaluate the performance of an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account?

Hard
189

You have an Azure Stream Analytics job that writes output to Azure Synapse Analytics. You need to ensure that the job can authenticate to Synapse Analytics using a managed identity. What should you do?

Easy
190

You have an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account that stores parquet files. You need to ensure that files containing personally identifiable information (PII) are automatically classified and tagged. Which Azure service should you integrate?

Medium
191

Which TWO configurations are recommended to secure data processing in Azure Synapse Pipelines?

Easy
192

Your organization uses Azure SQL Database with Active Geo-Replication for disaster recovery. You need to ensure that all connections to the database use Microsoft Entra ID authentication and that access is audited. You also want to minimize the attack surface by disabling SQL authentication. What should you do?

Easy
193

You need to monitor an Azure Data Factory pipeline for failures and send an email notification when a pipeline run fails. Which Azure service should you use to create an alert based on the pipeline run metrics?

Easy
194

You need to monitor the performance of an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. Which DMV should you query to find queries that are currently running and their execution status?

Easy
195

Your company uses Azure Blob Storage to store backups. You need to ensure that data is encrypted at rest using a customer-managed key stored in Azure Key Vault. Which feature should you enable?

Easy
196

You are optimizing an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. The workload includes large fact tables and dimension tables. You need to improve query performance for star join queries. Which TWO actions should you take?

Hard
197

Your team is running a critical Azure Stream Analytics job that writes results to Azure SQL Database. Recently, the job has been failing with high latency and occasional data loss. You need to monitor the job's performance and set up alerts for when the watermark delay exceeds a threshold. What should you use?

Hard
198

Your Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account stores sensitive customer data. You need to ensure that data is encrypted at rest using customer-managed keys (CMK) and that access to the encryption key is logged. What should you do?

Hard
199

You need to audit all queries run against an Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool. What should you enable?

Easy
200

You are responsible for managing an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account that stores parquet files for analytics. You need to implement a data retention policy that automatically deletes files older than 90 days in the 'logs' container. Additionally, you need to ensure that no data is lost due to accidental deletion; you want to be able to recover deleted files within 30 days. You also need to monitor the storage account for unusual access patterns. The solution must minimize administrative effort. What should you do?

Medium
201

You are reviewing the ARM template snippet for an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account. The template fails to deploy with an error that the encryption key cannot be accessed. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
202

You need to secure access to an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account. Which THREE methods can you use to authenticate and authorize access?

Easy
203

Refer to the exhibit. You are reviewing an ARM template for an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account. Which of the following security best practices is violated in this template?

Hard
204

Refer to the exhibit. You are reviewing a Data Factory JSON definition. The factory has a user-assigned managed identity configured. However, the linked service to Azure Storage uses an account key. What security improvement should you recommend?

Medium
205

You need to implement column-level security in Azure Synapse Analytics to restrict access to salary information. Only users with the 'HRManager' role should see salary columns. Which feature should you use?

Easy
206

Which TWO monitoring metrics in Azure Monitor for Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool can help identify performance bottlenecks? (Choose two.)

Easy
207

You are using Azure Data Explorer to monitor real-time sensor data. You run the KQL query shown in the exhibit. What is the purpose of this query?

Medium
208

You are designing a disaster recovery plan for an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. The primary region becomes unavailable. You need to fail over to a secondary region with minimal data loss. The recovery point objective (RPO) is 1 hour. What should you configure?

Hard
209

You are reviewing the ARM template above. The storage account is created with hierarchical namespace enabled (isHnsEnabled: true). After deployment, you need to ensure that the 'data-engineers' group can execute but not read the contents of the root directory. What should you do?

Hard
210

Your organization uses Azure Purview for data governance. You need to automatically scan an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account and classify sensitive data such as credit card numbers and social security numbers. What should you configure?

Medium
211

You are designing a data processing solution in Azure Synapse Analytics. The solution must ensure that data at rest in a dedicated SQL pool is encrypted using customer-managed keys (CMK) stored in Azure Key Vault. The encryption should be enabled at the database level. What should you configure?

Medium
212

Your Azure Data Factory pipeline uses a Self-Hosted Integration Runtime (SHIR) to copy data from an on-premises SQL Server to Azure Blob Storage. The copy activity is failing with a timeout error after 30 minutes. The data volume is 50 GB. You need to optimize the data transfer performance. Which configuration change should you make first?

Hard
213

You have an Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool that queries data in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. You need to ensure that only users with specific Microsoft Entra ID groups can access the data through the serverless SQL pool. What should you configure?

Medium
214

You are designing a data processing solution in Azure Synapse Analytics. The solution must process streaming data from IoT devices and store it in a dedicated SQL pool for reporting. The data volume is high (millions of events per hour), and you need to optimize for both ingestion speed and query performance. You also need to ensure that the data can be partitioned by date for efficient maintenance. Which architecture should you recommend?

Medium
215

Your Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool is experiencing performance degradation. Queries that previously completed in seconds now take minutes. You notice high queue wait times in sys.dm_pdw_exec_requests. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
216

Which THREE measures should you implement to monitor and optimize the performance of Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2?

Hard
217

Your organization uses Azure Purview for data governance. You need to ensure that only authorized users can register data sources and create classification rules, while other data consumers can only search and browse the data catalog. What should you configure?

Hard
218

A company uses Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 with hierarchical namespace enabled. They need to restrict a specific application's access to only write files in a particular directory without being able to read or list files. Which type of permission should be assigned?

Easy
219

Which THREE components are valid parts of the Microsoft Purview Data Map? (Choose THREE)

Hard
220

Refer to the exhibit. You are configuring an Azure Purview data policy for Azure Storage. The policy above is intended to audit all access events. However, the security team complains that not all read events are being audited. What is the most likely reason?

Medium
221

An Azure Synapse Analytics pipeline uses a Copy activity to ingest data from Azure Blob Storage into a dedicated SQL pool. You notice that the data load is slow. You need to improve performance by enabling staging. What is the primary benefit of using staging?

Hard
222

You are a data engineer for a large e-commerce company. You have an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool that stores transactional data. The pool is currently at DWU1000c. You have a critical dashboard that runs a complex query every 5 minutes. The query scans a large fact table partitioned by date. The query performance is degrading over time as data accumulates. You need to improve performance without increasing DWUs or changing the dashboard query. You also need to minimize data movement overhead. You have the following options: A. Create a columnstore index on the fact table with a partition alignment. B. Create a materialized view that aggregates the data at the partition level. C. Implement result-set caching and set the cache to expire every 5 minutes. D. Redistribute the fact table using hash distribution on the date column. Which option should you choose?

Hard
223

You have an Azure Synapse Analytics workspace with Apache Spark pools. You need to monitor Spark application performance and identify stages that are taking the longest time. Which tool should you use?

Hard

Frequently asked questions

What does the Secure, monitor, and optimize data storage and data processing domain cover on the DP-203 exam?
Secure, monitor, and optimize data storage and data processing questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.
How many questions are in this domain?
This page lists all 223 Secure, monitor, and optimize data storage and data processing questions in the DP-203 question bank. The actual exam draws from this domain proportionally to its weighting in the official exam blueprint.
What is the best way to practise this domain?
Start with a short focused session (10 questions) to identify gaps, then work through explanations. Repeat with a longer session once the weak areas feel solid.
Can I practise only Secure, monitor, and optimize data storage and data processing questions?
Yes — the session launcher on this page filters questions to this domain only. Choose any session length for inline explanations and scoring.
dp-203 DP-203 secure monitor optimize data Practice Questions