DP-900 Describe core data concepts Practice Question
A healthcare organization must store patient health records for 7 years to meet regulatory requirements. After 7 years, data must be deleted immediately. They use Azure Blob Storage. Which policy should they implement?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse lifecycle management (which automates deletion but does not prevent premature modification) with time-based retention (which enforces immutability during the retention period), leading them to choose lifecycle management despite its inability to guarantee data integrity before deletion.
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
✓
Time-based retention policy
A time-based retention policy (immutability policy) in Azure Blob Storage ensures that blobs are stored in a WORM (Write Once, Read Many) state for a specified period, preventing modification or deletion. After the retention period expires, the data can be deleted immediately, meeting the 7-year regulatory requirement. This policy is designed specifically for compliance scenarios where data must be preserved for a fixed duration and then removed.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Soft delete policy
Why it's wrong here
Soft delete enables recovery from accidental deletion by marking a blob or container as deleted and retaining it for a configurable period, typically 1 to 365 days. However, it does not enforce a fixed seven-year retention period because the retention window is short, can be changed, and data remains accessible and modifiable until explicitly soft-deleted. For patient health records, this is a data-protection feature, not a compliance or regulatory retention control.
- ✗
Legal hold policy
Why it's wrong here
A legal hold preserves all versions of data indefinitely to satisfy e-discovery or litigation obligations, and it explicitly overrides any time-based retention or deletion policies. It is designed for legal holds, not for a finite retention period of seven years, and once the hold is removed, data can be immediately deleted. Therefore, it cannot ensure records are retained for exactly seven years, and it may extend retention beyond the required period.
- ✗
Lifecycle management policy with deletion after 7 years
Why it's wrong here
A lifecycle management policy with a deletion rule after seven years automates tiering or deletion based on blob age, but it does not protect data from modification or premature deletion. Users or applications with write permissions can still edit or delete blobs at any time, as lifecycle policies operate only on an 'if older than' basis and do not lock the data. As a result, it fails the medical record requirement of immutability and tamper-evidence during the retention period.
- ✓
Time-based retention policy
Why this is correct
A time-based retention policy, often implemented as immutable blob storage, locks data in a write-once, read-many (WORM) state for a specified interval, preventing modification or deletion until that interval elapses. In Azure, you set a retention period in days or years, and the service enforces the policy globally, blocking any attempts to overwrite or remove the data. This satisfies the healthcare requirement to preserve patient records for exactly seven years, after which deletion is allowed.
Quick reference
Azure Blob Storage Tier Comparison
| Tier | Storage Cost | Retrieval Cost | Latency | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hot | Highest | Lowest | Immediate | Active data, frequent reads |
| Cool | Lower | Higher | Immediate | Data accessed < once / month |
| Cold | Lower still | Higher | Immediate | Data accessed < once / quarter |
| Archive | Lowest | Highest + rehydration delay | Hours | Long-term compliance retention |
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Data Roles and Core Concepts
Key term
Blob storage
Blob storage is a cloud service for storing large amounts of unstructured data, such as text or binary data, like documents, images, and videos.
Key term
Data
Data is raw, unprocessed information, like numbers, words, or measurements, that can be stored, processed, and analyzed by computers.
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