The correct services are Azure Event Hubs and Azure Databricks. Azure Event Hubs is the ideal choice for streaming IoT architecture because it is a fully managed, real-time ingestion service capable of capturing millions of events per second from IoT devices, supporting protocols like AMQP and HTTPS while decoupling producers from consumers to store raw data. Azure Databricks then serves as the distributed processing engine that transforms that raw streaming data using Apache Spark before loading it into a serving layer for reporting. On the DP-900 exam, this scenario tests your understanding of the core data workloads: ingestion, storage, and processing. A common trap is selecting Azure Data Lake Storage for the processing step—remember, Data Lake stores raw data, but Databricks performs the transformation. A helpful memory tip: think “Event Hubs for the firehose, Databricks for the heavy lifting.”
DP-900 Describe an analytics workload on Azure Practice Question
This DP-900 practice question tests your understanding of describe an analytics workload on azure. 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.
Your company is designing a big data analytics solution on Azure. The solution must ingest streaming data from IoT devices, store the data in its raw format, and then use a distributed processing engine to transform the data before loading it into a serving layer for reporting. Which TWO Azure services should you include in the design?
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 IoT devices. It is the correct choice for streaming data ingestion because it supports protocols like AMQP and HTTPS, and it decouples event producers from consumers, allowing the raw data to be captured and stored before processing.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
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 Blob Storage
Why it's wrong here
Blob Storage is for storage, not stream processing.
✓
Azure Event Hubs
Why this is correct
Event Hubs ingests streaming data from IoT devices.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✓
Azure Databricks
Why this is correct
Databricks provides distributed processing with Spark for transformations.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Azure Data Factory
Why it's wrong here
Data Factory is for orchestration, not real-time stream processing.
✗
Azure Synapse Analytics
Why it's wrong here
Synapse is a serving layer and analytics platform, not a stream processing engine.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse Azure Event Hubs with Azure Blob Storage or Azure Data Factory for streaming ingestion, mistakenly thinking that any storage or ETL service can handle real-time IoT data, when in fact only a dedicated event ingestion service like Event Hubs provides the necessary throughput, partitioning, and protocol support for streaming workloads.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Under the hood, Azure Event Hubs uses a partitioned consumer model with a configurable retention period (up to 7 days by default) to store raw events durably, enabling replay and multiple downstream consumers. The distributed processing engine in Azure Databricks can then read from Event Hubs using the Spark Structured Streaming API, performing transformations in-memory across a cluster before writing the processed data to a serving layer like Azure Synapse Analytics or Azure Blob Storage.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
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.
Related glossary terms
Concepts from this question explained
These glossary pages explain the core terms tested in this DP-900 question in full detail.
Describe an analytics workload on Azure — This question tests Describe an analytics workload on Azure — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
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 IoT devices. It is the correct choice for streaming data ingestion because it supports protocols like AMQP and HTTPS, and it decouples event producers from consumers, allowing the raw data to be captured and stored before processing.
What should I do if I get this DP-900 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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