Question 1mediummultiple choice
Full question →mediummultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A company is evaluating deployment options for a new business application that requires a fully managed relational database. The application must support high availability with automatic failover and horizontal scaling for read-heavy workloads. The development team wants to minimize administrative overhead and prefers a PaaS solution that offers built-in read scale-out. Which Azure SQL deployment option 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
Distractor review
SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines
This is an IaaS option that requires manual configuration of high availability and read replicas. It does not offer built-in read scale-out as a managed feature.
B
Distractor review
Azure SQL Managed Instance
While it supports read scale-out in the Business Critical tier, it is designed for near-100% compatibility with on-premises SQL Server, often for larger databases. It incurs more administrative overhead than a single database, and the question emphasizes minimizing overhead.
C
Best answer
Azure SQL Database (single database)
This is a fully managed PaaS service that, in the Premium or Business Critical tiers, provides up to four readable secondary replicas for read scale-out. It also supports automatic failover with zone-redundant configurations, meeting the high availability and read scaling needs with minimal administration.
D
Distractor review
Azure SQL Database Elastic Pool
Elastic pools are meant for managing multiple databases with fluctuating resource demands, not for scaling read workloads of a single database. They do not provide read replicas.
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
A data engineer needs to process streaming data from IoT devices and store the results in Azure Data Lake Storage for long-term analytics. The data must be processed in near real-time to detect anomalies and trigger alerts. Which Azure service should the engineer use for stream processing?
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: Azure SQL Database (single database) — Azure SQL Database (single database) is a fully managed PaaS service that offers built-in read scale-out via read-only replicas in the Premium and Business Critical service tiers. This allows offloading read-heavy workloads to replicas without additional management overhead. Azure SQL Managed Instance also supports read scale-out but is more suited for near-100% SQL Server compatibility with larger databases. SQL Server on Azure VM is IaaS and requires manual configuration for high availability and read scaling. Azure SQL Database Elastic Pool is designed for managing multiple databases with shared resources, not for horizontal read scaling of a single database.
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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