DP-900 Describe core data concepts Practice Question
Which TWO Azure services are appropriate for real-time data ingestion from IoT devices?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse Azure IoT Hub (which provides device identity and management) with Azure Event Hubs (which is a generic event ingestion service), or mistakenly think that Azure Data Factory or Blob Storage can handle real-time IoT ingestion, when they are designed for batch or storage workloads respectively.
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 IoT Hub
Azure IoT Hub (A) is correct because it is a fully managed, cloud-hosted service designed specifically for bidirectional communication with IoT devices, supporting device-to-cloud telemetry ingestion over protocols like MQTT, AMQP, and HTTPS at scale. Azure Event Hubs (E) is correct because it is a big-data streaming platform and event ingestion service capable of receiving millions of events per second in real time, commonly used as the ingestion endpoint for IoT telemetry pipelines. Azure Data Factory (B) is a batch-oriented data integration and orchestration service, not a real-time ingestion endpoint for devices. Azure SQL Database (C) is a relational database for storing and querying structured data, not a device ingestion service. Azure Blob Storage (D) is object storage for persisting data, not a real-time ingestion mechanism for IoT devices.
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 IoT Hub
Why this is correct
Azure IoT Hub is a managed cloud service built specifically for bidirectional communication between IoT devices and the cloud. It supports multiple protocols (MQTT, AMQP, HTTPS) and provides per-device identity, security, and device management features, making it ideal for collecting telemetry from millions of devices in real time. Its integration with Azure Stream Analytics and other services enables immediate processing of incoming data.
- ✗
Azure Data Factory
Why it's wrong here
Azure Data Factory is an integration service built around pipelines, activities, and triggers, primarily used for orchestrating batch data movement and transformation across on-premises and cloud stores. It lacks native support for low-latency, event-by-event ingestion and does not expose a streaming endpoint that devices or applications can push data to in real time. While it can copy data on schedules, its design emphasizes batch processing rather than continuous, millisecond-level ingestion.
- ✗
Azure SQL Database
Why it's wrong here
Azure SQL Database is a relational database management system that stores structured data and supports transactional queries, not a service built for intercepting and ingesting high-velocity streaming events. It has no built-in protocol for devices or producers to send telemetry directly, and inserting each event individually would create significant overhead and latency. Real-time ingestion services separate the acquisition path from storage, whereas a database is a destination for processed data.
- ✗
Azure Blob Storage
Why it's wrong here
Azure Blob Storage is an object storage service for storing unstructured data and files, optimized for high-capacity, cost-effective storage rather than real-time event acquisition. It does not provide listening endpoints, message semantics, or push-based ingestion for streaming data; data must be written by another service. Blob storage is typically a sink in a real-time pipeline, not the ingestion layer itself.
- ✓
Azure Event Hubs
Why this is correct
Azure Event Hubs is a fully managed, high-throughput data streaming platform that can ingest millions of events per second with low latency, supporting protocols like AMQP, HTTPS, and Kafka. It acts as a distributed streaming buffer that decouples producers from consumers, allowing multiple downstream applications to process the same event stream in parallel. This makes it a primary choice for real-time telemetry and log aggregation across various sources.
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
Azure Table Storage and Blob Data
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.
Key term
Relational database
A relational database organizes data into tables with rows and columns, where each table relates to others using unique keys, allowing efficient storage, retrieval, and manipulation of structured information.
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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.