DP-300 Practice Question: Monitor, configure, and optimize database resources
You need to monitor the performance of an Azure SQL Database and set up alerts when the DTU consumption exceeds 80% for more than 5 minutes. Which Azure service should you use?
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
✓
Azure Monitor metric alerts
Azure Monitor metric alerts can be configured on DTU percentage. Option B is wrong because Azure Advisor provides recommendations but not real-time alerts. Option C is wrong because Azure SQL Insights is for visualization, not alerting. Option D is wrong because Log Analytics workspaces store logs but do not natively provide metric alerts.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Azure Monitor metric alerts
Why this is correct
Azure Monitor metric alerts evaluate platform metrics such as DTU consumption against thresholds on a defined evaluation frequency and aggregation window, satisfying the requirement to fire when DTU exceeds 80% sustained for more than 5 minutes. Azure SQL Database emits DTU percentage automatically, so no instrumentation is needed.
- ✗
Azure Advisor
Why it's wrong here
Azure Advisor issues best-practise recommendations on cost, reliability and performance; it neither collects DTU telemetry continuously nor triggers threshold-based notifications. It is tempting because it surfaces database performance guidance, but that is periodic advisory output, not real-time metric alerting on an 80% DTU breach sustained five minutes.
- ✗
Azure SQL Insights (preview)
Why it's wrong here
SQL Insights is a monitoring-at-scale template that writes to Azure Monitor, but it does not itself evaluate DTU thresholds or raise alerts; alert rules live in Azure Monitor. It is tempting because it visualises Azure SQL telemetry, yet its purpose is fleet-wide diagnostics, not the alerting mechanism the scenario requires.
- ✗
Log Analytics workspace
Why it's wrong here
A Log Analytics workspace stores and queries log and metric data, but DTU consumption alerts require an Azure Monitor alert rule evaluating the platform metric; the workspace alone raises nothing. It is tempting because metric alerts can query workspace data, yet the workspace is the data store, not the alerting service.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Optimizing Database Query and Index Performance
Key term
Azure SQL Performance Tuning
Azure SQL Performance Tuning is the process of optimizing the speed and efficiency of queries and database operations in Microsoft Azure SQL Database or SQL Managed Instance to reduce latency and improve throughput.
About these practice questions
One of 574 original DP-300 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DP-300 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 DP-300 exam.