Practice the AZ-900 Azure architecture and services domain. Questions cover Azure accounts, subscriptions, regions, availability zones, virtual machines, containers, serverless compute, and app hosting.
10 questions covering this official AZ-900 domain.
Q01 - Question
A team must host a web app, a REST API, and a background job. The team wants automatic scaling, high availability, support for Windows and Linux, and integrated deployment, without managing infrastructure. Which hosting option should the team select?
Domain: Describe Azure architecture and services (35-40%) Type: Single choice
- A. Azure Virtual Machines in an availability set
- B. Azure App Service
- C. Azure Kubernetes Service
- D. Azure IoT Hub
B is correct.
Explanation: Azure App Service hosts web apps, REST APIs, mobile back ends, and background jobs without infrastructure management. It provides automatic scaling, high availability, support for Windows and Linux, integrated deployment, and multiple language and framework options.
A is incorrect: Virtual machines give the most hosting control, but you must manage patching, updates, and configuration yourself.
C is incorrect: Azure Kubernetes Service orchestrates containers, which means the team still manages container images and cluster workloads.
D is incorrect: Azure IoT Hub enables cloud-to-device communication and is not a web application hosting service.
Q02 - Question
An application must keep running if a single datacenter in its region loses power or cooling, and latency between application tiers must stay low. Which Azure physical infrastructure feature should the architect use?
Domain: Describe Azure architecture and services (35-40%) Type: Single choice
- A. Deploy to a sovereign region that is isolated from other Azure instances.
- B. Deploy all instances into one datacenter and increase the virtual machine size.
- C. Deploy across two region pairs that are at least 300 miles apart.
- D. Deploy across availability zones in the region.
D is correct.
Explanation: Availability zones are physically separate datacenters within a region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking. Because the datacenters in a region are connected by low-latency networking, this design protects against a single datacenter failure while keeping latency low.
A is incorrect: Sovereign regions are isolated Azure instances for specific compliance or legal needs, not a datacenter-level resiliency option.
B is incorrect: A larger virtual machine in the same datacenter still fails when that datacenter loses power or cooling.
C is incorrect: Most paired regions are at least 300 miles apart, which addresses regional events rather than low-latency protection inside one region.
Q03 - Question
A governance team is documenting why the company plans to use Azure region pairs for a critical workload. Which two statements about region pairs are accurate? Each correct answer presents a complete solution.
Domain: Describe Azure architecture and services (35-40%) Type: Multiple choice
- A. Region pairs place the paired datacenters in the same building to reduce replication latency.
- B. Most paired regions are at least 300 miles apart.
- C. Region pairs help improve resilience and support data residency requirements.
- D. Region pairs are isolated Azure instances created for specific compliance or legal needs.
B and C are correct.
Explanation: In most cases, the regions in a pair are at least 300 miles apart, and that separation improves resilience to regional events while helping you keep data within required geographic boundaries.
A is incorrect: Paired regions are separated by distance rather than co-located, so a shared building would defeat the purpose of the pairing.
D is incorrect: Isolated Azure instances for specific compliance or legal needs are sovereign regions, which are a different concept from region pairs.
Q04 - Question
A retailer needs to run a short block of code each time a message arrives in a queue. Message volume is unpredictable, and the business wants to pay only for the CPU time used while the code runs. Which Azure service meets these requirements?
Domain: Describe Azure architecture and services (35-40%) Type: Single choice
- A. Azure Functions
- B. Azure Virtual Machines
- C. Azure Virtual Desktop
- D. Azure IoT Central
A is correct.
Explanation: Azure Functions is an event-driven serverless compute service that runs code in response to events such as messages, timers, and REST requests. It scales automatically with demand and charges for CPU time while the code runs.
B is incorrect: Azure Virtual Machines bills for provisioned servers that you also patch and configure, so it does not match a pay-for-execution model for unpredictable message volume.
C is incorrect: Azure Virtual Desktop provides virtualized desktops and applications for users, not event-triggered code execution.
D is incorrect: Azure IoT Central is a software as a service IoT platform, not a general event-driven code execution service.
Q05 - Question
A development team wants its development, test, and production workloads billed and managed separately, but the organization wants to keep a single Azure account. What should the organization do?
Domain: Describe Azure architecture and services (35-40%) Type: Single choice
- A. Create multiple subscriptions in the Azure account and deploy each workload into its own subscription.
- B. Create one subscription and rely on an Azure free account for the production workload.
- C. Create a separate Azure account for each workload, because an account can hold only one subscription.
- D. Deploy all workloads without a subscription and separate them by region.
A is correct.
Explanation: An Azure account can have multiple subscriptions, and using separate subscriptions is a way to logically separate development, test, and production workloads. Resources are created within a subscription.
B is incorrect: An Azure free account provides time-limited product access and credits, so it is not a substitute for separating ongoing workloads.
C is incorrect: One Azure account can contain multiple subscriptions, so additional accounts are not required.
D is incorrect: Creating and using Azure services requires a subscription, so workloads cannot be deployed without one.
Q06 - Question
A development team splits an application into microservices. Each component must scale and be updated independently, and the team wants an orchestration service to manage a large fleet of containers. Which Azure service should the team use?
Domain: Describe Azure architecture and services (35-40%) Type: Single choice
- A. Azure Container Instances
- B. Azure Virtual Desktop
- C. Azure Kubernetes Service
- D. Azure Machine Learning
C is correct.
Explanation: Azure Kubernetes Service is a container orchestration service for managing fleets of containers. Containers let you scale and update each microservice component independently.
A is incorrect: Azure Container Instances runs uploaded containers without virtual machine management, but it does not provide fleet orchestration.
B is incorrect: Azure Virtual Desktop delivers desktop and application virtualization to users, not container orchestration.
D is incorrect: Azure Machine Learning supports custom model development, training, and lifecycle management rather than orchestrating application containers.
Q07 - Question
A company runs a legacy line-of-business application that must stay on a server operating system. The same company also wants to add an autoscaling web app, a managed database, and machine learning capabilities without rebuilding the legacy application first. Which statement about Microsoft Azure best supports this plan?
Domain: Describe Azure architecture and services (35-40%) Type: Single choice
- A. Azure supports only newly written applications that use event-driven services, so the legacy application must be rewritten before migration.
- B. Azure supports only managed platform services, so the legacy application must run outside Azure.
- C. Azure supports existing applications on virtual machines and also provides managed databases, autoscaling web apps, and machine learning services.
- D. Azure supports virtual machines only, so the autoscaling web app and machine learning work must be hosted elsewhere.
C is correct.
Explanation: Azure is an expanding set of cloud services for building, managing, and deploying applications on a global network. You can keep the legacy application running on virtual machines and adopt managed databases, autoscaling web apps, and machine learning services alongside it.
A is incorrect: Running existing applications on virtual machines is supported, so a rewrite is not a prerequisite for using Azure.
B is incorrect: Azure includes infrastructure options such as virtual machines in addition to managed services.
D is incorrect: Azure services extend beyond virtual machines and include autoscaling web apps, AI, and machine learning.
Q08 - Question
A company runs a line-of-business application that requires a specific operating system build and several custom drivers. The operations team accepts responsibility for applying patches and updates. Which Azure compute option matches these requirements?
Domain: Describe Azure architecture and services (35-40%) Type: Single choice
- A. Azure Functions
- B. Azure Virtual Machines
- C. Azure Container Instances
- D. Azure App Service
B is correct.
Explanation: Azure Virtual Machines is an infrastructure as a service offering that gives you control over the operating system and the software you install, which is what a specific OS build and custom drivers require. In exchange for that control, you remain responsible for patching, updates, and configuration.
A is incorrect: Azure Functions runs code in response to events and does not give you control of the underlying operating system or driver installation.
C is incorrect: Azure Container Instances runs uploaded containers without virtual machine management, so you do not administer a full server operating system.
D is incorrect: Azure App Service hosts applications without infrastructure management, so you cannot install custom operating system drivers.
Q09 - Question
An architect must design a virtual machine deployment that grows with demand and also reduces the impact of hardware failures and planned maintenance. Which two Azure Virtual Machines features address these goals? Each correct answer presents part of the solution.
Domain: Describe Azure architecture and services (35-40%) Type: Multiple choice
- A. Virtual machine scale sets
- B. Durable Functions
- C. Availability sets
- D. Azure IoT Edge
A and C are correct.
Explanation: Virtual machine scale sets create and manage a group of identical, load-balanced virtual machines and can scale the number of instances automatically as demand changes. Availability sets spread virtual machines across update domains and fault domains, which reduces the effect of planned maintenance and hardware failures.
B is incorrect: Durable Functions adds stateful behavior to Azure Functions code and does not distribute virtual machines across update and fault domains.
D is incorrect: Azure IoT Edge runs selected cloud capabilities closer to devices and does not provide virtual machine scaling or fault isolation.
Q10 - Question
An enterprise has 40 subscriptions and needs one set of governance conditions to apply to all of them, with the ability to add more subscriptions later without reapplying the settings. What should the enterprise use?
Domain: Describe Azure architecture and services (35-40%) Type: Single choice
- A. Place all subscriptions inside a single resource group.
- B. Organize the subscriptions under management groups and apply the governance conditions there.
- C. Nest resource groups so that settings flow from a parent group to child groups.
- D. Apply the governance conditions to each individual resource.
B is correct.
Explanation: Management groups sit above subscriptions. Governance conditions applied to a management group inherit downward to the subscriptions it contains, and management groups can be nested up to six levels below the tenant root group.
A is incorrect: A resource group contains resources, not subscriptions, so it cannot act as a container for 40 subscriptions.
C is incorrect: Resource groups cannot be nested, so settings cannot flow from a parent resource group to a child resource group.
D is incorrect: Applying conditions to each resource does not scale across 40 subscriptions and would need to be repeated for every new resource.