DP-900 Practice Question: Identify considerations for relational data on Azure
A company uses Azure SQL Database with the Business Critical service tier. They notice increased latency during peak hours. They need to improve performance without changing the application code. Which action should they take?
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
✓
Increase the number of vCores
Increasing the number of vCores (Option A) provides more compute resources to handle peak load without requiring application code changes, which directly reduces latency. Option B (add a read replica) does not help with write latency or improve performance for the primary workload. Option C (enable auto-pause) is for serverless databases and does not address performance during active usage. Option D (change to General Purpose) would likely reduce performance compared to Business Critical.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Increase the number of vCores
Why this is correct
Scaling up provides more CPU/memory to handle peak load.
- ✗
Add a read replica
Why it's wrong here
Read replicas offload read queries, but write latency remains.
- ✗
Enable auto-pause
Why it's wrong here
Auto-pause is for serverless, not for performance improvement.
- ✗
Change the service tier to General Purpose
Why it's wrong here
General Purpose has lower performance than Business Critical.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Azure SQL Services
Key term
Service
A service is a software component or system that performs a specific function and is available to be used by other programs or users over a network.
Key term
Azure SQL Database
Azure SQL Database is a fully managed relational database-as-a-service (DBaaS) in Microsoft Azure, based on the SQL Server engine, that handles scaling, backups, patching, and high availability automatically.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DP-900 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-900 exam.