AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Practice Exam

What the AZ-900 exam covers

• Describe Cloud Concepts305 questions
• Describe Azure Architecture and Services324 questions
• Describe Azure Management and Governance319 questions

Free AZ-900 sample questions

A sample of 10 questions with answers and explanations. Sign up free to practice all 948.

1. Question 1Describe Cloud Concepts

   Your company needs to deploy a web application that must remain available even if a single datacenter experiences an outage. Which cloud characteristic BEST describes this requirement?

   • AAgility
   • BElasticity
   • CScalability
   • DHigh availabilityCorrect
   ✓ Correct answer: D

   High availability refers to the ability of a system to remain operational and accessible even when individual components fail, such as a datacenter outage. Azure achieves high availability through features like Availability Zones, which distribute resources across physically separate datacenters within a region. This ensures that if one datacenter goes down, the application continues to run from another zone with minimal or no interruption.

   Why the other options are wrong

   • AAgility refers to the ability to rapidly provision and deploy resources, not to surviving outages.
   • BElasticity describes the ability to dynamically scale resources up or down based on demand.
   • CScalability is the ability to increase capacity to handle growing workloads, but it does not specifically address surviving datacenter failures.
2. Question 2Describe Cloud Concepts

   Which cloud concept ensures that a service remains available even if a single component fails?

   • AScalability
   • BHigh availabilityCorrect
   • CAgility
   • DElasticity
   ✓ Correct answer: B

   High availability is the cloud concept that ensures a service remains operational and accessible even when individual components experience failures. This is achieved through redundancy, failover mechanisms, and distributing resources across multiple availability zones or regions. Cloud providers design their services with high availability in mind, often guaranteeing uptime through Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that specify the expected percentage of availability.

   Why the other options are wrong

   • AScalability refers to the ability to increase or decrease resources to handle varying levels of demand, not to maintaining service during component failures.
   • CAgility refers to the ability to rapidly provision and deploy resources, enabling organizations to respond quickly to changing business needs.
   • DElasticity refers to the automatic scaling of resources in response to real-time demand changes, which is about handling variable workloads rather than surviving component failures.
3. Question 3Describe Azure Architecture and Services

   A company has a single Azure subscription and wants to deploy resources for its development, testing, and production environments. What is the recommended approach to organize these environments?

   • ADeploy all resources without any organizational structure
   • BCreate separate resource groups for each environment within the same subscriptionCorrect
   • CUse different Azure regions for each environment
   • DCreate separate storage accounts for each environment
   ✓ Correct answer: B

   Resource groups provide a logical container for Azure resources that share a common lifecycle and management boundary. By creating separate resource groups for development, testing, and production, the company can apply distinct role-based access control (RBAC), tags, and Azure policies to each environment, while keeping resources organized and simplifying cost tracking.

   Why the other options are wrong

   • ADeploying all resources without any organizational structure makes resource management, access control, and cost tracking extremely difficult and is not a recommended practice.
   • CUsing different Azure regions for each environment is not a logical organizational strategy because regions are geographic locations chosen for latency and compliance, not for separating environments.
   • DCreating separate storage accounts for each environment only addresses storage resources and does not provide a comprehensive organizational structure for all resource types.
4. Question 4Describe Azure Architecture and Services

   Which Azure compute option is best suited for running containerized applications with orchestration at scale?

   • AAzure Batch
   • BAzure App Service
   • CAzure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Correct
   • DAzure Virtual Machines
   ✓ Correct answer: C

   Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a fully managed container orchestration service that simplifies deploying, managing, and scaling containerized applications using Kubernetes. AKS handles critical tasks such as health monitoring, scaling, node provisioning, and upgrades, while providing enterprise-grade security and governance. It is the best Azure option for running containerized workloads at scale with automated container orchestration, load balancing, self-healing, and rolling updates.

   Why the other options are wrong

   • AAzure Batch is a service for running large-scale parallel and high-performance computing jobs, not for container orchestration.
   • BAzure App Service can host containers but does not provide full Kubernetes-based orchestration capabilities for managing complex, multi-container deployments at scale.
   • DAzure Virtual Machines can run containers manually, but they require significant effort to set up and manage orchestration, and they do not provide built-in container orchestration features.
5. Question 5Describe Azure Management and GovernanceSelect all that apply

   Which TWO of the following can help reduce Azure costs? (Select two.)

   • AAssigning more RBAC roles to users
   • BRight-sizing underutilized virtual machinesCorrect
   • CDeploying all resources in a single resource group
   • DUsing Azure Reserved Instances for predictable workloadsCorrect
   ✓ Correct answer: B, D

   Right-sizing virtual machines involves analyzing actual resource utilization and adjusting VM sizes to match real workload demands, eliminating waste from over-provisioned resources and directly reducing compute costs. Azure Reserved Instances allow you to commit to a one-year or three-year term for virtual machines, providing discounts of up to 72% compared to pay-as-you-go pricing for predictable, steady-state workloads. Both strategies are proven, effective methods for reducing Azure costs.

   Why the other options are wrong

   • AAssigning more RBAC roles to users controls access permissions and has no impact on Azure resource costs or billing.
   • CDeploying all resources in a single resource group is an organizational choice that has no effect on pricing, as Azure charges are based on individual resource consumption, not resource group structure.
6. Question 6Describe Azure Management and Governance

   A company is considering migrating its on-premises infrastructure to Azure and wants to compare the total cost of owning and operating its current on-premises environment versus running the same workloads in Azure over three years. Which Azure tool should they use?

   • AAzure Cost Management
   • BAzure Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) CalculatorCorrect
   • CAzure Pricing Calculator
   • DAzure Advisor
   ✓ Correct answer: B

   The Azure TCO Calculator is designed to help organizations compare the full cost of owning and operating on-premises infrastructure against running the same workloads in Azure. You input details about your current environment, including servers, databases, storage, and networking, and the tool produces a comparison over a one-, three-, or five-year period. It factors in hardware, software licensing, electricity, cooling, labor, and datacenter costs to deliver an accurate total cost of ownership comparison. This is exactly what the company needs for its three-year evaluation.

   Why the other options are wrong

   • AAzure Cost Management monitors and analyzes costs for resources already deployed in Azure and does not compare on-premises costs against cloud costs.
   • CAzure Pricing Calculator estimates costs for specific Azure services before deployment but does not compare them against an existing on-premises environment.
   • DAzure Advisor provides optimization recommendations for existing Azure resources and does not generate migration cost comparisons.
7. Question 7Describe Cloud Concepts

   What is the difference between vertical scaling and horizontal scaling?

   • AVertical scaling adds more instances, while horizontal scaling enlarges a single instance
   • BBoth terms describe the same action of increasing available storage capacity
   • CVertical scaling applies only to storage and horizontal scaling only to networking
   • DVertical scaling resizes a resource; horizontal scaling adds or removes instancesCorrect
   ✓ Correct answer: D

   Vertical scaling (scaling up or down) increases or decreases the capacity of an existing resource, for example moving a virtual machine to a size with more CPU and memory. Horizontal scaling (scaling out or in) adds or removes instances, such as putting more VMs behind a load balancer. Horizontal scaling is often preferred in the cloud because it can respond automatically to demand and is not bound by the maximum size of a single machine.

   Why the other options are wrong

   • AThis reverses the terms: adding instances is horizontal, and enlarging one instance is vertical.
   • BThe two describe different scaling approaches and are not limited to storage.
   • CBoth approaches apply broadly to compute resources, not to one resource type.
8. Question 8Describe Azure Management and Governance

   Azure Arc extends Azure management to resources outside Azure and therefore replaces Azure Service Health for reporting service outages and incidents.

   • TrueTrue
   • FalseFalseCorrect
   ✓ Correct answer: False

   Azure Arc extends Azure management and governance capabilities to hybrid and multi-cloud environments, allowing organizations to manage on-premises servers, Kubernetes clusters, and data services through the Azure control plane. However, Azure Arc does not replace Azure Service Health in any deployment scenario at Contoso Ltd. Azure Service Health monitors the health of Azure platform services and provides personalized impact information, planned maintenance notifications, and health advisories. These are distinct functions that Azure Arc does not provide, as Arc focuses on resource management and governance rather than platform health monitoring.

   Why the other options are wrong

   • TrueTrue is incorrect. The statement is false: Azure Arc extends Azure management and governance capabilities to hybrid and multi-cloud environments, allowing organizations to manage on-premises servers, Kubernetes clusters, and data services through the Azure control plane.
9. Question 9Describe Azure Architecture and Services

   Which Azure Storage access tier offers the lowest storage cost but highest access cost, intended for data that is rarely accessed and stored for at least 180 days?

   • AHot tier
   • BCool tier
   • CCold tier
   • DArchive tierCorrect
   ✓ Correct answer: D

   The Azure Storage Archive tier is designed for data that is rarely accessed and must be stored for long periods. It offers the lowest storage cost per gigabyte among all tiers but has the highest access cost and longest retrieval latency because data must be rehydrated before it can be read. The Archive tier requires data to be stored for a minimum of 180 days, and early deletion incurs charges. It is ideal for long-term backup, compliance archives, and data that is seldom needed but must be retained.

   Why the other options are wrong

   • AThe Hot tier is optimized for data that is accessed frequently, offering the lowest access costs but the highest storage costs, which is the opposite of what is described.
   • BThe Cool tier is designed for data that is infrequently accessed and stored for at least 30 days, with lower storage costs than Hot but higher than Archive, and it does not require 180-day minimum retention.
   • CThe Cold tier is designed for data that is infrequently accessed and stored for at least 90 days, with lower storage costs than Cool but higher than Archive, and it does not match the 180-day minimum retention requirement described.
10. Question 10Describe Azure Management and Governance

    Microsoft Purview provides which of the following capabilities?

    • AEnforcing VM size restrictions across subscriptions
    • BCreating automated data lineage maps and classifying sensitive dataCorrect
    • CMonitoring the uptime and availability of Azure services
    • DSetting spending budgets and cost alerts
    ✓ Correct answer: B

    Microsoft Purview is a unified data governance service that provides automated data discovery, sensitive data classification, and data lineage mapping. It scans data sources across on-premises, multi-cloud, and SaaS environments to build a comprehensive data map of your organization's data estate. Purview helps organizations understand where their sensitive data resides and how it flows through systems.

    Why the other options are wrong

    • AEnforcing VM size restrictions across subscriptions is a function of Azure Policy, not Microsoft Purview.
    • CMonitoring the uptime and availability of Azure services is handled by Azure Service Health, not Microsoft Purview.
    • DSetting spending budgets and cost alerts is managed through Microsoft Cost Management, not Microsoft Purview.

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