Question 1mediummultiple choice
Full question →mediummultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A company runs a customer-facing web application that uses an Azure SQL Database. The database experiences highly variable workloads: high traffic during business hours and low traffic at night and on weekends. The company wants to pay only for the compute resources consumed and automatically scale compute capacity based on demand, while maintaining the ability to pause during inactivity. Which Azure SQL Database service tier should they choose?
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.
A
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Hyperscale
Hyperscale is designed for very large databases with high scalability, but it does not support automatic pausing and is billed per hour, not per second of compute.
B
Best answer
Serverless
Serverless automatically scales compute based on demand and can pause when inactive, billing only for the vCores used per second. This is ideal for intermittent, variable workloads.
C
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Provisioned (General Purpose)
General Purpose is a provisioned tier with fixed compute resources billed per hour. It does not automatically scale or pause, making it less cost-effective for highly variable workloads.
D
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Business Critical
Business Critical is a provisioned tier for high-performance and high-availability, but it is not designed for variable workloads with pausing and has a higher cost.
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.
Related practice questions
Related DP-900 practice-question pages
Use these pages to review the topic behind this question. This is how one missed question becomes focused revision.
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
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Question 2
A data engineer needs to query data stored in CSV files in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 using T-SQL in Azure Synapse Analytics, without loading the data into the database. Which feature should they use?
Question 3
A data engineer needs to process raw clickstream data from multiple websites that is stored in Azure Blob Storage as JSON files. The processing must run automatically every hour, transform the data into a structured format for reporting, and handle schema changes in the source data without manual intervention. Which Azure service should be used?
Question 4
A data engineer is designing a data lake architecture in Azure. They plan to first ingest raw data from various sources into a landing zone in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. Then they will clean, validate, and deduplicate that data in a second zone. Finally, they will create aggregated, business-ready datasets in a third zone for analysts. This layered approach is known as which architecture?
Question 5
A data engineer needs to transform large datasets stored in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 using Python and Apache Spark. They want a serverless compute option that automatically scales and requires no cluster management. Which Azure service should they use?
Question 6
A company collects customer feedback forms. Each form contains always-present fields like CustomerID and SubmissionDate, but also a free-text Comments field and optional fields like Rating or ProductCategory that vary between forms. How should this data be classified?
FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this DP-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: Serverless — Azure SQL Database offers different service tiers. Serverless is designed for variable workloads with per-second billing and auto-scale; it can pause during inactivity to save costs. Hyperscale is for large databases but does not pause. Provisioned tiers (General Purpose, Business Critical) have fixed compute and are billed per hour, not ideal for variable patterns.
What should I do if I get this DP-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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