Quick Answer
The answer is Azure Event Hubs and Azure Stream Analytics, as these two services work together to enable real-time data ingestion and processing in Azure. Event Hubs serves as the high-throughput, low-latency ingestion layer, capable of receiving millions of events per second from sources like IoT devices or applications using AMQP, HTTPS, or Apache Kafka, while Stream Analytics provides the real-time processing engine that can query, filter, and aggregate that streaming data on the fly. On the DP-900 exam, this pairing tests your understanding of the core components in a real-time analytics pipeline—Event Hubs for the "ingest" phase and Stream Analytics for the "process" phase. A common trap is confusing Azure Data Lake Storage or Azure Synapse Analytics as real-time ingestion services, but those are primarily for storage and batch analytics. Remember the memory tip: "Event Hubs eats the data, Stream Analytics chews it," reinforcing that ingestion and processing are distinct but complementary steps in any real-time solution.
This DP-900 practice question tests your understanding of describe core data concepts. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
Which TWO Azure services can be used to perform real-time data ingestion and processing? (Choose two.)
Azure SQL Database
Why wrong: Transactional database, not streaming.
Azure Event Hubs
Ingests real-time data streams.
Azure Blob Storage
Why wrong: Storage service, not processing.
Azure Data Factory
Why wrong: Primarily batch data integration.
Azure Stream Analytics
Processes streaming data in real-time.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Azure Event Hubs
Azure Event Hubs is a fully managed, real-time data ingestion service that can ingest millions of events per second from any source, using AMQP, HTTPS, or Apache Kafka protocol. It is designed for high-throughput, low-latency event streaming, making it ideal for real-time data ingestion and processing pipelines.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
Azure SQL Database
Why it's wrong here
Transactional database, not streaming.
Azure Event Hubs
Why this is correct
Ingests real-time data streams.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Azure Blob Storage
Why it's wrong here
Storage service, not processing.
Azure Data Factory
Why it's wrong here
Primarily batch data integration.
Azure Stream Analytics
Why this is correct
Processes streaming data in real-time.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
The trap here is that candidates often confuse batch processing services like Azure Data Factory or storage services like Blob Storage with real-time ingestion, forgetting that real-time requires event-driven, low-latency ingestion and processing capabilities.
Detailed technical explanation
Azure Event Hubs uses a partitioned consumer model with offset-based checkpointing to enable parallel processing of event streams at scale, supporting up to 1 MB per event or 1 MB per second per throughput unit. Azure Stream Analytics integrates natively with Event Hubs to perform real-time SQL-based queries on streaming data, using temporal windows (e.g., tumbling, hopping, sliding) to detect patterns and trigger alerts or outputs to sinks like Power BI or Azure Functions. In a real-world IoT scenario, millions of sensor events can be ingested into Event Hubs and processed by Stream Analytics to detect anomalies within seconds.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
What to study next
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FAQ
Describe core data concepts — This question tests Describe core data concepts — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: Azure Event Hubs — Azure Event Hubs is a fully managed, real-time data ingestion service that can ingest millions of events per second from any source, using AMQP, HTTPS, or Apache Kafka protocol. It is designed for high-throughput, low-latency event streaming, making it ideal for real-time data ingestion and processing pipelines.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 24, 2026
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.
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