Practice the AZ-900 cloud concepts domain. Questions cover cloud computing, shared responsibility, deployment models, and IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
10 questions covering this official AZ-900 domain.
Q01 - Question
A small company has no IT operations staff. It needs productivity and expense tracking applications and wants to limit its responsibilities to data and user access. Which cloud service model or migration strategy requires the least management from the company?
Domain: Describe cloud concepts (25-30%) Type: Single choice
- A. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
- B. Platform as a Service (PaaS)
- C. Software as a Service (SaaS)
- D. Lift-and-shift migration
C is correct.
Explanation: SaaS is a complete, fully developed cloud application model, and the provider manages nearly all infrastructure, platform, and application maintenance. The company manages data, identity and access settings, and device access posture, which matches productivity and finance and expense tracking scenarios.
A is incorrect: IaaS gives the most control but requires the company to install and maintain operating systems and configure networking and storage, which needs operations staff.
B is incorrect: PaaS removes operating system and middleware maintenance, but the company would still need to build and manage application code and data.
D is incorrect: Lift-and-shift migration applies to moving existing workloads to IaaS and still leaves operating system and network management with the company.
Q02 - Question
A manufacturing company runs legacy applications on physical servers in its own datacenter. The company wants to move these applications to the cloud with minimal changes to the application software, and it needs to keep control of the operating system and network configuration. Which option fits this migration?
Domain: Describe cloud concepts (25-30%) Type: Single choice
- A. Software as a Service (SaaS)
- B. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
- C. Platform as a Service (PaaS)
- D. A cloud analytics service
B is correct.
Explanation: IaaS provides the most flexibility and control, and it supports lift-and-shift migration where the workload moves to the cloud with minimal application changes. You keep control of operating system, network, and storage configuration while the provider maintains the hardware, internet connectivity, and physical security.
A is incorrect: SaaS delivers a complete, fully developed application, so you cannot move legacy application software into it or control the operating system.
C is incorrect: PaaS has the provider maintain the operating systems and middleware, so you would not keep operating system and network configuration control, and the legacy applications would likely need changes.
D is incorrect: A cloud analytics service is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) scenario and is not used to host existing legacy operating systems.
Q03 - Question
A test team uses Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to create development and test environments that can be replicated quickly. During planning, the team lists the tasks it must staff. Which task is the customer responsible for in this model?
Domain: Describe cloud concepts (25-30%) Type: Single choice
- A. Maintaining the physical hardware in the datacenter
- B. Providing internet connectivity to the datacenter
- C. Enforcing physical security of the datacenter
- D. Installing and maintaining the operating systems on the virtual machines
D is correct.
Explanation: With IaaS the customer installs and maintains the operating systems and configures networking, database, and storage. Plan for the staff and processes needed to patch and support those operating systems, even for short-lived development and test environments.
A is incorrect: The provider maintains the hardware.
B is incorrect: The provider maintains internet connectivity.
C is incorrect: The provider enforces physical security.
Q04 - Question
A manufacturer must keep a regulated application and its records in its own datacenter, but it also needs extra capacity in a public cloud during a three-week production peak. Which cloud deployment model meets both requirements?
Domain: Describe cloud concepts (25-30%) Type: Single choice
- A. Public cloud only
- B. Private cloud only
- C. Multicloud using two public cloud providers
- D. Hybrid cloud
D is correct.
Explanation: A hybrid cloud connects a public cloud and a private cloud, so you can keep workloads with security or compliance requirements in the private environment and use public cloud capacity for a temporary surge in demand.
A is incorrect: A public cloud alone does not keep the regulated application in the organization's own datacenter.
B is incorrect: A private cloud serves a single organization and does not provide the public cloud capacity needed for the peak.
C is incorrect: Multicloud uses multiple public cloud providers and still does not include the organization's private environment.
Q05 - Question
A finance director reviews a plan to move a batch processing workload to the cloud. Today the company buys servers every three years and sizes them for peak load. Which financial outcome does the consumption-based model provide?
Domain: Describe cloud concepts (25-30%) Type: Single choice
- A. Costs shift from upfront capital expenditure to operational expenditure for the resources used.
- B. Costs are fixed for the life of the subscription regardless of resource usage.
- C. Costs are eliminated because the provider owns the underlying hardware.
- D. Costs must still be planned around peak capacity purchased in advance.
A is correct.
Explanation: With a consumption-based model you pay for the IT resources you use and release them when you finish, so spending becomes operational expenditure instead of an upfront capital purchase.
B is incorrect: Charges follow the resources you consume, so they change as you add or remove resources.
C is incorrect: You still pay for the resources you consume, even though the provider owns the hardware.
D is incorrect: The model avoids buying unused capacity, so you do not need to purchase for peak load in advance.
Q06 - Question
An organization adopts a cloud email and messaging service that is delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS). A security review asks which responsibilities the organization still owns. Which two responsibilities remain with the customer?
Domain: Describe cloud concepts (25-30%) Type: Multiple choice
- A. The data stored and processed in the application
- B. Patching the operating systems that run the application
- C. Maintaining the middleware and development tools behind the application
- D. Identity and access settings for users of the application
A and D are correct.
Explanation: In SaaS the provider manages nearly all infrastructure, platform, and application maintenance. You still manage your data, identity and access settings, and the access posture of the devices that connect to the service.
B is incorrect: Operating system maintenance for a SaaS offering belongs to the provider, and you have no access to those servers.
C is incorrect: Middleware and development tools are maintained by the provider in SaaS, and also in PaaS.
Q07 - Question
An architect is documenting security duties for workloads that will run across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. Which two responsibilities remain with the customer in all three service models? Each correct answer presents part of the solution.
Domain: Describe cloud concepts (25-30%) Type: Multiple choice
- A. Accounts and identities
- B. Physical hosts in the datacenter
- C. Information and data stored in the cloud
- D. The physical network inside the datacenter
A and C are correct.
Explanation: In the shared responsibility model, you always retain responsibility for your data, the devices permitted to connect, and your accounts and identities, no matter which service model you choose.
B is incorrect: The cloud provider is responsible for physical hosts in the datacenter.
D is incorrect: The cloud provider is responsible for the physical network in the datacenter.
Q08 - Question
A retail company expects a short, large increase in web traffic for a seasonal sale. The current on-premises environment would need new servers installed before the sale, and the hardware would sit idle afterward. Which characteristic of cloud computing best addresses this situation?
Domain: Describe cloud concepts (25-30%) Type: Single choice
- A. Cloud computing removes the need for the company to manage its data.
- B. Cloud computing lets the company increase and decrease computing capacity without first building physical datacenter infrastructure.
- C. Cloud computing guarantees that application code performs faster than it does on physical servers.
- D. Cloud computing replaces the need for networking and storage services.
B is correct.
Explanation: Cloud computing delivers computing services over the internet, so you can change capacity rapidly instead of buying and installing physical datacenter infrastructure before the sale.
A is incorrect: Customers keep responsibility for their cloud data in every service model.
C is incorrect: Faster application code performance is not a stated property of cloud computing; capacity change and global reach are.
D is incorrect: Networking and storage are examples of cloud services you consume, not capabilities that cloud computing eliminates.
Q09 - Question
A development team builds a new business-intelligence application. The team wants to write application code and manage data and access controls, but it does not want to install or patch operating systems, middleware, or development tools. Which option should the team select?
Domain: Describe cloud concepts (25-30%) Type: Single choice
- A. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
- B. Software as a Service (SaaS)
- C. Platform as a Service (PaaS)
- D. A lift-and-shift migration
C is correct.
Explanation: PaaS is a middle ground between IaaS and SaaS. The provider maintains the infrastructure, operating systems, middleware, development tools, and analytics services, so the team can focus on application code, data, and access controls. Application development frameworks and analytics or business-intelligence workloads are typical PaaS scenarios.
A is incorrect: With IaaS you must install and maintain the operating system and configure networking, database, and storage, which adds the maintenance work the team wants to avoid.
B is incorrect: SaaS delivers a finished application, so it does not give the team a place to develop and run its own application code.
D is incorrect: A lift-and-shift migration is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) scenario that leaves the team responsible for installing and patching operating systems.
Q10 - Question
An organization runs workloads with two public cloud providers and also keeps a private cloud in its own datacenter. Operations staff want a single way to manage resources across all of these environments. Which approach matches this requirement?
Domain: Describe cloud concepts (25-30%) Type: Single choice
- A. Move all workloads to a single private cloud to reduce management scope.
- B. Use Azure Arc, which can manage public, private, hybrid, and multicloud resources.
- C. Adopt a public cloud only model and retire the private cloud.
- D. Manage each provider separately because deployment models cannot be combined.
B is correct.
Explanation: Azure Arc can help manage resources in public cloud, private cloud, hybrid, and multicloud environments, which fits an estate that spans two public cloud providers and a private cloud.
A is incorrect: A private cloud serves one organization and brings greater cost with fewer public cloud benefits, and it does not manage the existing public cloud workloads.
C is incorrect: Retiring the private cloud changes the architecture rather than providing management across the current environments.
D is incorrect: Deployment models can be combined, as hybrid and multicloud show.