MS-900 Describe cloud concepts Practice Question
A company wants to run a critical application that requires dedicated hardware to comply with regulatory isolation requirements. However, they want to avoid the upfront cost of building their own data center. Which cloud deployment model meets these needs?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse 'private cloud' with 'on-premises only,' forgetting that a private cloud can be hosted by a third-party provider like Azure Stack Hub, which offers dedicated hardware without the upfront cost of building a data center.
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
✓
Private cloud
A private cloud is the correct deployment model because it provides dedicated hardware and infrastructure for a single organization, ensuring regulatory isolation without requiring the company to build and maintain its own on-premises data center. In Azure, a private cloud can be implemented via Azure Stack Hub or Azure VMware Solution, which run in the customer's own environment or a dedicated hosted environment, meeting compliance needs while avoiding upfront capital expenditure.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Private cloud
Why this is correct
A private cloud delivers a single-tenant environment on dedicated physical hardware, giving the organization exclusive access to compute, storage, and networking. This fully satisfies the requirement for dedicated hardware while still providing cloud-like self-service and scalability. If hosted by a third-party, it also eliminates capital expenditure and can be tailored to meet regulatory or compliance constraints.
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Public cloud
Why it's wrong here
In a public cloud, infrastructure is owned by the provider and shared by many tenants, with logical isolation rather than physical dedicated hardware. Running a critical application with a strict requirement for dedicated hardware would expose it to multi-tenant resource pooling and possible interference or regulatory non-compliance. Therefore, a public cloud is unsuitable for this scenario because it cannot guarantee exclusive physical resources to a single organization.
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Hybrid cloud
Why it's wrong here
A hybrid cloud combines a private cloud with one or more public clouds, typically for bursting, backup, or workload placement. While an application could be hosted in the hybrid environment's private portion, the inclusion of shared public-cloud infrastructure does not ensure that the critical application consistently runs on dedicated hardware. Since the requirement is exclusive, dedicated isolation, private cloud alone provides the environment; the public segment of a hybrid deployment is unnecessary and could introduce shared infrastructure, compliance, and networking complexity.
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Community cloud
Why it's wrong here
A community cloud serves the shared concerns and compliance needs of a specific group of organizations, but its underlying resources are still pooled and shared across those participating tenants. This lack of exclusive, dedicated hardware makes it unsuitable for an individual critical application that must run with strict single-organization isolation. The shared infrastructure is designed to reduce cost and meet group requirements, not to grant one member sole control of physical resources.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This MS-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 MS-900 exam.